Northern Virginia Home Energy Audits

 703-912-4710

 703-328-4057

Serving the DC METRO area since 1998  

Doing Energy Audits to save you money and fix your problems

What are ACPI Sleep States and what do they do? 

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) sleep states define the various possible power states for a PC. They are part of "Operating System Directed Power Management."

Sleep states
Sleep State CPU Status Targeted System Power Front LED Status
S0 Working State C0 - Working Full Power >60 Watts On
S1- CPU Stopped C1 - Stop Grant Five Watts to Thirty Watts of Power Blink - 1 Hz
S3 - Suspend to RAM (context saved to RAM) No Power Power less than Five Watts Blink - 1 Hz
S4 - Suspend to Disk (Context saved to HDD) No Power Power less than Five Watts Off
S5 - Context NOT saved - cold boot required No Power Power less than Five Watts Off 
Unplugged No power to system No Power Off

What is the benefit of the Standby and Hibernate sleep mode?

S3/4 hardware plus an S3/4 enabled operating system (Windows XP) allows for your system to be 'Ready Now!' providing 'Instant On' performance for users. The S3/4 allows the system to be "on" all of the time, especially with Windows XP Professional.

When a user does not use the system for a specific period of time, the system goes to "sleep".

When the user is ready to use the system again, the system "wakes up" in a few seconds.

When the system wakes up, it is at the exact point it was at when the system went to sleep. (for example: in the middle of a Word document)

The S3/4 feature saves power and increases user efficiency. (users do not have to wait for the system to shut down or re-boot).

What kind of cost savings might I see?

Depending on usage model, your savings can be significant, up to $100 in yearly energy savings 

 

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