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Apr 2, 2024 · Step 3: Choose the Right Power Plan. Adjust your power settings in the Control Panel to prioritize either hibernation or sleep based on your needs. Different power plans cater to different use cases, like high performance or power saving. Choose a plan that aligns with your decision to prioritize sleep or hibernate.
- What's the Difference Between Sleep and Hibernate?
- Which One Uses More Energy?
- The Best Tech Newsletter Around
Before we dive into energy consumption, let's talk about why these two modes exist separately. Neither mode fully shuts down your PC, but they do very different things.
Sleep is essentially a "low-power mode." The PC's state is kept in memory, but the other parts of the PC are shut down. This is what allows it to very quickly resume where you left off when your turn the PC back on. Sleep mode is sort of like a light nap.
Hibernate saves the current state to the hard drive instead of the memory. When you power the PC back on, it loads that state back to the memory. Since the state is saved to the hard drive, the PC can essentially shut down completely while still resuming where you left off when it's powered on. It does take a little longer to boot up from hibernating than sleep, though.
Sleep mode should typically be used if you're stepping away for a short time, whereas hibernate is better for situations like going to sleep for the night. Both save more energy than keeping the PC on when you're not using it.
You may have already guessed from the previous descriptions, but hibernating does save more energy than sleep. Is it a considerable difference? There's only one way to find out.
A PC that is hibernating supposedly uses about the same amount of power as one that's completely shut down. As mentioned, that's why it takes longer to boot up. While both sleep and hibernate are still technically powered on, sleep mode is more "awake" than hibernate. That takes more power.
To test this, I plugged my PC into a smart plug that has a power meter feature. When the PC is powered on, I tracked it using anywhere from around 40W to over 100W. In sleep mode, that dropped down to around 4W. Hibernate dropped it all the way down to 0.2W and even 0W.
Related: PSA: Don't Shut Down Your Computer, Just Use Sleep (or Hibernation)
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Feb 14, 2024 · If you’re a Windows user, Microsoft suggests that you just set up your PC to “hibernate” overnight. “Hibernate” powers down your monitor to about 5 watts of energy and your PC to 2.3 ...
Jan 27, 2014 · Sleep. This is sort of the inverse of hibernation: most of a computer’s operations (like the hard drive) are turned off and RAM is placed in a minimum power state. When you “wake up” your ...
Apr 12, 2023 · Sleep saves your current work to RAM, and your computer continues to draw a little bit of power while in sleep mode. Hibernate saves your current work to your hard drive or SSD, and consumes no power. Windows provides several options for conserving power when you are not using your PC. These options include Sleep, Hibernate, and Hybrid Sleep ...
- Lori Kaufman
Jan 12, 2024 · Hibernate mode uses less power than Sleep Mode. Windows by default offers multiple power conserving features to users that includes Sleep mode and Hibernate. Another option is shutdown, which completely shuts your computer, of course. Sleep mode is the most common power-saving feature that you will come across in laptops.
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Jun 19, 2015 · Hibernate is best used for longer periods of downtime. The convenience of being able to waken your computer from Sleep in just a matter of seconds without any significant battery drain, coupled with the intelligent use of even lower power modes for extended use, makes that the best option to use on a daily basis.
