Author Topic: Putting your desktop computer in standby  (Read 5445 times)

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Offline bd139

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #25 on: July 02, 2021, 02:07:44 pm »
I've got a 256Gb Samsung 840 Pro here which has spent about 6 years being hibernated on to daily and SMART says it has used about 4% of its lifespan. This is with an 8Gb machine. The hibernation file on windows is compressed and is only the active memory pages as well. So unless you're ramming that up to 32Gb all the time with already compressed data then you're not going to get anywhere near the point the SSD starts dying.

Also to note my new Mac has an SSD soldered to the motherboard and actually actively uses the SSD as a pagefile as well. This is smartctl output:

Code: [Select]
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    5,714,067 [2.92 TB]
Data Units Written:                 2,599,798 [1.33 TB]

Over the lifespan of the device (6 years) I expect to write around 50TiB to the SSD on this basis. Drive is rated to 250TBW.  :-//. Meh don't give a shit.
 

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #26 on: July 02, 2021, 06:51:47 pm »
That's a surprisingly low number.  You made me curious so I checked mine.

My SSD was used with Windows for about 2-3 years.  Never used hibernate with it.  Since I migrated to Linux the SSD is still plugged in the computer, but it remained unused.
Quote
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
...
Device Model:     Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB
...
User Capacity:    512,110,190,592 bytes [512 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
...
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   092   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       7646
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0013   098   098   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       106
...
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       41378694293

41378694293 * 512 = 21.19 TB (about 7% lifespan is gone, and never used hibernation)
TBW for Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB is 300 TB.

I guess the writing habbits varies a lot from one user to another.
Yours was ~0.2 TB/year with hibernate on, mine was ~8.5 TB/year, about 40 times more and that's without hibernate.
 :-//
« Last Edit: July 02, 2021, 06:58:32 pm by RoGeorge »
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #27 on: July 02, 2021, 06:58:07 pm »
As always it depends. Had DB server at last outfit with 10x 6.4TB PCIe cards in it. They last about a year each  :scared:
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #28 on: July 02, 2021, 06:59:33 pm »
I haven't powered up my desktop in about 6 months but when I was using it frequently I had it go into standby after a couple of hours, almost never shut it down or rebooted, maybe a 2-3 times a year. Never really had any problems with standby, that was solved by the mid 2000's.
 

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #29 on: July 02, 2021, 07:10:54 pm »
On a second thought, I guess my numbers are strange.

Assuming 2.5 years is about 1 000 days, that means I was writing each and every day 20 GB.   :o
20 GB writes/day seems way too much.  Maybe it was a virus I didn't know about, or a bug, IDK.

It's hard for me to believe I was writing that much.   :-//
Anybody else can post the TB written/year please? 

Offline bd139

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #30 on: July 02, 2021, 07:21:14 pm »
Probably windows search indexer  :-DD

My old work desktop used to get that sort of writes. Each compile run of the product I was working would kick out 500 megs of binaries.
 

Offline edavid

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #31 on: July 02, 2021, 07:41:33 pm »
As I said, it has mostly worked well for me, but the only problem I've encountered was with processor cooling on one workstation (watercooling.)
Upon resume, when the issue arises, the pump just doesn't restart. But it's only occasional. Most resume events go OK, so this is not a systematic issue. I suppose the power to the pump does occasionally remain switched off when this happens. Since it's random, I can't pinpoint the issue - I guess it's a BIOS-specific problem.

I could of course power the pump through a power rail that is always ON, but I don't like the idea of the pump constantly on when the computer is in standby.

Assuming you have the water pump connected to a fan port, that sounds like the fan controller doesn't like the pump startup current.

You could try disabling BIOS speed control for that fan port, or connect the pump to a different fan port, or connect it to the regular 12V rail.

 

Offline SiliconWizardTopic starter

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #32 on: July 02, 2021, 07:55:19 pm »
Assuming you have the water pump connected to a fan port, that sounds like the fan controller doesn't like the pump startup current.
You could try disabling BIOS speed control for that fan port, or connect the pump to a different fan port, or connect it to the regular 12V rail.

I'll have to check, but IIRC, I connected it to a fan port that is not speed controlled. I used the speed controlled ones for the fans.

But, the pump startup current could be an idea here. Didn't think of that. Yes maybe (probably) this port still has a protection, and it occasionally kicks in. It never happened upon a cold power-on, but maybe this is a BIOS thing - the port protection could behave differently upon resume maybe due to a small BIOS bug. Or maybe it's due to how the power supply reacts to a resume condition.

I didn't connect to a regular rail, as I said, to avoid the pump running when the computer is in standby. But that could be an option otherwise indeed.

 

Offline golden_labels

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #33 on: July 02, 2021, 08:17:34 pm »
Another thing why I don't like about hibernation (apart from taking too long to load/unload the RAM) is that it needs hibernation space as big as the entire RAM.
It does not. Actually it is not even directly dependent on RAM capacity. And it’s a probability distribution, not a fixed value.

Suspend-to-disk is probabilistic in nature, with 100% certainity requiring infinitely large disk. For any success rate R%, a good rule of thumb is: approximately a bit over the amount of memory used in R% of cases. I will stress that: memory, not RAM alone. So, taking Linux as an example, if your processes and tmpfs use 2GB of memory 99% of time, 2.5GB is fine to have suspend-to-disk work 99% of time.

RAM capacity itself is not directly affecting that value: most of RAM is not used to store anonymous pages, which is the primary thing written to disk during suspend-to-disk.

The actual amount of swap needed for hibernation is often even less than the estimate given above, because the hibernation image is being compressed.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2021, 08:39:53 pm by golden_labels »
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Offline olkipukki

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #34 on: July 02, 2021, 08:57:11 pm »
This is with an 8Gb machine. The hibernation file on windows is compressed and is only the active memory pages as well. So


The actual amount of swap needed for hibernation is often even less than the estimate given above, because the hibernation image is being compressed.

What a swap size you would use if a whole system memory, lets say, 256GB?  ::)
What about  reactivation time from that state?  :-DMM

 

Offline edavid

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #35 on: July 02, 2021, 09:55:18 pm »
I didn't connect to a regular rail, as I said, to avoid the pump running when the computer is in standby. But that could be an option otherwise indeed.

Only the 5VSB line is active in standby - the 12V supplies that you would use for the pump are turned off.
 

Offline coromonadalix

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #36 on: July 02, 2021, 10:11:10 pm »
For my "sleeper" 64gb machine, the pagefile.sys is just 10 gig   loll

Since i'm on a pcie 4x nvme drive, just take around 3 secs to be ready  ....
 

Offline SiliconWizardTopic starter

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #37 on: July 02, 2021, 10:52:14 pm »
I didn't connect to a regular rail, as I said, to avoid the pump running when the computer is in standby. But that could be an option otherwise indeed.

Only the 5VSB line is active in standby - the 12V supplies that you would use for the pump are turned off.

Ah. I'll look into this.
 

Offline RaymondMack

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #38 on: July 03, 2021, 12:28:50 am »
I've only ever used suspend to RAM / S3 on my desktop. Hibernate is much slower since it saves everything to disk and shuts the PC off--but it is better for battery life on a laptop. For a snappy "wake up" on a desktop machine S3 is the better way to go. I generally put my desktop to "sleep" once or twice a day until some event requires me to reboot the machine, which is rare. I believe I had my desktop reliably going in and out of sleep for almost a year at one point. I think the power went out for a couple of hours, at which point my UPS gave up the ghost and it finally went down.

To extend the life of my SSDs I turn off search indexer, hibernate and page file. I also use a RAM disk for the temp folders and as a scratch disk for downloads and other activity that can live in my 32GiB of RAM until it actually needs to be saved to disk. After two years of rigorous use I only have 3.4TBW to my 1TB Samsung 970 Pro and 2TBW on my 2TB Micron 1100. This is with Windows 8.1. Windows 10 is known to cause excessive writes to SSDs not only from constant updates but the file history updating constantly:

https://superuser.com/questions/1229362/windows-10-averaging-over-50gb-of-writes-day-to-ssd-over-9months

On a side note, I noticed that "sleep mode" on my Windows 10 laptop is a lie. While playing music or even a video before putting the machine to sleep it continues to play... with the screen off, lol. I don't know if this is a bug in LTSC 2019 or what. Even when "off" I notice that the battery drains at an alarming rate compared to my past laptops. This is a new Lenovo Yoga "ultra book"... so I don't really know what's going on here. I just turn it off to save the battery as best I can while I'm traveling. It boots so fast that it's not much of a deak breaker for me.
 
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Offline SiliconWizardTopic starter

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #39 on: July 03, 2021, 01:22:44 am »
I've only ever used suspend to RAM / S3 on my desktop. Hibernate is much slower since it saves everything to disk and shuts the PC off--but it is better for battery life on a laptop.

Yeah. Well, I've never used hibernate even on laptops. I usually put my laptop in standby (suspend to RAM). It draws very little power. Even when it's not plugged to mains while suspended, it can last several days on a single battery charge in standby. So that's fine with me.
 

Offline peteru

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #40 on: July 03, 2021, 05:53:33 am »
On a second thought, I guess my numbers are strange.
...
Anybody else can post the TB written/year please?

This is a Linux workstation, always on. It's a fairly recent build, and has seen about half a year of use so far.

Code: [Select]
Model Number:                       ADATA SX8200PNP
Namespace 1 Size/Capacity:          2,048,408,248,320 [2.04 TB]
Namespace 1 Utilization:            1,350,480,986,112 [1.35 TB]
Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size:     512
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    1%
Data Units Read:                    13,606,991 [6.96 TB]
Data Units Written:                 20,517,355 [10.5 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 105,944,790
Host Write Commands:                249,362,510
Controller Busy Time:               6,730
Power Cycles:                       57
Power On Hours:                     5,123

The drive has a 5 year warranty and is rated for 1280 TBW.

The machine has 64GB RAM, no swap and it sees moderate use. As you can see, there's significantly more writes than reads to the SSD.
 
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Offline David Hess

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #41 on: July 03, 2021, 03:06:22 pm »
Invariably for me, standby mode has always resulted in breaking things requiring a restart, so I disable it.  Hibernation has been even worse.

What I do do now though is use the power button to put the monitors in standby.

Looks like I'm not having it too bad, then. Mostly... because I haven't had much issues other than this occasional cooling problem (that I'm sure I can fix powering the pump from another source, but since the issue is not systematic, I don't want to waste time trying things in hopes it will never happen again...)

If I had good reason, then I would try to resolve the issues coming out of standby but reliability is more important to me.  I initially experimented with it but quickly concluded that it was a lost cause at least on this system.  It may just have too much expansion hardware like Ethernet ports, external drives, hardware RAID, etc.

Quote
Of course one final fix would be to get rid of watercooling. The fans always spin up, so a purely air-cooled system would be 100% fine. I've installed watercooling on this machine because it's overclocked and I couldn't really find a proper air-cooled system at the time that would be efficient enough AND fit on the motherboard! (Big ventirads tend to not have enough room due to RAM sticks... anyway.)

I went the air cooled route this time but have not been completely happy with the performance compared to my last air cooled system.  My last system had a 125 watt Phenom II 940 with Hyper 212 and my new system with a 65W Ryzen 3700X and perhaps even more impressive heat sink does not run as cool.  I suspect he Scythe Fuma 2 cooler has a  manufacturing defect but it works well enough that I am reluctant to take the system apart just to replace it.  It just seems like it should work better than it does.

Quote
Although I could leave the computer on as some of you do, I still prefer standby if at all possible: this machine draws about 140W on idle. This isn't tiny.

That seems awfully high unless you have a lot of mechanical storage installed inside like I do.
 

Offline golden_labels

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #42 on: July 05, 2021, 07:07:29 am »
What a swap size you would use if a whole system memory, lets say, 256GB?  ::)
Please re-read what I have written. The answer is there. It’s in the second sentence of the message.
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Offline SiliconWizardTopic starter

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #43 on: July 05, 2021, 04:33:19 pm »
Quote
Although I could leave the computer on as some of you do, I still prefer standby if at all possible: this machine draws about 140W on idle. This isn't tiny.
That seems awfully high unless you have a lot of mechanical storage installed inside like I do.

This is a relatively powerful config, with a 2011-socket motherboard, overclocked Core i7 (the 2011 series was powerful but pretty power-hungry), 64GB RAM, NVidia GTX1060, a couple PCIe cards..., 2 SSDs. The only mechanical "storage" I have is a DVD reader/writer. It has watercooling too, which certainly draws more power than just an air-cooled solution.

Of course by "idle" I mean the computer fully on, but CPU load at "0"%.

A more recent CPU and motherboard would probably lead to a lower power consumption. Especially if not overclocked.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #44 on: July 07, 2021, 07:58:34 pm »
I seem to be the odd one out here in that I never hibernate or sleep but turn off the PC every night. Or morning if it's been a long night.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #45 on: July 09, 2021, 07:45:33 am »
I tried that for a while, but inevitably I end up with 3 or 4 PCB layouts open that I'm working on, various programming projects, browser tabs I'm using, a few emails in my queue to reply to, it's just too much hassle to figure out what I was doing and get it all opened back up so I try to reboot as little as possible, typically 2-3 times a year.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #46 on: July 09, 2021, 10:59:56 am »
We no doubt all have different ways of working. When I am in the workshop, for instance, periodically I will clean the work area and put away tools that are surplus, etc. At the end of some work period I generally put everything away and clean up. When getting going with something I like to just start, not spend time clearing up the last mess before I can even think about what I was going to do. Perhaps my PC workflow follows that kind of mindset.

But, particularly with PCs, what happens if you get a powercut? Or the cat walks over your keyboard during the night? That's a lot of work to try and figure out if you need to save whatever changes, of if it's changes to revert.

The other reason your kind of workflow doesn't work for me is because things one often sees tend to fly under the radar after a bit. My bench has loads of half-finishes projects, some of which I forget I even started, because I put them aside to do something else, and after a bit they are just bench furniture.

On a practical level, turning the thing off saves me 250-300W. I just checked and counted 12 mains plugs (or wallwarts) which are switched with the PC, so that's a fair number of potential fire sources to not have nightmares about too :)
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #47 on: July 09, 2021, 11:30:19 am »
As always plan for failure not success and you’ll never kill anyone or lose your work
 

Offline SiliconWizardTopic starter

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #48 on: July 09, 2021, 04:48:08 pm »
But, particularly with PCs, what happens if you get a powercut? Or the cat walks over your keyboard during the night?

For me, nothing much really. I have an UPS, so powercuts are no problem. Cat walking over keyboard won't do much either. It will make the computer get out of standby. But since it requires entering your password when it resumes, if the keyboard is pressed randomly at this point, nothing happens except filling up the password field. If the cat ever managed by pure chance to actually hit the right keys to enter the proper password and the enter key, then, well. Guess I would start believing miracles are possible! ;D
 

Offline edavid

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Re: Putting your desktop computer in standby
« Reply #49 on: July 09, 2021, 04:58:19 pm »
Obviously you save your open files before you put your computer in standby (or even hibernate if you are cautious)  :-//  If the power fails, you're no worse off than if you had turned it off.

And, a desktop PC that draws 250W in standby is seriously broken.  I've never seen one that draws that much even in a running/idle state.
 
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