Questions about Asus M5A88-V Evo Motherboard EPU Power Saving

[tech0925]

As the title says, I am trying to figure out what is going on with my power saving settings. I have the epu set to high performance and all the settings for the rest of the options I have the turn off disk to never and CPU power settings to none.

I even went into my control panel and have the power settings set to never turn off hard disk and etc. However, after about 30 minutes my EPU automatically changes to Max Power Saving mode and after about 45 minutes to 1 hour my tower goes to sleep. This is really frustrating as I cannot figure out why this is happening.

Any ideas?

 

[RGone]

1. Don't remember seeing EPU on the few Asus boards I have had and went and looked at what Asus says about EPU. EPU does not seem to have any ability to put the system to sleep as you are seeing.

2. IF possible can you disable EPU in the bios? If so do so.

3. I would guess you have Win 7 and you should have power management set to performance mode. Just setting the hard drive (etc as you said) to never turn off will not necessarily influence the full system and if performance mode is chosen for the whole system in power management, that is where you can set the whole thing to "never" sleep.

 

[tech0925]

1. Don't remember seeing EPU on the few Asus boards I have had and went and looked at what Asus says about EPU. EPU does not seem to have any ability to put the system to sleep as you are seeing.

2. IF possible can you disable EPU in the bios? If so do so.

3. I would guess you have Win 7 and you should have power management set to performance mode. Just setting the hard drive (etc as you said) to never turn off will not necessarily influence the full system and if performance mode is chosen for the whole system in power management, that is where you can set the whole thing to "never" sleep.

Unfortunately it does have EPU and I don't see an option to disable it in the BIOS. However, I already have everything set up as you suggested but it still does that. Here is a screen shot:

I am sure you can see why this is driving me crazy now. LOL I also have the, I believe it's called C1E support, disabled in Bios as well.

Thanks!

 

[RGone]

after about 45 minutes to 1 hour my tower goes to sleep = Asus gives absolutely NO hint that EPU can put the system to sleep. So you need to look at Windows for that problem.

 

[Aldakoopa]

You can always uninstall it.

I never had EPU turn off my computer... but then again, I never really used it and uninstalled all the ASUS software not too long ago.

 

[RGone]

Your reply was what I suspicioned.

You can always uninstall it.

I never had EPU turn off my computer... but then again, I never really used it and uninstalled all the ASUS software not too long ago.

Thanks "Aldakoopa", what you say was what I suspicioned. I looked into what Asus claimed for their EPU and found that they say the EPU has a 'real' chipset in hardware on the motherboard. It occurred to me that to interface with it would require software and software can vary widely from one configuration to the next in its' implementation and the results that transpire from one implementation to the next may be varied for sure.

An uninstall of EPU software seems a very valid approach to troubleshooting this user's issues. Thanks again for the heads up.

 

[tech0925]

Thanks everyone, the only issue with uninstalling it is that it has been the only way that I have found to actually control the vcore voltage from dropping. When uninstalled, the vcore voltage is set to drop to save on power when not needed.

Does anyone else have an approach to solve that problem if I were to uninstall the software? Thanks!

 

[Aldakoopa]

Thanks everyone, the only issue with uninstalling it is that it has been the only way that I have found to actually control the vcore voltage from dropping. When uninstalled, the vcore voltage is set to drop to save on power when not needed.

Does anyone else have an approach to solve that problem if I were to uninstall the software? Thanks!

Turning off all the "green" options in the BIOS should stop it from slowing down and cutting voltage at idle. The "green" options are Cool 'n' Quiet and C1E.

Personally I have left them on, but I did disable them once before and my voltage and clockspeed never dropped at idle, and that was without EPU. If you're still having a problem, you can always manually set the vCore and multiplier to the proper amounts, and forego the "Auto" option which gives the BIOS control of the values.

 

[trents]

If you are running an FX CPU then C6 is also part of the power saving green stuff and needs to be disabled.

 

[RGone]

"tech0925" I see you now have a yellow star under your forum name and that means about 50 posts. It is time.

Sigs are pretty easy. Signatures follow you in every post in the forum so your system information follows you and people know what is in the box.

Be logged in to the forum.

Across the top of the forum is a button shown as 'user cp'. Click that button.

On the page that loads are a list of options down the left side of the page.

Under the Settings & Options menu area is a Edit Signature listing. Click on that listing.

Clicking Edit Signature opens another page. In the middle of that page is where you Edit YOUR signature.

Enter your information there and at bottom of the window you are entering your signature is button for either Preview Signature or Save Signature. Do save and you will have your signature incorporated into the forum in each of your posts. Of course Preview Signature will let you see 'how' your signature would appear in the forum. But in the end the Save Signature must be clicked to save it to the forum.

You can look at my signature for a template of some good stuffz to put in one's own signature when seeking help.

Good luck man.

 

[Buddywh]

I have an M5a88-m... thought I'd share some things I've experienced that may be applicable to you.

First, uninstalling EPU, Turbo-V, Asus Probe and other ASUS utilities doesn't fully remove them. Or didn't in my case; artifacts are left behind, some which appear intended to reduce power consumption. Check the ASUS folder in the Task Scheduler and you'll probably find where some are being started up as scheduled tasks on various triggers.

Second: disabling all the 'green' settings in BIOS (C1E, C6 modes, APM, Cooln'Quiet, etc) doesn't completely turn things off. I have to run the AMDMsrTweak utility to disable APM features of the processor and keep it from throttling back to maintain a 95w TDP when running 'at load'.

I got everything turned off and completed stress testing for a 24/7 overclock then turned CnQ back on in BIOS to let it throttle back the CPU when not working hard. Which ALSO drops the voltage, that's a lot of the time, which I take for a good thing since I'm hitting the processor with fairly high volts (1.475 at 4.52 Gig). This way, I figure it's life will still be meaningful.

 

[Aldakoopa]

I have an M5a88-m... thought I'd share some things I've experienced that may be applicable to you.

First, uninstalling EPU, Turbo-V, Asus Probe and other ASUS utilities doesn't fully remove them. Or didn't in my case; artifacts are left behind, some which appear intended to reduce power consumption. Check the ASUS folder in the Task Scheduler and you'll probably find where some are being started up as scheduled tasks on various triggers.

I only have a help file for TurboV that got left behind on mine. Nothing to reduce power consumption left at all.

Second: disabling all the 'green' settings in BIOS (C1E, C6 modes, APM, Cooln'Quiet, etc) doesn't completely turn things off. I have to run the AMDMsrTweak utility to disable APM features of the processor and keep it from throttling back to maintain a 95w TDP when running 'at load'.

I have to do this as well. I believe it's a problem with all 8xx chipset boards, or at least the Asus ones. We just don't have the right BIOS option that the 9xx boards do to disable the throttling.

I got everything turned off and completed stress testing for a 24/7 overclock then turned CnQ back on in BIOS to let it throttle back the CPU when not working hard. Which ALSO drops the voltage, that's a lot of the time, which I take for a good thing since I'm hitting the processor with fairly high volts (1.475 at 4.52 Gig). This way, I figure it's life will still be meaningful.

I've done this same thing, just with less overclock and stock Vcore, as my computer sits idling most of the time anyway so I figure I may as well save some energy.

 

[Buddywh]

I only have a help file for TurboV that got left behind on mine. Nothing to reduce power consumption left at all...

I found a couple things left... one in particular called 'aaCenter.exe'. I googled it and found a number of complaints about it being a memory leak and hogging CPU resources. True, that was back in the Vista days and it may be fixed now but I saw no reason for monitoring use-age and shutting down sub-systems on the motherboard (it's apparent purpose) to save a few milliwatts every now and then. I found it AFTER uninstalling ALL Asus utilities! I thought.

By the way... i found after returning from hibernate the processor's internal APM throttling resumes so I have to run the MSR tweak again. Which is important, cause I'm either active on my computer or it's in hibernation.

 

[Aldakoopa]

I found a couple things left... one in particular called 'aaCenter.exe'. I googled it and found a number of complaints about it being a memory leak and hogging CPU resources. True, that was back in the Vista days and it may be fixed now but I saw no reason for monitoring use-age and shutting down sub-systems on the motherboard (it's apparent purpose) to save a few milliwatts every now and then. I found it AFTER uninstalling ALL Asus utilities! I thought.

By the way... i found after returning from hibernate the processor's internal APM throttling resumes so I have to run the MSR tweak again. Which is important, cause I'm either active on my computer or it's in hibernation.

I don't know about the hibernating thing. One of the first things I had done with my computer after I first got it built was make it so it wouldn't hibernate. Did you put your MSR tweak batch file into the startup folder, or do you start it manually every time you turn on your comp?

 

[Buddywh]

I don't know about the hibernating thing. One of the first things I had done with my computer after I first got it built was make it so it wouldn't hibernate. Did you put your MSR tweak batch file into the startup folder, or do you start it manually every time you turn on your comp?

Starting up from a hibernate is a lot faster than cold boot and I don't have to close thing's I'm working on, that's why i like using it.

I put an msrtweak batch in the startup folder. I also created a task in task scheduler that runs after unlocking the workstation which happens when resuming from hibernation.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Starting up from a hibernate is a lot faster than cold boot and I don't have to close thing's I'm working on, that's why i like using it.

I put an msrtweak batch in the startup folder. I also created a task in task scheduler that runs after unlocking the workstation which happens when resuming from hibernation.

When I turn my computer off, I'm usually not on it for 16 hours or so. When I turn it on, I am usually on it for quite a while without leaving it, so hibernation is useless to me. If I do leave it, it's usually to let it complete a task while I do something more constructive, hence the reason I don't want hibernation to get in the way. Does the task scheduler thing work to restart it after hibernation?

 

[Buddywh]

...Does the task scheduler thing work to restart it after hibernation?

There isn't a trigger for resume after hibernation so I use the one for when the workstation is unlocked. It will run on the subsequent unlock even if I just lock it (Winkey+L) to step away or if screensaver kicks in. I also have to set the flag for entering password.

I think there's a kernel event that would trigger it more correctly but I have no documentation as to what the event ID's are.

There's also a trigger to run a program at every login... i probably should use that instead of the batch file in the startup group!