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How much power consumed in both S3 standby and Hibernate

T

tlucca

Member
HI all,

Just wondering if anyone knows how many watts of power a computer uses both in S3 standby mode and in hibernate. Im debating leaving my computer on for faxes in S3 standby but I heard it could be over 100 watts of power if left in this mode.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

BYW, my system is:
Dell Dimension 8400 with Win XP MCE 2005
512 mb pc3200 ram
160 Gb HD
nvidia 6800 N/U 256mb vid
Soundblaster audigy 2
faxmodem
DVD +/- burner
DVD ROm

thanks,
Tom
 
I don't see how anyone could give you anything specific unless they did the same test themselves on a nearly identical computer. You can buy a Kill-A-Watt for $20-$30 and test all the crap you want around the house on its usage. 🙂

But 100W seems kinda high for hibernate. I would've guessed that my system (similar to your power usages I'd say) uses around 100W idling, not in any standy modes, but that is just a guess.
 
Hibernate uses 0, it copies all your ram to the hard drive and turns off everything. Hibernating is like standby and turning your computer off combined.
 
Yeah, when hibernating, the computer is totally off. The contents of RAM, however, have been stored on the hard drive, and instead of reloading and re-initializing everything during OS boot, it just quickly loads the saved settings.
S3 (suspend to RAM) uses just slightly more. All that's on is the RAM, so whatever power your RAM uses when the system is idle, that's what the whole thing draws. Usually that's a couple watts.
S1 (software power down) is probably where that 100W estimate came from. There's not much difference between this and letting the computer idle with the display powered off.
 
Hibernate doesn't use 0, just like Off doesn't. The power supply is still live, providing +5Vstandby to the system, at about 2A. With the PSU being extremely inefficient in this mode, that'll be about 20W of intake. Your screen in "soft-off" mode will also be anywhere between 1W and 10W, so will every single one of your other misc peripherals.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Hibernate doesn't use 0, just like Off doesn't. The power supply is still live, providing +5Vstandby to the system, at about 2A. With the PSU being extremely inefficient in this mode, that'll be about 20W of intake. Your screen in "soft-off" mode will also be anywhere between 1W and 10W, so will every single one of your other misc peripherals.
Click to expand...


20W for the power supply sounds way too high, considering some laptops while running use less than that.
 
Show me a 350 to 500W PSU that runs at 50 percent efficiency when it supplies 10W out its rear end.

And while you're at it, show me just one contemporary notebook that does with 20W. You're free to set the CPU speed to the lowest it can.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
Show me a 350 to 500W PSU that runs at 50 percent efficiency when it supplies 10W out its rear end.

And while you're at it, show me just one contemporary notebook that does with 20W. You're free to set the CPU speed to the lowest it can.
Click to expand...

It was in a notebook review I was reading recently, under max battery life mode it had a measured power draw(using a multimeter I suppose) of 17W. I believe it used a low voltage dothan, and since it was in max battery mode the harddrive was probably shut off, and it was using integrated graphics and the monitor set to minimum brightness.
 
Are those PSUs implementing Power Factor Correction? If they don't, then your measuring equipment might be displaying too low figures.
 
While we're at it, I'm curious, where can you adjust such settings for S0-S4, etc for different levels? After I got my mobo replaced, standby just isn't the same anymore, everything is functioning except the monitor, I can even hear the hard disk spinning up a storm. Standby used to be great before the replacement, but I wasn't able to switch it back.(I may be answering my question, but possibly these settings are in my boot setup..)
 
Originally posted by: Fox5
Originally posted by: Peter
Show me a 350 to 500W PSU that runs at 50 percent efficiency when it supplies 10W out its rear end.

And while you're at it, show me just one contemporary notebook that does with 20W. You're free to set the CPU speed to the lowest it can.
Click to expand...

It was in a notebook review I was reading recently, under max battery life mode it had a measured power draw(using a multimeter I suppose) of 17W. I believe it used a low voltage dothan, and since it was in max battery mode the harddrive was probably shut off, and it was using integrated graphics and the monitor set to minimum brightness.
Click to expand...

Link? I am pretty sure even a low-voltage Dothan uses more than 17w, much less the mobo/RAM/LCD.

 
Originally posted by: vtohthree
While we're at it, I'm curious, where can you adjust such settings for S0-S4, etc for different levels? After I got my mobo replaced, standby just isn't the same anymore, everything is functioning except the monitor, I can even hear the hard disk spinning up a storm. Standby used to be great before the replacement, but I wasn't able to switch it back.(I may be answering my question, but possibly these settings are in my boot setup..)
Click to expand...

That would be the BIOS's business. Support for S3 (suspend-to-RAM, the "good" suspend state) needs to be enabled and declared present to the OS by BIOS. Else you'll get S1 (powered sleep).
 
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