2016 15" shut down completely, while plugged in under load

[fs454]

I was just getting a few rounds of Battlefield 1 in and the notebook fully shut down on me in the middle of a round. Restarted and tried again, but it forced a shutdown again sitting at the game's main menu. This is all while plugged into its 87w brick, albeit at 7% battery and charging.


Is it not ridiculous that it can't keep itself powered on under load connected to AC power at a battery level lower than 15%? Is my only solution to wait until the battery is full again before attempting high load tasks?

Kind of insane. I'm extremely impressed with the performance of this notebook both with gaming and cutting 4K XAVC-S footage, but this is the first I've seen of a MacBook Pro unable to keep itself powered on with the AC power plugged in.

 

[eeyoredragon]

A few of us have been issues with the battery charging in general.

I just mailed mine off for replacement.

It slowed to a crawl in the middle of a game. I rebooted it. It showed as having 0% charge and "not charging" despite being plugged in. Then it turned itself off and never powered on or charged again.

 

[SBruv]

A few of us have been issues with the battery charging in general.

I just mailed mine off for replacement.

It slowed to a crawl in the middle of a game. I rebooted it. It showed as having 0% charge and "not charging" despite being plugged in. Then it turned itself off and never powered on or charged again.

Was this in MacOS or Windows?

 

[drambuie]

I was just getting a few rounds of Battlefield 1 in and the notebook fully shut down on me in the middle of a round. Restarted and tried again, but it forced a shutdown again sitting at the game's main menu. This is all while plugged into its 87w brick, albeit at 7% battery and charging.


Is it not ridiculous that it can't keep itself powered on under load connected to AC power at a battery level lower than 15%? Is my only solution to wait until the battery is full again before attempting high load tasks?

Kind of insane. I'm extremely impressed with the performance of this notebook both with gaming and cutting 4K XAVC-S footage, but this is the first I've seen of a MacBook Pro unable to keep itself powered on with the AC power plugged in.

[doublepost=1481143106][/doublepost]I don't know about the 2016 rMBPs, but I remember past posts in this forum to the effect that MBPs with high processing loads on both the CPU and GPU required combined power from AC and the battery to operate. The battery would be subject to some drain even with AC power connected.

 

[cchangx]

I was just getting a few rounds of Battlefield 1 in and the notebook fully shut down on me in the middle of a round. Restarted and tried again, but it forced a shutdown again sitting at the game's main menu. This is all while plugged into its 87w brick, albeit at 7% battery and charging.


Is it not ridiculous that it can't keep itself powered on under load connected to AC power at a battery level lower than 15%? Is my only solution to wait until the battery is full again before attempting high load tasks?

Kind of insane. I'm extremely impressed with the performance of this notebook both with gaming and cutting 4K XAVC-S footage, but this is the first I've seen of a MacBook Pro unable to keep itself powered on with the AC power plugged in.

Was the MacBook very hot? Some computers have an auto shutdown feature to prevent a component from frying.

 

[idark77]

The maximum power consumption of the MBP 15 2016 with i7/6700HQ, 16GB Ram, 256GB SSD and AMD Radeon Pro 450 is around 90W (89.5W measured by notebookcheck.net) but if you have i7-6920HQ and Radeon Pro 460 it will be more. The power supply is only 87W and the battery pack is only 76Wh so at high load tasks (playing games) you draw more than >76Wh so at the end you will get less charge and "end of games"...

 

[eeyoredragon]

Was this in MacOS or Windows?

MacOS

 

[Clint_Barton]

I was just getting a few rounds of Battlefield 1 in and the notebook fully shut down on me in the middle of a round. Restarted and tried again, but it forced a shutdown again sitting at the game's main menu. This is all while plugged into its 87w brick, albeit at 7% battery and charging.


Is it not ridiculous that it can't keep itself powered on under load connected to AC power at a battery level lower than 15%? Is my only solution to wait until the battery is full again before attempting high load tasks?

Kind of insane. I'm extremely impressed with the performance of this notebook both with gaming and cutting 4K XAVC-S footage, but this is the first I've seen of a MacBook Pro unable to keep itself powered on with the AC power plugged in.

do you have any way to measure power draw from the wall or measure (istat) the total system power consumption?

 

[therealseebs]

That sounds different from the "just stops charging at all" behavior, but just in case, make backups ASAP.

 

[fs454]

A few of us have been issues with the battery charging in general.

I just mailed mine off for replacement.

It slowed to a crawl in the middle of a game. I rebooted it. It showed as having 0% charge and "not charging" despite being plugged in. Then it turned itself off and never powered on or charged again.

I do get occasional "slow to a crawl" moments in BF1 that I did NOT get on the one I had replaced for the speaker issues. For about 8-10 seconds, the game will drop to about a half a frame a second and then go back to the usual 50-60fps. It'll be stable for 20-30 minutes and then choke for that same brief period again. I still need to try the AMD driver over the Apple one, but the other 2016 MBP I had didn't do this.

More shockingly, I just measured the battery drain during a high-load, sustained task like gaming. I played Battlefield 1 for two hours starting at 100% battery. When I was done, the battery was at 71%! Which means an overnight render, if intensive enough, could totally shut the laptop down unexpectedly. 15% per hour is a pretty large drain while plugged into AC power.

I mean what, we're looking at TDPs under load as 45w CPU, 35W-ish GPU, 10-14 for the rest of the system like the 1TB flash chips and the 4GB GDDR5, and the LCD? That's over 90 watts and the max it can take in is 81.

 

[linguist]

gosh Apple need to get their head straight.

 

[Gav2k]

This has always been the case with higher end MacBooks and not new in any way

 

[linguist]

Hi Gav2k , no offence, just surprised if this is the case and still is the case,

2015" with dGPU also have this same problem ?

 

[Gav2k]

Hi Gav2k , no offence, just surprised if this is the case and still is the case,

2015" with dGPU also have this same problem ?

Wasn't having a pop mate it's just a known issue and not isolated to Apple. Many other brands exhibit the same behaviour as a tradeoff between a sensible power brick and a silly sized brick.

 

[fs454]

Wasn't having a pop mate it's just a known issue and not isolated to Apple. Many other brands exhibit the same behaviour as a tradeoff between a sensible power brick and a silly sized brick.

Has it always been as severe as 15% per hour? That gives you 6 hours of full-load working time before the notebook shuts off. Plugged in. If that's not a headline I don't know what is.

 

[linguist]

Wasn't having a pop mate it's just a known issue and not isolated to Apple. Many other brands exhibit the same behaviour as a tradeoff between a sensible power brick and a silly sized brick.

I think the best solution would be software solution for this case scenario, drop the CPU and GPU performance when reaching 30% -ish battery power.

 

[Gav2k]

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204054

Has it always been as severe as 15% per hour? That gives you 6 hours of full-load working time before the notebook shuts off. Plugged in. If that's not a headline I don't know what is.

Depending on load yes.

 

[idark77]

It's the electronic of MBP and Apple designed it to work in that way.
For example if you draw 100W (87W from power supply + 13W from battery) after 2 hours the battery has ~66% of charge...
The solution is buy a Gaming Laptop if you want to play games...

 

[Ries]

Wasn't having a pop mate it's just a known issue and not isolated to Apple. Many other brands exhibit the same behaviour as a tradeoff between a sensible power brick and a silly sized brick.

They should have included a 100w charger (maximum for USB-C). My work lenovo comes with a 170w.

 

[Queen6]

I do get occasional "slow to a crawl" moments in BF1 that I did NOT get on the one I had replaced for the speaker issues. For about 8-10 seconds, the game will drop to about a half a frame a second and then go back to the usual 50-60fps. It'll be stable for 20-30 minutes and then choke for that same brief period again. I still need to try the AMD driver over the Apple one, but the other 2016 MBP I had didn't do this.

More shockingly, I just measured the battery drain during a high-load, sustained task like gaming. I played Battlefield 1 for two hours starting at 100% battery. When I was done, the battery was at 71%! Which means an overnight render, if intensive enough, could totally shut the laptop down unexpectedly. 15% per hour is a pretty large drain while plugged into AC power.

I mean what, we're looking at TDPs under load as 45w CPU, 35W-ish GPU, 10-14 for the rest of the system like the 1TB flash chips and the 4GB GDDR5, and the LCD? That's over 90 watts and the max it can take in is 81.

That`s normal, many of the preceding MBP`s had the same issue, equally it`s just BS in 2016 for Apple to not ensure the power supply to the notebook is adequate for maximum load. Clearly an indication of Apple`s intended usage for the 15" MacBook Pro...

Q-6

 

[therealseebs]

Wasn't having a pop mate it's just a known issue and not isolated to Apple. Many other brands exhibit the same behaviour as a tradeoff between a sensible power brick and a silly sized brick.

I've never seen it elsewhere. I think my current laptop is capable of drawing more power than it can draw from a USB-C hub, but they do include an adequately large power supply for it. (USB-C hub peaks at 130W delivered, normal power adapter is 180W.)

Can you identify for me a specific example of a non-Apple laptop which doesn't have enough power supply for its full power draw?

 

[Gav2k]

I've never seen it elsewhere. I think my current laptop is capable of drawing more power than it can draw from a USB-C hub, but they do include an adequately large power supply for it. (USB-C hub peaks at 130W delivered, normal power adapter is 180W.)

Can you identify for me a specific example of a non-Apple laptop which doesn't have enough power supply for its full power draw?

Dell and asus have been guilty of this all you have to do is search. It's quite common

 

[xraydoc]

Not suggesting anyone try it until we know it's safe to do so, but I wonder if in a situation like this one could not use the included 87w AC adapter in one port plus an Apple 29w adapter in another port.

 

[Gav2k]

Not suggesting anyone try it until we know it's safe to do so, but I wonder if in a situation like this one could not use the included 87w AC adapter in one port plus an Apple 29w adapter in another port.

It'll only take power from one port. This was mentioned at the keynote

 

[fs454]

It's the electronic of MBP and Apple designed it to work in that way.
For example if you draw 100W (87W from power supply + 13W from battery) after 2 hours the battery has ~66% of charge...
The solution is buy a Gaming Laptop if you want to play games...

That's not the solution, though. I'm using gaming as an example because that's where I'm seeing it right now. I do production work throughout the year that often requires an overnight render because it's effects-heavy or extremely high res for floor-to-ceiling displays or something of that nature. If I start one of these renders and it takes longer than six hours, the computer will flat out fail at the task. That, to me, is absolutely crazy. Gaming is not the only lengthy, high load situation that the owner of a quad core+dGPU notebook is going to encounter.

It happens all the time. I do transcode work for the company on my 12-core Hackintosh that can take up to two full days of processing to complete. A weekend-long shoot that generates 4TB of 6K footage which needs to be converted down to 1080p proxies for smooth post work - if I'm on the road, this limitation means I can't do it.