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Does Standby Mode Help Save Energy? And Is It Bad?

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As far as I know:

Yes.
No.

But, my old mobo (an MSI k7n2 delta-L) would bluescreen after resuming from standby while overclocked. I think the contents of the ram got corrupted during standby because of lack of voltage or something.
 
Fr3@k3r said:
well thats good to know..

Guess ill just start doing standby from now on instead of shutting down.
Click to expand...
Well, when in standby your computer still uses power so if your doing it for power reasons you can always try hibernate.
 
Hibernate has been bugy for a long time. For some it works ok, some not. Mostly the not. It is a known bug in both hibernate and standby.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907477

As for standby, it is great for leaving the machine on for the day and you just want it to be half on kind of. I just did standby while typing this. It was on, but I heard it go in low power mode(Raptors are kind of loud). Fans were on and the LED for the Sunbeam. It appeared like everything shut down though. It was just powered down some. For the fans to turn off you need the CPU(fans) and system fans to be QnQ/Speedstep, driver controlled.

Hibernate is where is appears to shut off. It will hold an image of the current state in RAM and on the drive. Which is the lowest power state you can get a semi active machine. It is a nove lconcept and, if it works is the better of the two for low power. the machine appears to be off. In reality is has a slight draw and eats a bit if drive space for the image. Depending on what you was doing prior to hibernating the machine.

Both work pretty good if they are not acting silly. Actually you can do similar with the power saving features inside the OS. It will do its thing and start shutting stuff down at a time you set it to. All the way to a full standby mode.

It does nto hurt the machine doing both Hibernate and Standby. It just manages the power draw on the parts more then a normal DT enviroment. Less power = less heat. Less heat = parts last longer and lower power bill.

My settings for power lowering. (This is automatic, unless I set it for another task.) My system is overclocked alright and has been setup this way for some time now. I usually do not fully turn my machine off. It is half there anyways.

10 minutes - monitor goes off.
120 minutes - disks go off
4 hours - system standby
 
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standby still uses energy shutting down uses less.

So standby saves energy compared to being fully on but wastes energy compared to turning your computer off.
 
Yes it helps save a lot of energy.

Incidentally though, the best thing for your cpu is to maintain a constant temperature. It's the heating/cooling cycles of cpu's that cause them to expand and contract, and hence break. If a cpu is always at a constant temperature, it will not expand or contract, and this will extend its life. Of course, if the temperature is too high this will also shorten its life, but the cycling is even worse, unless the temperature is too high.

Of course, the energy saved over a few years is probably more than enough to buy a new cpu, which will be faster anyways.
 
*disclaimer: I'm kinda an environmentalist so this is going to be biased*

3 hours is kinda a long time. That isn't like you are using it for 2 hours and 50 minutes and then leave and in 10 minutes it stands by. It's more like if you are using it for 3 hours and then stop it will standby 3 hours later on the 6th hour. I don't know for me if I don't plan on using my computer for 3 hours (heck for me even 1 hour) I just shutdown to save electricity cause I still say if that is what you are concerned about shutting down is really the best way to go. I mean I would recommend sleep your monitor after like 10 your computer after 40min-60 min during the day and then shutdown your computer at night if you are really looking to save energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_power

It is estimated that 10% of house electricity use is lost to what is sometimes called vampire power or by appliances in standby mode because they still use energy when on standby. I mean the best ultimate solution (which I'm not sure you sound like you are ready to take but I'll throw out there) is to put this stuff on a power strip and turn the power strip off at night and when you aren't using it because that cuts out the standby drain
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface
Wikipedia ACPI Entry said:
The ACPI specification defines the following seven states (so-called global states) an ACPI-compliant computer system can be in:

* G0 (S0) Working is the normal working state of the computer - the operating system and applications are running. The CPU(s) execute instructions. Within this state (i.e., without entering G1 Sleeping), it is possible for CPU(s) and devices like hard drives, DVD drives, etc. to be repeatedly put into and come back from low-energy states, called C0–Cn and D0–D3. (Laptops, for example, routinely power down all currently unused devices when running on battery; some desktops also do this to reduce noise.)
* G1 Sleeping subdivides into the four states S1 through S4. The time needed to bring the system from here back into G0 Working (wake-latency time) is shortest for S1, short for S2 and S3, and not so short for S4.
o S1 is the most power-hungry of sleep modes. All processor caches are flushed, and the CPU(s) stop executing instructions. Power to the CPU(s) and RAM is maintained; devices that do not indicate they must remain on may be powered down. Some newer machines do not support S1; older machines are more likely to support S1 than S3.
o S2 is a deeper sleep state than S1, where the CPU is powered off; however, it is not commonly implemented.
o S3 is called Standby in Windows, Sleep in Mac OS X, and sometimes also Suspend to RAM (STR), although the ACPI specification mentions only the terms S3 and Sleep. In this state, main memory (RAM) is still powered, although it is almost the only component that is. Since the state of the operating system and all applications, open documents, etc. lies all in main memory, the user can resume work exactly where he/she left off—the main memory content when the computer comes back from S3 is the same as when it was put into S3. (The specification mentions that S3 is rather similar to S2, only that some more components are powered down in S3.) S3 has two advantages over S4; the computer resumes in about the time it takes the monitor to come on, secondly if any running applications (opened documents, etc) have private information in them, this will not be written to the disk. Desktop users using this state may want to disable disk caching (also called disk buffer) so that, in the event of a power failure, the system disk is less likely to become corrupted due to data in the cache not being written to the disk.
o S4 is called Hibernation in Windows, Safe Sleep in Mac OS X, and sometimes also Suspend to disk, although the ACPI specification mentions only the term S4 (main article: Hibernate (OS feature)). In this state, all content of main memory is saved to a hard drive, preserving the state of the operating system, all applications, open documents etc. That means that after coming back from S4, the user can resume work where it was left off in much the same way as with S3. The difference between S4 and S3, apart from the added time of moving the main memory content to disk and back, is that a power loss of a computer in S3 makes it lose all data in main memory, including all unsaved documents, while a computer in S4 is unaffected. S4 is quite different from the other S states and actually resembles G2 Soft Off and G3 Mechanical Off more than it resembles S1–S3.
* G2 (S5) Soft Off-- G2, S5, and Soft Off are synonyms. G2 is almost the same as G3 Mechanical Off, but some components remain powered so the computer can "wake" from input from the keyboard, LAN, or USB device [2]. This state is the same as G3 Mechanical Off, in that the boot procedure must be run to bring the system from G2 to G0 Working. G3 Mechanical Off is entered only when a power loss occurs, whereas G2 is initiated by the operating system (typically because the user issued a shutdown command in some way). The computer is not safe for disassembly in the G2 state due to the components that remain powered, however it is safe to unplug the computer and, after approximately 20 seconds, the computer will be in the G3 state. It is always advisable to unplug a desktop computer (and wait 20 seconds) prior to "disassembly", because, although internal drives are usually not powered, the (PS2) keyboard, USB ports, mainboard, expansion cards, and power supply may remain powered, even if the computer is not used to wake from input to these devices.
* G3 Mechanical Off: The computer's power consumption is very close to zero, to the point that the power cord can be removed and the system is safe for disassembly (typically, only the real-time clock is running off its own small battery). The computer falls into this state when a power loss occurs, e.g. in case of a power outage. Once power is restored, a full boot procedure is necessary to bring the system from G3 to G0 Working.
Click to expand...

That should cover all of the different states of energy saving. As far as I know, it's not bad for the PC at all.
 
MRD said:
Yes it helps save a lot of energy.

Incidentally though, the best thing for your cpu is to maintain a constant temperature. It's the heating/cooling cycles of cpu's that cause them to expand and contract, and hence break. If a cpu is always at a constant temperature, it will not expand or contract, and this will extend its life. Of course, if the temperature is too high this will also shorten its life, but the cycling is even worse, unless the temperature is too high.

Of course, the energy saved over a few years is probably more than enough to buy a new cpu, which will be faster anyways.
Click to expand...


the obvious thing to do is to leave the computer on and have it fold! Woo!
 
IAmMoen said:
the obvious thing to do is to leave the computer on and have it fold! Woo!
Click to expand...
:attn: :attn:

RangerXLT8 said:
Standby uses the memory to hold the OS in, notice fans do not spin etc.
Not even the PSU fan is on....
Click to expand...


my fans were still on.


can you put your computer in standby and still fold/ run a vent server?
 
Both standby and hibernate act really screwy on most desktops I try them on.

On laptops I always use hibernate, and I use it very often. Startup time is way quicker than booting in and of course the machine is actually off when its off.
 
imposter said:
can you put your computer in standby and still fold/ run a vent server?
Click to expand...
If the machine is shutting of the disks and the server does not need them, sure. Not going to realistically happen for 99% of the time though. It is pretty much shutting off most of the parts that run the machine. Just the parts needed to retain data are left on. Depending on what is needed to get this. You can trim what is on pretty easy though. Trimming the profile manually or software/hardware wise can reduce heat dumping pretty good into a room. Which in electronics. Heat is energy use.

Things you can power down for reduced power/heat. Whether actually controlling them manually or using the settings via driver/software/hardware control. Trim to suite what is needed at the time or usesage.

NIC (driver control on some devices)

HD (via OS power control features)

monitor (turning this off when not in use is a good thing. LCD in standby is not to bad. CRT is best powered off manually)

speakers (same as CRT above)

pointers ( most wireless do automaticly, corded will shut off when not needed with OS features)

usb devices (some devices can be unplugged when not in use or power managed via driver/OS support.)

non-critical fans(if supported controller is present)

Crtical fans (use driver level control via MB headers)

Disabling uneeded devices in BIOS will also trim power consumtion on most boards. Controllers, ports sound and other onboard features.
 
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