I have been a long time Zwift user (almost entirely racing), In December I got a high-end MSI gaming laptop, which dramatically improved gaming experience. In the last 2-weeks, I have a new recurring issue. About 10-30 minutes into the session the laptop appears to go into sleep mode (screen goes black). I have to hit the power button, enter screen passcode and then click on Zwift icon to call the game back up. I remain in the event, but no power recorded or progress while I was “away” (so I am usually dropped from the pack by 45 seconds or so). I have checked my sleep setting and they are all set to “never”. Ideas on what might be causing this? I run live diagnostics so I can see graphics card and CPU usage and have fans set on balanced gaming mode. CPU seems to hover around 30% and Graphics card around 70% but it fluctuates a lot more. The fans rarely ramp up unless I am in some huge gran fondo event with a 1000+ participants. Ideas welcome…
Does your gaming laptop allow you to see CPU and GPU temps? How about turning the fans on high and see what happens. Does the case get hot?
If not thermal throttling then it’s possible that your laptop uses more power when gaming than it can draw, and it’s hitting a critical battery level threshold forcing it into sleep mode. Even on mains power this can be an issue. Have a look in the advanced power settings, but you may need to consider a beefier PSU if one is available.
Thanks guys, did check out which gaming mode which dictates how the fans operate and it was set to “extreme”, As mentioned above, I thought it was set to “balanced”, so I changed it to balanced and notice that now the fan usage and speed are fluctuating a lot more. Since I made this change (3 Zwift sessions), the problem has not occurred, so it make be as mentioned that ‘extreme’ mode was pushing the hardware too hard a triggering a forced shutdown. Fingers crossed that it is solved. Thanks for the input, which had me go back in a catch the setting issue.