Suspend has higher power consumption than normal running state
I am a translator!
I plugged the power cable of my desktop onto a device that records power consumption, it shows instaneous power as well as cumulated power consumption. When my computer is on and I am not doing anything, it indicates a power consumption that fluctuates between 87W and 93W. I wanted to check the suspend to RAM (left most button that shows up when selecting the "switch off" in the Mozo menu), to my great surprise, when the desktop is supposed to be suspended, the power consumption is about 125W, i.e. significantly higher.
So I am wondering: is suspend not working? or is it actually suspending anything? In that mode, the screen becomes dark, the mouse light becomes dark, there power button led remains on. My desktop has water cooling for the CPU and there is no fan beyond that, it pretty silent. When it goes to sleep, I actually hear no difference, so it looks like the cooling is still working normally.
What's the name of those devices that records power consumption?
I think I should make such tests, but I don't know what to search for.
I am a translator!
I guess it is called a consumption meter. Here is a picture of the model I am using. I also noticed that when the computer is off, it still consumes 3W, perhaps the network card is still doing some things?
Thank you.
Those 3W might be to be able to wake on LAN.
> in the Mozo menu
Mozo is the menu *editor* for MATE: https://wiki.mate-desktop.org/mate-desktop/applications/mozo.
Trisquel comes with the MATE 'compact' menu by default, although I usually replace it with the MATE 'classic' menu. There is also an 'advanced' MATE menu that can be accessed by hitting the Super key, where you can search for applications by starting typing their name. This is a nice feature for those who like to use the keyboard.
I am a translator!
When my raid array is being checked, the power consumption is around 165 W (vs. 90 W otherwise).
$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10]
md0 : active raid6 sdd[2] sde[3] sdc[1] sdf[4] sdb[0]
11720658432 blocks super 1.2 level 6, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/5] [UUUUU]
[==>..................] check = 12.1% (476498256/3906886144) finish=387.8min speed=147413K/sec
bitmap: 0/30 pages [0KB], 65536KB chunk
This is triggered periodically by systemd. The details are not documented, one needs to look at systemd files (click for a short summary).