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Can I upgrade the power adapter to increase the performance of my laptop?

This is usually not neccessary.

XMG laptops are always delivered with a sufficiently powered AC adapter. The adapter is matched to the laptop's performance potential - in other words, it supplies enough energy to fully, simultaneously and permanently realize the performance potential of all components (especially CPU and GPU) within the capacity of the laptop's cooling system.

The limiting factor here is actually the respective cooling system. All the energy that is fed into the laptop via the power adapter must be dissipated again by the cooling system. The choice of the power adapter that is bundled with each laptop is therefore also linked to the potential of the cooling system installed.

High consumption at the power outlet? Input power is not the same as output power!

If you measure the energy consumption of your laptop with an energy meter (see examples), you may notice that the energy consumption under full load is already close to or even above the adapter's rated power. However, it is important to remember:

  • The adapter's power rating refers to the permanently guaranteed (24 hours, non-stop) power output, i.e. the energy that arrives at the laptop.
  • The measuring device, however, measures the power input, i.e. the energy that goes from the wall socket into the power adapter.

During voltage conversion in the power adapter, power loss occurs, which manifests itself in the form of heat emissions on the power adapter itself. This conversion loss must be subtracted from the measured input power before the actual output power can be estimated.

With a regulated efficiency of at least 88%, the power loss is approx. 12%. A power adapter with an official 230 watts power rating can therefore consume 257 watts permanently (24 hours, non-stop) at the socket without operating outside its specifications.

For shorter periods of time, even more is possible.

So-called "peaku201d and "surgeu201d loads are time periods in which the adapter's power output is allowed to be above the official rating while still being within its own specifications. For example, many common high-performance AC adapters for gaming laptops are able to permanently exceed their nominal power by 10% for up to 9 minutes (surge) without being outside their operational parameters.

Thus, even a temporary measurement of 283 watts at the wall socket is still within the specifications of a 230-watt power supply. In the seconds and milliseconds range, the power peaks are allowed to be even higher. All this is defined in the manufacturer's extended datasheet of the adapter. These documents are usually not publicly accessible.

When operating with XMG OASIS water cooling, an upgrade can still make sense.

(Users who do not own and do not plan to own XMG OASIS do not need to read any further from here on.)

As already described above, the cooling system of a laptop is the limiting factor. This factor was raised with the introduction of the XMG OASIS water cooling solution for XMG CORE and XMG NEO (from 2022). The following criteria were taken into account when selecting the bundles power adapters for these laptops:

  • The adapter should provide sufficient power to cover the performance potential of the laptop's air cooling. This applies to all XMG laptops.
  • The power adapter should also have enough leeway to take into account the increased performance potential due to the connection of the XMG OASIS.
  • However, the power adapter should not be so large and heavy that the mobile use of the laptop is restricted too much.

Under these circumstances, the power adapter bundled with XMG OASIS-supporting laptops represent the middle ground between performance potential, price and weight. In addition, the maximum performance potential of a laptop is only used relatively rarely or by a small group of customers, namely only when the CPU and GPU are used to 100% capacity at the same time. This is practically never the case in gaming, but at most in very specialised content creation applications, the simultaneous combination of software and hardware rendering or in special machine learning processes. As a rule, however, even these professional applications are either CPU- or GPU-limited instead of maxing out both.

In addition to the laptop's performance potential, there are of course peripheral demands such as fast battery charging and powering connected peripherals. For example, a battery can be charged from 0 to 50% with up to 60 watts. A USB-C port can deliver up to 15 watts of power.

These considerations combined with full simultaneous CPU and GPU load using XMG OASIS can make upgrading the power supply for stationary use worthwhile, even if the actual performance increase (e.g. increase in benchmark score) is relatively small.

Power supply upgrade requires an update of the system configuration in firmware.

As described in the previous section, a power supply upgrade can be useful for users of the XMG OASIS water cooling system. In order to enable the performance increase, the system must be "informed" that a larger power adapter is now connected.

The laptop is not able to recognise by itself which power adapter is connected. In other words, the power adapter is "dumb" - it has no data connection, but only supplies power. In order to "tell" the system which power supply is connected, we have to manually set certain flags in the firmware. This is done by means of a special program which is available in the respective laptop's download portal. The program is called "ECSVTool". The name is made up of these components:

  • "EC" for "Embedded Controller
  • SV" for "Service" (here in the sense of "maintenance")
  • "Tool" for "tool

The upgrade goes something like this:

  • The user decides to buy a larger AC adapter, e.g. an upgrade from 280 to 330 watts.
  • The user connects the new power adapter to the laptop.
  • The user selects their laptop in the download portal and downloads the package with the ECSVTool.
  • The user selects their combination of CPU, graphics card and power adapter within the package and runs the corresponding tool.
  • The tool writes the corresponding values (performance profiles, power limits, etc.) into the firmware and then shuts down the system.
  • The user starts up the system again manually. The process is now complete.

These configuration flags are NOT overwritten by EC/BIOS updates. Instead, the tool must be run each time the power supply is upgraded or downgraded.

What if I run the wrong tool?

Running the wrong tool will not brick your system. However it may have adverse effects on performance profiles, RGB lights and other functions in the Control Center.

Can I increase my graphics performance if I choose the tool for a higher GPU?

No, the graphics performance will NOT increase if you run the tool for the next higher graphics card. On the contrary, running the tool with the wrong firmware flags may have negative effects on system performance and stability due to the mismatched power profiles. Such operation is not recommended and is NOT covered by the warranty.

What if I upgrade the power limits in firmware, but keep using the original adapter?

Upgrading the AC adapter limits in firmware without actually upgrading the AC adapter can be problematic. If you overload your actually connected AC adapter, the adapter may overheat or shutdown. This can be somewhat mitigated by lowering the CPU power limits in Control Center, by disabling NVIDIA Dynamic Boost or by simply avoiding high-load situations. However, the best course of action is to make sure that the power limits in firmware (set with this tool) match the AC adapter that is connected to the system.

To learn more about this topic, please follow the link to this FAQ article::