Well, you've got stand-by, and hibernation. Stand-by keeps power on your memory, so that their content isn't lost and your computer powers up near instantly when waking. This uses some energy, but 70w seems a bit much to me. I mean, it's not like your powersupply is actively running or something.

Hibernation writes your memory to your HDD and then powers off completely, just like a normal shutdown. In this case with the difference that, on boot, the cache file is loaded back into RAM and your computer resumes where it was left off.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radeon915

Well, you've got stand-by, and hibernation. Stand-by keeps power on your memory, so that their content isn't lost and your computer powers up near instantly when waking. This uses some energy, but 70w seems a bit much to me. I mean, it's not like your powersupply is actively running or something.
Hibernation writes your memory to your HDD and then powers off completely, just like a normal shutdown. In this case with the difference that, on boot, the cache file is loaded back into RAM and your computer resumes where it was left off.

You know by idle I meant it's on, but I'm not doing anything right?

Also that didn't answer my question but thanks. ALSO hibernate sucks and 50% of the time doesn't turn back on which is why I use sleep. I don't mind the wait, I just don't like having to re-open everything.

 

I keep my PC on sleep whenever I leave it idle or so, It actually consumes a lot less. I used to use hibernation but then sleep is much much faster in waking.

 

Anyone actually used a kill a watt to measure it? I had one a few months ago and I probably should have measured it.

 

If no one answers by Thursday I'd be happy to check when I get back home. I never use sleep anymore though, I just let the computer idle for the day and turn it all the way off at night. The only computer that I have that does sleep is my laptop (duh) and it actually will hibernate after 3 hours but I hate when it does. It's really slow and I usually end up restarting anyways.

 

I have used a Kill a watt to measure several computers in sleep, and they were all 1-2 w when sleeping.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by blupupher

I have used a Kill a watt to measure several computers in sleep, and they were all 1-2 w when sleeping.

And hippie websites say computers use 40 watt hours if you leave them in sleep while you sleep.

 

I just measured my old Phenom-9600 XP computer and my newly built much faster W7 one with a Kill-A-Watt power-meter. The XP only has "standby", which leaves fans and its 3 disks and who know what-all running, and only cuts its full-on power use from 111 Watts down to 83 Watts (excluding monitor). The W7 machine is an FX8350 on an ASUS M5A99FX with 8GB RAM, a single Drive, and a fairly good NVidia graphics card, and its true "sleep" mode cuts the running power of 70 Watts to (count-em) TWO!!!! It apparently keeps only the memory refresh powered up during sleep.

I read someone's claim that computers drew 50 Watts when literally OFF, and that's totally wrong. Even my XP machine only registers 3 Watts when "off", and that's through a surge protector.

- Lenny - (an actual Electrical Engineer and long-time computer guy)

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by lenngray

I just measured my old Phenom-9600 XP computer and my newly built much faster W7 one with a Kill-A-Watt power-meter. The XP only has "standby", which leaves fans and its 3 disks and who know what-all running, and only cuts its full-on power use from 111 Watts down to 83 Watts (excluding monitor). The W7 machine is an FX8350 on an ASUS M5A99FX with 8GB RAM, a single Drive, and a fairly good NVidia graphics card, and its true "sleep" mode cuts the running power of 70 Watts to (count-em) TWO!!!! It apparently keeps only the memory refresh powered up during sleep.

I read someone's claim that computers drew 50 Watts when literally OFF, and that's totally wrong. Even my XP machine only registers 3 Watts when "off", and that's through a surge protector.

- Lenny - (an actual Electrical Engineer and long-time computer guy)

The reason your XP computer uses so much power in standby is because it is using S1 sleep, which leaves the PSU on, and only puts the computer's components in low power mode. Computers nowadays use S3 sleep, which actually turns everything off, except for the memory, USB power (in some computers), and LAN devices (usually if wake-on-LAN is enabled). Hibernation is perfectly identical to power off as far as power consumption is concerned.
S3 sleep has been around for a long time, so I would be surprised if your XP computer doesn't support it. Make sure that S3 sleep is enabled in the BIOS and that your video driver is good (not running the generic Microsoft VGA driver).
Typical "off" power draw for a computer is 1 to 10 watts, with the majority of that usually coming from unneeded or wasteful components in the PSU. S3 standby typically adds another 1 to 10 watts to that, depending on the motherboard and memory.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by UsernameGoesHer

And hippie websites say computers use 40 watt hours if you leave them in sleep while you sleep.

all my computers sleep at 1-2w max. idles depend on the system and GPU used which can range from 30w-150w

40w hours while you sleep is kinda BS unless you dont wake up

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by akromatic

40w hours while you sleep is kinda BS unless you dont wake up

40WH is only 5 watts for 8 hours. Seems very reasonable to me.

 

4W at sleep S3 measured with Kill-a-Watt. 16GB of RAM.

 

if you have no pump few fans and few hdd , not too much , but if you have pumps fans and thing that are hooked to the psu and don't stop during sleep it can be quite high.
i have 2xpumps 4x180mm fans 5x120mm fans , 1xhdd, 2x280x with ulps disable and a 4670k , all this use nearly 200 watts (measured) at idle and maybe less in sleep , but my pump and fans never stop so i guess i still have a good 50-75 watt while in sleep

 

I personally don't use hibernate or sleep mode. I don't allow my disks to turn off either. The only thing I let happen is my monitor go to sleep.

I do wonder how much power I use but it would mean nothing in the end as I do not plan on changing how I do things so... meh.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashuiegi

if you have no pump few fans and few hdd , not too much , but if you have pumps fans and thing that are hooked to the psu and don't stop during sleep it can be quite high.
i have 2xpumps 4x180mm fans 5x120mm fans , 1xhdd, 2x280x with ulps disable and a 4670k , all this use nearly 200 watts (measured) at idle and maybe less in sleep , but my pump and fans never stop so i guess i still have a good 50-75 watt while in sleep

That means that your computer is using the very old S1 sleep. If it used S3 sleep, the PSU and everything connected to it would turn off during sleep. Check my comments several posts above to see possibilities on fixing the issue.

 

"G1 Sleeping-The system appears to be off but is actually in one of four Sleep states-up to full hibernation. How quickly the system can return to G0 depends on which of the Sleep states the system has selected. In any of these Sleep states, system context and status are saved such that they can be fully restored. The Sleep states available in the Global G1 state are defined as follows:

• G1/S1 Halt-A low-latency idle state. The CPU is halted; however, system context and status are fully retained.

• G1/S2 Halt-Reset-Similar to the S1 sleeping state except that the CPU and cache context is lost, and the CPU is reset upon wakeup.

• G1/S3 Suspend to RAM (STR)-All system context is lost except memory. The hardware maintains memory context. The CPU is reset and restores some CPU and L2 context upon wakeup.

• G1/S4 Suspend to Disk (Hibernation)-The system context and status (RAM contents) have been saved to nonvolatile storage-usually the hard disk. This is also known as Hibernation. To return to G0 (Working) state, you must press the power button, and the system will restart, loading the saved context and status from where they were previously saved (normally the hard disk). Returning from G2/S5 to G0 requires a considerable amount of latency (time).

"

... ...

"... When the system is set to suspend in the S3 state, upon entering Sleep (either automatically or manually), the current system context is saved in RAM and all the system hardware (CPU, motherboard, fans, display, and so on) except RAM is powered off. In this mode, the system looks as if it is off and consumes virtually the same amount of power as if it were truly off ..."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-protection-calculate-consumption,3066-3.html

While in S3 STR the PSU's three main rails are off. The RAM gets its juice from the +5VSB rail.

 

it s intended , i don't want it to turn off unless i tell him to , it s not an issue for me .

 

Since I posted, the surprise led me to find out about and fix the
83-watts in standby mode in XP::

"On PC Power Saving - S1 to S3 standby - dumppo.exe"
http://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2006/12/23/on-pc-power-saving-s1-to-s3-standby-dumppo-exe/

"S3 Sleep Mode Solved!"
http://www.avsforum.com/t/991517/s3-sleep-mode-solved

and an actual currently valid URL (5/16/14) for yon dumppo.exe:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dnfyjmzry3z/dumppo.exe

- Lenny -