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Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)

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mouser:
I have a homebuilt spare PC in the bedroom and when it's on it sounds a bit like an airplane (loud).

One of my favorite features of windows that many people don't seem to take advantage of is "Standby Mode", which basically puts your PC into a very low power state, very quickly, that it can very quickly wake up from.  It's a great alternative to shutting down and restarting if you just want to turn your PC off for the night, etc.

BUT

I noticed recently that my PC stopped going into a silent standby mode, for no apparent reason!
What was the cause? How to fix it?

Well, it turns out that there are at least 2 different kinds of Standby modes (S1 and S3) that a PC can go into.  S1 leaves the fans and usb connections on, S3 turns off the fan and usb (this is the quite mode).

And there are several things that can control whether your PC goes into S1 or S3 standby mode.

For me, the answer was to go into the bios and change the bios power setting to "S3 ONLY" mode.

There is also a registry setting that addresses this issue, though it's not clear to me whether you should set this INSTEAD of the bios setting, or in addition to.

For a longer description of related settings see this nice post on the matter: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/29899.aspx

From your bios you can also do some nice stuff like configure your power button to go in and out of standby mode.  For a spare bedroom PC this is a great setup -- push the button at any time and the PC wakes up or goes to quiet sleep in seconds.

tomos:
I only discovered that myself lately - I was using hibernation on my last machine cause I didnt realise I could change this.

I changed it in the bios -
all I did was change S1 to S3

but my computer wont wake up with the mouse or keyboard - even though it should
In device manager:

    * under Keyboards
          o Properties on Microsoft eHome...
                + Power management TAB
                      # Make sure 'Allow this device to bring..." is checked
          o Properties on your keyboard
                + Power management TAB (if exists)
                      # Change setting based on your preference
    * under Mice and other pointing devices
          o Properties on your mouse
                + Power management TAB (if exists)
                      # Change setting based on your preferencefrom your link above mouser (these all selected)


but I'm happy enough, oh, forgot to say, it wakes up when I press the power button :)
(on the other hand the power button is set to send it into hibernation :-\)
I might try some of the other stuff he did - registry, other bios settings
or
then again maybe not -cause as I say I happy enough - no fans quickly if I select standby

mouser:
in my case, you can change the mouse and keyboard wakes up and power button function all from the bios.
i never touched the registry.

tranglos:
but my computer wont wake up with the mouse or keyboard - even though it should
-tomos (January 24, 2008, 03:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

Since S3 turns off USB, if both your mouse and keyboard are USB-connected, then I can't see how they could possibly work :)

I've always found the power saving feaures deeply confusing. I can never figure out if a setting should be made in the BIOS or the registry, for one thing. Do they work in tandem, or do they wrestle for control? I only ever use power settings to turn off the monitor, and even that doesn't work reliably - some days it does, other times I find the monitor still on hours after I'd touched the machine last. Inscrutable!

f0dder:
Keep in mind that S3 consumes a bit more power than off (although not THAT much, since you don't "really get off" unless you pull the plug out of the socket, or flip the switch on your PSU) - see my PowerSlave thread.

And also keep in mind that if the power b0rks while in standby, it's almost as bad as if you hard reboot while the machine is on, only difference is that in standby, at least your filesystem buffers have been flushed.

And also keep in mind that sometimes windows has trouble resuming from standby, although that's really hardware/driver related. So be careful!

I wouldn't recommend standby during the night, use hibernate and unplug your system, you get lower power consumption, and guard against power surges as well. But do use standby when you're leaving your system for more than a few minutes!

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