Computers & Electronics

How to maintain laptop ac adapter?

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  • Jan 13th, 2012 4:01 pm
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Aug 3, 2011
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How to maintain laptop ac adapter?

I have had bought several laptop adapters because my laptop adapters easily failed to work. I do not konw why. Can you share the maintenance tips of laptop ac adapter?
bluesky
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Feb 15, 2008
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How/why are they failing? Physical abuse? Normal wear-and-tear? Cords breaking? Failing to output power when plugged in?

If you're buying cheap Chinese knock-offs, you might be experiencing lower reliability than an OEM adapter.

Generally, its best to go for the highest power rating of adapter that your equipment will handle. For instance, Dell makes a 65W, 90W, and 135W adapter for their laptops. The 135W adapter would be expected to have the longest longevity (but probably won't work if you're on an airplane!).

Since the adapters are generally sealed units, there's really nothing you can do to 'maintain' them. Of course, as with all electrical equipment that generates heat, you would be advised to not smother the adapter in blankets, clothing, or other things that may cause heat build-up.
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Jun 18, 2008
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Mark77 wrote: How/why are they failing? Physical abuse? Normal wear-and-tear? Cords breaking? Failing to output power when plugged in?

If you're buying cheap Chinese knock-offs, you might be experiencing lower reliability than an OEM adapter.

Generally, its best to go for the highest power rating of adapter that your equipment will handle. For instance, Dell makes a 65W, 90W, and 135W adapter for their laptops. The 135W adapter would be expected to have the longest longevity (but probably won't work if you're on an airplane!).

Since the adapters are generally sealed units, there's really nothing you can do to 'maintain' them. Of course, as with all electrical equipment that generates heat, you would be advised to not smother the adapter in blankets, clothing, or other things that may cause heat build-up.

i have an ac brick adapter for my netbook that gets hot as hell during normal usage. out of concern, i just set some oem cpu heatsink (that was just laying around the house) on top of the brick which doesnt burn up as hot anymore. it probably helps a little.
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Hiroshirou wrote: i have an ac brick adapter for my netbook that gets hot as hell during normal usage. out of concern, i just set some oem cpu heatsink (that was just laying around the house) on top of the brick which doesnt burn up as hot anymore. it probably helps a little.

Yeah might help. Although since a typical adapter is encapsulated in plastic that insulates, that really doesn't address the big elephant in the room, and that is, the overall package probably is undersized (ie: poorly engineered) for the application. Some designs (ie: yours) may be blatently undersized.

Laptop PSUs basically have to be treated as a disposible sort of item that very likely won't outlive a well built laptop. It is, of course, better to have most of the heat dissipation and prone-to-damage battery charger circuitry inside a relatively inexpensive, replaceable AC adapter PSU -- than it is to have all that stuff built into a laptops motherboard.

A laptop user with a hot running AC adapter potentially has a few options:

a) Upgrade to a higher wattage rating adapter if possible.

b) Set the laptop to a 'slow charge' or 'airplane charge' mode, to minimize the charge rate, if possible (this should also help preserve battery life -- but obviously charges less quickly, so not verhy good for a businessman on the go!).

c) Upgrade to a SSD (lower power consumption) from a hard drive.

d) Make use of processor power management/ACPI features on the laptop (in Windows, right-click on the battery icon in the tray, and select 'power saver'; in Linux, use the ondemand power scheduler, or echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor for cpu0-n, where n is the number of cpu's in the system). In Windows, keeping the Task Manager open in the tray can let you know if a process is running out of control and burning up all your CPU. In Linux, a tool called powertop is very useful and can be downloaded from an Intel-sponsored website. It actually gives you an interactive guide to reducing energy consumption of your computer, which should help the life of your battery and its charging components.

e) Downclock/underclock GPU's or switch to using the low-power graphics instead of the dedicated GPU whenever possible.
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Oct 13, 2002
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I have seen so many "broken" wires as people tend to bend them too much when they tie & pack them, especially at the point around the power brick and the thinner wire to the laptop side. I suggest not to bend them too much. Afterall, there are metal inside.

And I agree with Mark77, I purchased many "OEM" ones from ebay, they tend to fail rather quickly ....
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willy wrote: I have seen so many "broken" wires as people tend to bend them too much when they tie & pack them, especially at the point around the power brick and the thinner wire to the laptop side. I suggest not to bend them too much. Afterall, there are metal inside.

And I agree with Mark77, I purchased many "OEM" ones from ebay, they tend to fail rather quickly ....

Yeah I tend to wrap some duck tape or electrical tape around the weak points of mine. The tape seems to reduce the level of stress that one exerts on the bend. The weak point on the Dell PA-10 seems to be where the laptop plug connector meets the wire, on the low voltage side. Tape looks a bit tacky in an office environment, but it works! The new PA-2E's have been revised to use a better connector that is more tapered and less susceptible.

Of course, the best time to do the tape wrapping is when they're brand new. Not when the plastic sheathing of the cable is cracked and the whole thing is on the verge of falling apart.
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Jul 5, 2006
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typically it's the cord and connector between the laptop and the brick that breaks. the power cord from the adapter to the wall is usually more durable, and it's very low cost to replace if it does. the brick itself should never die (of course some do), so that's what's flaking out, it's probably because you're not using ones from the original laptop vendor. generally if you treat your AC adapter with care it'll survive. the less you flex pieces like the connector ends back and forth the better it's going to be for your stuff.

stuff like using less power which mark suggested will help your battery last longer, should make no difference to your power adapter. and the power difference between an ssd and a regular hard drive surely should not be the deciding factor for choosing one or the other.

i think the real solution is that laptop manufacturers will juts have to decide that they're going to make more durable ones

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