Understanding Screen Flickering During Gaming While Charging: A Case Study on Power Supply Limitations
Gaming laptops are powerful machines designed to handle intensive workloads, but users often encounter perplexing issues such as screen flickering or system instability during gameplay. One common yet overlooked cause is insufficient power delivery from the charger. This article explores a real-world scenario illustrating how an underpowered charging adapter can lead to visual glitches and system instability during gaming sessions, and offers guidance on diagnosing and resolving the problem.
The Context
Consider a user operating an HP Victus Gaming Laptop equipped with a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor and an RTX 3050 6GB GPU. The laptop came with a 200W charger, a typical power brick intended to support gaming performance and battery charging simultaneously.
The Issue
The user observed that during gaming sessions—playing titles such as Wuthering Waves, Counter-Strike 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2—the screen intermittently flickered, sometimes turning completely black. Interestingly, these artifacts only appeared when the laptop was connected to the charger; running on battery alone did not induce flickering. Diagnostics revealed:
- No flickering or instability during CPU-only stress tests.
- GPU stress testing on battery was stable.
- GPU stress testing while charging consistently caused flickering within minutes.
- Occasional need to fully drain the battery to reset the system, raising suspicions of hardware failures such as motherboard issues or VRM faults.
The Turning Point
The resolution emerged through experimentation with different power adapters:
- Replacing the 200W charger with a borrowed 230W charger resulted in stable gameplay for hours, with no flickering or system instability whatsoever.
- Reverting to the original 200W charger led to flickering once the battery was nearly full, indicating that the charger could handle normal operation on battery power but struggled under full load and charging simultaneously.
This pattern pointed to a power delivery limitation rather than hardware fault. The 200W brick was operating at its maximum capacity—just enough to run the laptop on battery, but inadequate when attempting to power both the laptop and charge the battery under demanding gaming loads.
Key Takeaways
- Power adapters have maximum output ratings; exceeding these limits can cause system instability or visual glitches.
- Screen flickering during gaming while charging doesn’t necessarily indicate hardware failure—the charger’s wattage capacity may be insufficient.
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