Large increase in power consumption with screen off...

roadie

roadie

roadie

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Large increase in power consumption with screen in standby when power plan kicks in...

Hi guys,

I am having an issue with my PC that I've just noticed after plugging it into a power meter. The gist of it is that power consumption shoots up by ~20W when the screen turns off (from ~75W at the desktop to ~95W with the screen off).

This occurs when the PC is idle for 10 minutes and the screen turns off as per the "Balanced" Windows power profile, and also after a minute when the PC is locked.

Wasted power and money is a bad thing!

The PC in question is in my signature. I believe I am running the latest drivers, including Catalyst 13.1 for my graphics card.

I cannot see any suspicious processes in the Task Manager and MBAM shows all clear.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Thank you!
 
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Does it maintain that increase indefinitely? Does the cpu usage shoot up or perhaps hard disk activity? Also, which Os?
 
Does your PC carry out operations when it is idle?
Superfetch/readyboost
media library update
AV/AM scan

etc etc
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I am running Windows 8 x64 as per my signature.
jaybee said:
If you turn the monitor off manually (without doing anything to the PC) do you see the same power increase?
Click to expand...
If I turn of the monitor manually when it is idle at the desktop power consumption stays the same. I will try doing the same when the power profile kicks in and turns the monitor to standby.
Does it maintain that increase indefinitely? Does the cpu usage shoot up or perhaps hard disk activity? Also, which Os?
Click to expand...
Yes the power increase is indefinitely from what I've observed.
Have you got the PC plugged into the power meter, or your entire extension strip?
Click to expand...
It is only the PSU that is plugged into the power meter.
Does your PC carry out operations when it is idle?
Superfetch/readyboost
media library update
AV/AM scan
Click to expand...
I am sure Windows 8 will be running stuff in the background when the computer is idle. I do have 3 hard drives - 1 SSD for Windows, 1 games drive and one media drive. Would those processes run constantly and for hours at a time?
 
Do a virus check or search for processes called ieutil.exe / iehighutil.exe. Seems to be a common piece of malware that's picked up by AMD users of late.
 
im still willing to bet its indexing. i have the same on windows 8 myself. as soon as the screen goes off i can hear my cpu fan increase. stop the windows search service and see.
 
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