22-03-2022, 11:11 PM
What are you using to measure power?
I've got a Brennenstuhl PM230 that I bought from Maplin some 15+ years back. I have reason to doubt its accuracy at these low power levels, so would like to try something else. I think this is the 3rd time I've asked this question recently on this forum, but no "bites" so far
For as long as I can remember, I've put my PCs to sleep rather than powered down fully. In the XP days, a power cut during sleep meant the PC would start from cold when you next switched them on, and probably nag you about not shutting them down properly IIRC.
With W10, power cuts are not a problem - aside from having to hit the front panel power button rather than mashing the keyboard or clicking the mouse to wake them up, they just come back exactly as they were. So they must dump the RAM to HDD or similar - if it's keeping the RAM powered (and refreshed) then I'd expect a similar cold start followed by a nag after the outage.
I have less success with my laptop. If I put it to sleep, the battery does run down reasonably quickly - I suspect that it powers itself up and installs updates (sometimes I look at the event log to see, but normally I'm running about setting up a gig, so don't have time to investigate). Occasionally, even when completely shut down, the battery will still run down. Things improved after a BIOS update which fixed a bug that was introduced by - guess what - a BIOS update! It would probably be fine if I used it at home regularly, but it mostly lives in a flight case awaiting the next gig. I check on it roughly once a fortnight, and allow it to update, etc, at the same time.
When it full "sleep", I'd expect them to use about the same amount of power that they take when plugged in but not switched on. On other words, the main PSU is not running, and just the standby PSU is alive. The standby PSU is normally rated at 10 watts or so, but what is taken from the wall socket will depend on what the motherboard takes. When fully shut down, it only needs to respond to the power switch and wake-on-LAN if enabled (which it usually is by default, but turning that off is well worth doing). When in sleep, it additionally needs to keep the keyboard and mouse powered, but not much else - as mentioned, I don't think it needs to keep the RAM powered and refreshed, else it wouldn't survive power cuts.
You'd hope that the one watt initiative applies to PCs. Or half watt initiative, as it now is. All my PCs are ancient, and don't give specs on standby power consumption. My DIY machines have decent PSUs that claim high efficiency, but I've not been able to measure it reliably. Which is where I came in...
I've got a Brennenstuhl PM230 that I bought from Maplin some 15+ years back. I have reason to doubt its accuracy at these low power levels, so would like to try something else. I think this is the 3rd time I've asked this question recently on this forum, but no "bites" so far
For as long as I can remember, I've put my PCs to sleep rather than powered down fully. In the XP days, a power cut during sleep meant the PC would start from cold when you next switched them on, and probably nag you about not shutting them down properly IIRC.
With W10, power cuts are not a problem - aside from having to hit the front panel power button rather than mashing the keyboard or clicking the mouse to wake them up, they just come back exactly as they were. So they must dump the RAM to HDD or similar - if it's keeping the RAM powered (and refreshed) then I'd expect a similar cold start followed by a nag after the outage.
I have less success with my laptop. If I put it to sleep, the battery does run down reasonably quickly - I suspect that it powers itself up and installs updates (sometimes I look at the event log to see, but normally I'm running about setting up a gig, so don't have time to investigate). Occasionally, even when completely shut down, the battery will still run down. Things improved after a BIOS update which fixed a bug that was introduced by - guess what - a BIOS update! It would probably be fine if I used it at home regularly, but it mostly lives in a flight case awaiting the next gig. I check on it roughly once a fortnight, and allow it to update, etc, at the same time.
When it full "sleep", I'd expect them to use about the same amount of power that they take when plugged in but not switched on. On other words, the main PSU is not running, and just the standby PSU is alive. The standby PSU is normally rated at 10 watts or so, but what is taken from the wall socket will depend on what the motherboard takes. When fully shut down, it only needs to respond to the power switch and wake-on-LAN if enabled (which it usually is by default, but turning that off is well worth doing). When in sleep, it additionally needs to keep the keyboard and mouse powered, but not much else - as mentioned, I don't think it needs to keep the RAM powered and refreshed, else it wouldn't survive power cuts.
You'd hope that the one watt initiative applies to PCs. Or half watt initiative, as it now is. All my PCs are ancient, and don't give specs on standby power consumption. My DIY machines have decent PSUs that claim high efficiency, but I've not been able to measure it reliably. Which is where I came in...
