350 watt when idle

[anthony117x]

Hey,

 

Firsttime poster here.

 

So heres my problem, when my pc is on idle it still uses somewhere between 350 and 400 watt, this seems reallly hight to me.

Is there some setting in BIOS or windows that could help with that? I think that an idle pc should idle around 150 watt right? With this pc i started out with a MSI motherboard which didnt have this problem, so i figure it must have something to do with the "new" motherboard?

 

Thanks in advance, please excuse any grammar faults, english is not my native language.

 

System specs:

 

windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

2x gtx 580 (SLI)

intel 2600k

16gb kingston ram

corsair ax1200 wat psu

asrock Z68 extreme 4 gen3

[Spannerhands]

Welcome to LTT 

 

To answer your question please explain what you are using to obtain the wattage figure...

[zip2k4]

as spanner said and also if it's still an issue, lucid virtu mvp to help curb the power consumption (if your mobo supports it)?

[anthony117x]

Welcome to LTT 

 

To answer your question please explain what you are using to obtain the wattage figure...

I've got an energy meter that i plug into the wall outlet and then plug my pc powerplug into that.

 

It has a display that then tells me how much wattage im consuming.

[mk005]

Larger power supplies will draw more power at idle than smaller ones simply because it's not in the middle of their operating range.  Even so, 350 watt at idle seems like alot... when most people overclock they disable most of the power saving features; could this be a contributing factor?  

[anthony117x]

Larger power supplies will draw more power at idle than smaller ones simply because it's not in the middle of their operating range.  Even so, 350 watt at idle seems like alot... when most people overclock they disable most of the power saving features; could this be a contributing factor?  

The only thing i've got overclocked is my cpu, but its overclocked dynamicly, meaning when idle i've got 3,6Ghz but when needed can go up to 4,5 to 4,7.

I dont touch gpu overclocking. 

 

I understand that a high wattage psu can consume more power when idle. But i always thought that the high idle wattage might have something to do with the motherboard, maybe something can be changed in bios (uefi)?

[Electronics Wizardy]

580 use lots of power and that 1200 what psu is so overkill that its is running very iniffecent. go for somehting in the 600 range. try running on the igpu with no addition hdds for a day and then check power

[mk005]

The only thing i've got overclocked is my cpu, but its overclocked dynamicly, meaning when idle i've got 3,6Ghz but when needed can go up to 4,5 to 4,7.

I dont touch gpu overclocking. 

 

I understand that a high wattage psu can consume more power when idle. But i always thought that the high idle wattage might have something to do with the motherboard, maybe something can be changed in bios (uefi)?

For me there's an enable c6 state(or something like that) and cool n quiet... My processor drops from 4.4 all the way down to 1.4ghz.  I dont know what kind of power saving features are available on your motherboard but they're usually enabled by default so if you didn't turn them off they should already be on.   Power saving options would be somewhere in the CPU menu of the uefi.