| Author |
Message |
Alan Liefting
Guest
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 Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:46 am Post subject:
Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake on LAN feature.
Alan Liefting
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Ken Taylor
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:47 am Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
| Quote: | I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the wake
on LAN feature.
Alan Liefting
How will it do wake-on-anything without drawing power? You could turn it |
"Off" if you didn't want to draw any power. And why is it the government's
problem that you can't be bothered reaching for the power switch?
Ken |
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John Larkin
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:57 am Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:47:47 +1300, "Ken Taylor" <ken123@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
| Quote: | "Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the wake
on LAN feature.
Alan Liefting
How will it do wake-on-anything without drawing power? You could turn it
"Off" if you didn't want to draw any power. And why is it the government's
problem that you can't be bothered reaching for the power switch?
|
My new Dells don't have power switches, just the annoying soft-power
button on the front panel. Worse, they don't have reset buttons.
Luckily, I use a UPS that *does* have a real power switch on the
front.
John
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Guy Macon
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:41 am Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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Alan Liefting wrote:
| Quote: | I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off.
|
There is this new invention called an "outlet strip" that allows
you to cut the power to your monitor, computer, printer, etc. all
with a single switch. Some of them even have built-in surge
suppressors and interference filters.
| Quote: | I am a bit of an environmentalist and I find it rather lax of
govt agencies to allow this blatent waste of what collectively
is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
|
Funny how "environmentalist" always seems to equal "he who
calls for increased government power and decreased liberty"...
Look here for some eye-opening information:
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://www.john-daly.com/ |
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Ken Taylor
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:41 am Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote in
message news:tlfl01h0761e3ab5jdoiegf25vruit0lkd@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:47:47 +1300, "Ken Taylor" <ken123@xtra.co.nz
wrote:
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow
this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake
on LAN feature.
Alan Liefting
How will it do wake-on-anything without drawing power? You could turn it
"Off" if you didn't want to draw any power. And why is it the
government's
problem that you can't be bothered reaching for the power switch?
My new Dells don't have power switches, just the annoying soft-power
button on the front panel. Worse, they don't have reset buttons.
Luckily, I use a UPS that *does* have a real power switch on the
front.
John
How the hell do you run Windoze without a reset switch?? :-) |
I run my PC's on a UPS too, leave them on basically all the time. For the
environmentally conscious, I figure that it's better to sue a couple of
watts more rather than suffer the wear and tear on components leading to
earlier failure and more rubbish. (It's my rationalization, I'll try if I
want to....)
Ken
Ken |
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Joel Kolstad
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:41 am Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
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|
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
| Quote: | The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the wake
on LAN feature.
|
There's a lot more than that. The typical PC also supports wake on modem
(ring), wake on USB device interrupt (e.g., mouse moved), and wake on
keyboard.
The whole standby power idea was specifically aimed at getting people to
stop leaving their _entire_ computer running just so that they wouldn't have
to wait for it to reboot. Standby typically uses more than an order of
magnitude less power than active usage does, so it's a significant
improvement.
---Joel |
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Fritz Schlunder
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:48 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
| Quote: | I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake on LAN feature.
|
I would care to differ with the idea that wake on LAN is the only benefit
the ATX power supply offers. Learn how to configure your computer to use
suspend-to-ram, and try it out for awhile. Once you've gotten a taste for
it you will never want to go back.
Unfortunately not all cheap motherboards and other hardware is fully
compatible yet with suspend to ram, but hopefully your system is. When you
suspend to ram all of the contents of your memory remain intact, but all of
the power hungry equipment of your system turn off (monitor, drives, fans,
processor, etc.). Power consumption drops dramatically, but your
motherboard continuously refreshes the ram contents so they aren't lost.
As a result your computer shuts down in a matter of a couple of seconds, and
boots up in a matter of maybe around five or so seconds. This represents a
dramatic improvement over shutting down and booting up normally. Another
very major advantage is that none of your applications need to be closed.
When you turn your computer back on everything will be just as it was when
you turned off your computer, all applications fully open and ready to use.
This is a very valuable feature, well worth the extra power consumption (at
least for me). But as others have indicated, if you still don't find any of
the advantages of ATX useful, you are free to switch off your system fully
using a mechanical power switch.
No need to lobby govt agencies to move technologically backwards back to
using AT powersupplies all around. The ATX powersupply was designed with an
importance of the environment in mind. |
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Keith Williams
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:58 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
In article <QYEOd.387$1S4.27236@news.xtra.co.nz>, ken@home.nz says...
| Quote: | "John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote in
message news:tlfl01h0761e3ab5jdoiegf25vruit0lkd@4ax.com...
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:47:47 +1300, "Ken Taylor" <ken123@xtra.co.nz
wrote:
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow
this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake
on LAN feature.
Alan Liefting
How will it do wake-on-anything without drawing power? You could turn it
"Off" if you didn't want to draw any power. And why is it the
government's
problem that you can't be bothered reaching for the power switch?
My new Dells don't have power switches, just the annoying soft-power
button on the front panel. Worse, they don't have reset buttons.
Luckily, I use a UPS that *does* have a real power switch on the
front.
John
How the hell do you run Windoze without a reset switch?? :-)
|
Laying on the power switch to four seconds will shut down an ATX supply
(at least that's what the spec says). It's just a slower reset. ;-)
| Quote: | I run my PC's on a UPS too, leave them on basically all the time. For the
environmentally conscious, I figure that it's better to sue a couple of
watts more rather than suffer the wear and tear on components leading to
earlier failure and more rubbish. (It's my rationalization, I'll try if I
want to....)
|
Like everything there is a trade-off point. Cycling a PeeCee isn't all
that hard on it. I generally power them on once a day. Once on they
stay on. Though the reason I do so is more boot time than
reliability/cost/power.
--
Keith |
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John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:22 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:58:23 -0500, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
wrote:
| Quote: | How the hell do you run Windoze without a reset switch?? :-)
Laying on the power switch to four seconds will shut down an ATX supply
(at least that's what the spec says). It's just a slower reset. ;-)
|
Unless Windump has crashed so hard it's taken out the BIOS too. Then
you have to hit reset before the power button will work. If it has a
reset. I just cycle the big rocker on the UPS.
| Quote: | I run my PC's on a UPS too, leave them on basically all the time. For the
environmentally conscious, I figure that it's better to sue a couple of
watts more rather than suffer the wear and tear on components leading to
earlier failure and more rubbish. (It's my rationalization, I'll try if I
want to....)
Like everything there is a trade-off point. Cycling a PeeCee isn't all
that hard on it. I generally power them on once a day. Once on they
stay on. Though the reason I do so is more boot time than
reliability/cost/power.
|
Something like 3% of the electricity ganerated in the US goes to power
PCs left on all the time. They're left on mostly because Winmuck takes
so long to boot. They use so much power because it takes a 100-amp
Pentium chip to execute the 80 million lines of code required to print
a 1-page document in less than 10 minutes.
John |
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| Back to top |
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John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:26 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:48:42 -0700, "Fritz Schlunder" <me@privacy.net>
wrote:
| Quote: |
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake on LAN feature.
I would care to differ with the idea that wake on LAN is the only benefit
the ATX power supply offers. Learn how to configure your computer to use
suspend-to-ram, and try it out for awhile. Once you've gotten a taste for
it you will never want to go back.
Unfortunately not all cheap motherboards and other hardware is fully
compatible yet with suspend to ram, but hopefully your system is.
|
Unfortunately, not all OSs handle this properly. Windows, for example.
When you
| Quote: | suspend to ram all of the contents of your memory remain intact, but all of
the power hungry equipment of your system turn off (monitor, drives, fans,
processor, etc.). Power consumption drops dramatically, but your
motherboard continuously refreshes the ram contents so they aren't lost.
|
Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.
John |
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| Back to top |
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Guy Macon
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:38 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
John Larkin wrote:
| Quote: | Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.
|
My copy of Windows (Windows 2000 Server) has a suspend to disk feature.
It doesn't work on my motherboard - probably something to do with the
quad proceesors or the dual hotswap power supplies - but it's there. |
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Fritz Schlunder
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:43 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
"John Larkin" <jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote in
message news:3j2n019uq4ar86lsngmcbvkgat1rdm32gn@4ax.com...
| Quote: | Unfortunately not all cheap motherboards and other hardware is fully
compatible yet with suspend to ram, but hopefully your system is.
Unfortunately, not all OSs handle this properly. Windows, for example.
|
Uhh... I use suspend to ram with Windows 2000, works just fine. I've seen
it work just fine with Windows XP as well. When it doesn't work, it is hard
to be certain where to place the blame, since suspend to ram requires both
hardware and software compatibility. However, in my experience all new
versions of Windows support suspend to ram just fine, but sometimes specific
hardware and specific applications sometimes have some trouble with it.
| Quote: | Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.
|
Windows 2000 and surely other versions of Windows also support suspend to
disk. Windows 2000 calls it "hibernate." You can access the settings for
it (and suspend to ram, and other power saving features) from the icon
labeled "Power Options" from the control panel. If I recall correctly even
in the days of Windows 95 (or at least 98) the laptop version of those OSes
normally also supported suspend to disk. Suspend to disk really isn't as
good as suspend to ram though for a desktop computer. It is much slower,
especially if you have say 1GB of RAM. Even with a decent hard drive
capable of reading at 30MB/sec., that would take over half a minute to load
the contents back into RAM (or shut down for that matter). On the plus side
though you don't lose all the data in your unclosed applications if the
power goes out like with suspend to ram. |
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Joel Kolstad
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:55 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
"John Larkin" <jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote in
message news:3j2n019uq4ar86lsngmcbvkgat1rdm32gn@4ax.com...
| Quote: | Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.
|
Windows does suspend to disk; it's called 'hibernation.' Unfortunately, it
is noticeably slower to re-start from than 'standby,' adding about 10
seconds. Since re-start is being done by very 'simple minded' software, I
think part of the delay is due to having to read in something approaching a
gigabyte on a modern PC using the 'bombproof' but slow data transfer modes
(e.g., programmed I/O for the hard drive).
I realize that, yeah, in theory it should take 'about 2 seconds,' but when
you really start thinking about all the different hardware a modern OS has
to support and how complicated the device driver stack to support all that
is, Windows actually does quite respectably. In fact, Microsoft has people
whose job it is to try to optimize Windows' start-up time; Windows XP even
schedules periodic 'startup optimizations' whereby it watches how long
various modules take to load when your PC starts and then changes their
placement on disk and the load order to minimize the boot delay.
FWIW, Linux typically takes much longer to boot than Windows and I don't
believe it has any automated 'boot optimizer' yet. Its support for standby
and hibernation also seems a little less reliable than Windows, although I'd
grant that -- at least around the 1998 time frame -- there was a lot of
flaky hardware that no OS seemed to be able to get to suspend/resume
properly. I haven't seen any PC built within the past three years though
with such problems.
---Joel Kolstad |
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Keith Williams
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:07 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
In article <m72n01ht2739lh6q90p7gu6ju683677sgk@4ax.com>,
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX says...
| Quote: | On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:58:23 -0500, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz
wrote:
How the hell do you run Windoze without a reset switch?? :-)
Laying on the power switch to four seconds will shut down an ATX supply
(at least that's what the spec says). It's just a slower reset. ;-)
Unless Windump has crashed so hard it's taken out the BIOS too. Then
you have to hit reset before the power button will work. If it has a
reset. I just cycle the big rocker on the UPS.
|
Hmmm, I remembered that the "four second spec" was a PS hardware thing.
I'll have to go find the spec again. I've never had a system crash so
hard it didn't work, though I've had 'em lock up so hard I couldn't get
them powered back on without cycling the AC (hardware fault, outputs
crow-bared).
| Quote: | I run my PC's on a UPS too, leave them on basically all the time. For the
environmentally conscious, I figure that it's better to sue a couple of
watts more rather than suffer the wear and tear on components leading to
earlier failure and more rubbish. (It's my rationalization, I'll try if I
want to....)
Like everything there is a trade-off point. Cycling a PeeCee isn't all
that hard on it. I generally power them on once a day. Once on they
stay on. Though the reason I do so is more boot time than
reliability/cost/power.
Something like 3% of the electricity ganerated in the US goes to power
PCs left on all the time.
|
I've heard that statistic, but haven't seen it well documented.
| Quote: | They're left on mostly because Winmuck takes
so long to boot. They use so much power because it takes a 100-amp
Pentium chip to execute the 80 million lines of code required to print
a 1-page document in less than 10 minutes.
|
100A across the *surface* of a chip is pretty amazing, in itself.
Though they're not 100A because Win takes forever to boot or a printer
is printing at .002 pps. They're at 100A because they can.
--
Keith |
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| Back to top |
|
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Keith Williams
Guest
|
| Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:11 pm Post subject:
Re: Why is the ATX PSU designed to standby current? |
|
|
In article <3j2n019uq4ar86lsngmcbvkgat1rdm32gn@4ax.com>,
jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX says...
| Quote: | On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:48:42 -0700, "Fritz Schlunder" <me@privacy.net
wrote:
"Alan Liefting" <ALiefting@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:420ABCDC.4070309@ihug.co.nz...
I am mystified as to why the ATX PSU was designed so that it draws
standby current even while the PC is off. I am a bit of an
environmentalist and I find it rather lax of govt agencies to allow this
blatent waste of what collectively is a whole stack of CO2 emssions.
The only advantage of the current (!!) ATX power supply design is the
wake on LAN feature.
I would care to differ with the idea that wake on LAN is the only benefit
the ATX power supply offers. Learn how to configure your computer to use
suspend-to-ram, and try it out for awhile. Once you've gotten a taste for
it you will never want to go back.
Unfortunately not all cheap motherboards and other hardware is fully
compatible yet with suspend to ram, but hopefully your system is.
Unfortunately, not all OSs handle this properly. Windows, for example.
When you
suspend to ram all of the contents of your memory remain intact, but all of
the power hungry equipment of your system turn off (monitor, drives, fans,
processor, etc.). Power consumption drops dramatically, but your
motherboard continuously refreshes the ram contents so they aren't lost.
Why doesn't Windows suspend to disk? Just copy all of ram to disk and
*fully* shut down, zero power. Restart would take about 2 seconds;
spin up the disk, restore RAM, run.
|
It does, but it takes more than 2 seconds (takes perhaps 30 seconds on
this laptop). ...longer to restore. There is more to hibernation than
copying RAM to disk.
--
Keith |
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