Razer Blade 15 advanced 2021 woes. Can't use chargers | Razer Insider
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I’ve had my Razer Blade 15 advanced 2021 RZ09-0409 for almost two years now. For the first 14 months it worked perfectly and I loved using it. It is now pretty much unusable.

tldr - It doesn’t work with any 3 prong charger. Not a charger issue. The computer massively slows down and will not charge the battery (plus it shows it’s on battery power).

 

To preface, I used it for software development and light gaming. When used the clamshell screen was always opened. When gaming it was always connected to the original charger. As it was my work computer as well, the battery had time to discharge and charge when I took it with me to meetings. All this to say it was treated nicely.

 

After 14 months I noticed two things. 1 - I can’t use the trackpad anymore and 2 - the computer stopped charging. Reading up online I figured the battery must be the issue - and indeed it was swollen to the point it pressed on the touchpad so the latter can’t be clicked. The computer was marginally out of warranty at that point, so figuring it’s only a battery issue I ordered a replacement battery and installed it. This is the swollen battery:
 

 

The trackpad worked properly after battery replacement, but the computer still didn’t accept a charge from the 3 prong charger. If I plug the charger in, windows shows it as charging for about 2 seconds before showing “on battery power”. In addition, while in this state the CPU speed drops to about 1ghz (when the base speed is about 2.1 ghz).

See video demonstration here
 



Originally after reading the forums and hearing about dead chargers I thought that was the case, even though I tested the charger using a voltmeter and it seemed fine. So I got another original Razer charger. Guess what? Same thing. Figuring it must be another faulty Razer charger, I got a 3rd party charger, the SlimQ 240w charger.
Same result. Tested all three chargers with the voltmeter and they are around the required 19.5V so the issue is definitely the computer and not any of chargers, since it’s highly unlikely all three chargers are bad.

Depicted - one of the razer chargers, the USB-C charger, and the SlimQ charger:
 


When I used a 100w PD USB-C charger, the computer does show it’s connected, and the battery does indeed charge. However the computer is prone to suddenly turning off because the power draw is too great for the charger (and I’m assuming there’s also awful power management from the hardware side, since the computer shouldn’t just turn off, it should throttle the CPU to draw less!). I can kind of work with this if I disable CPU turbo and don’t game at all, but that caps the CPU at 2.1 Ghz and prevents me from doing what this computer was bought for.

 

Some things I tried:

  • Connecting both a 3 prong charger and the USB-C charger makes no difference. It works the same as if I’ve only connected the USB-C one.
  • If I physically disconnect the battery and connect it to a 3 prong charger, the computer will not turn on at all.


Bios is updated, windows is updated, Synapse was reinstalled, installed, uninstalled, whatever - no difference.

This is most likely a hardware or a firmware issue. 

I am beyond frustrated, to say the least, especially given how well everything worked the first year.

For a $3000 laptop (plus money spent on extra chargers) this is absurd. The computer is out of warranty, so I can’t get “free support”. I’m not too keen on sinking any extra money on that either.

 

I am facing the exact same issue.  I don’t know what to do. It’s beyond frustrating! It does seems odd mine started around the time a Synapse update was rolled out, but I am suspicious whether it is related. 

I am facing the exact same issue.  I don’t know what to do. It’s beyond frustrating! It does seems odd mine started around the time a Synapse update was rolled out, but I am suspicious whether it is related. 

Have the exact model been trying to find a reliable fix for ages 

and I do agree it tend to occur when a synapse update is rolled out but can’t confirm more likely a deeper issue with the battery management

I finally figured out a solution that works for me!

1. DON’T USE USB-C CHARGING AT ALL. While USB-C charging works for charging, for some reason after a short while it messes with the battery management and puts the system into a state where it will no longer charge from the 3-prong charger.
2. If your laptop presents the symptoms of non-charging discussed here, let it run unplugged until the battery depletes (red light in the indicator and then some). Then wait a few hours. After waiting, connect it to the 3-prong charger and then again wait a few hours (while the laptop is powered off). The waiting is crucial here, I’m not sure exactly why, perhaps because of residual heat or capacitors or dark magic but without waiting it will not go back to charging.
3. Turn on the laptop. It should be able to charge again with the 3-prong charger.
4. Consider using windows hibernation instead of sleep. Sleep caused the issue to return once for me.

 

Extra steps I’ve taken (Not sure if they’ve contributed or not, but putting them here for transparency)

 

 

  • In advanced power settings, set maximumprocessor state to 95%
     

     

  • Most of the time while plugged I have the power settings on “better performance”, and when I’m gaming/doing development work I switch it up to “best performance”. This along with the CPU settings mentioned has the effect of selecting between CPU speed of ~2.05 GHz  and ~4.00Ghz.
     

     

  • In synapse performance I set the fans manually to 4000 and crank them if I’m gaming.  This isn’t really related to charging but rather because I’m afraid of my battery bloating all over again
     


     

     


This has worked for me twice in the past few months. After many hours of tinkering and testing, I know for a fact the issue happens with USB-C charging, and once it happened after putting the computer in sleep mode while charging. Other than that charging has been rock stable for months.


I’m certain it’s a hardware issue with charging/battery management, not a software one.
I say this with confidence because I hooked up a monitor to see power draw between the charger and the laptop when it’s off, and the issue is apparent when trying to charge without the computer being on at all so neither windows nor synapse could have an effect on that.
 

I’m appalled at how widespread this issue is without an official solution, and surprised how come Razer never caught this issue in QA given that all it takes is to try and charge a laptop with USB-C for several hours.


Hope this works for you.

Where did you purchased the replacement battery any link?

Where did you purchased the replacement battery any link?

Link for battery?

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