Playing Steam plugged in and still lose power

[bulls96]

Have an i7 sp4 8gb ram 256, and when I play nba 2k16 with my sp4 docked, I am few percentage points lower in battery than when I started.

Have a usb fan attached to help with heat, and play with a Bluetooth Xbox one s controller.

Anyone else?

 

[xandros9]

I think that's certainly possible. When I had a Surface Pro 2 and an underpowered RT charger, playing a heavy game with it would result in the tablet slowly discharging. Not sure if that should be happening though. It's while playing a game so naturally it's using a lot of power. Maybe check the dock's power supply wattage?

 

[bulls96]

Well I'm using the charger that came with it, and also the SP3dock (the one that clicks)

 

[dc9super80]

Yes, that happens to me as well when I play FSX Steam. I have an i7 SP4.

 

[bulls96]

So is that expected behavior or sign that something is not working right?

 

[onlysublime]

The charger is really slow on the Surface Pro 4. So if you run a really intensive program constantly, you can see the charge drop. Note that it has to be running intensively constantly. Like a game or video encoding. Something like Photoshop is only intensive in bursts (when you perform certain actions) so you won't see the behavior during things like Lightroom, QuickBooks, etc.

 

[dc9super80]

I have seen people complain of similar behavior on Apple laptops as well, so yeah, it seems as though it is normal. Anything that peaks the processor power will do that.

 

[bulls96]

You would think they would optimize that and that shouldn't be an issue, especially portable devices like this.

Thanks for your responses.

 

[anon(5327127)]

Check which charger you have as there's TWO possible choices. You might want to upgrade to the Surface Book's charger.

 

[bulls96]

Check which charger you have as there's TWO possible choices. You might want to upgrade to the Surface Book's charger.

I am using the clicking Surface dock, and even the new Surface dock, it still discharges when I play games.

I guess it cannot be a full desktop replacement then.