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S3 Sleep/Standby state not supported by ASUS TUF A15, only Modern Standby

xpclient
Level 8
I bought a 2021 ASUS TUF A15 in May 2021 and found to my shock that it does not support S3 standby sleep state at all. Like all the other notebooks and laptops that suffer from Modern Standby issues - way higher power consumption ( https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Modern-Standby-is-causing-some-XPS-Lenovo-and-Asus-laptops-t... ), this laptop also has it in Sleep mode.

When you send it to sleep, the laptop keeps certain components on initially like SSD, network, fans. It turns on randomly and periodically without ANY user control over it to download stuff from the internet that nobody asked it to do.

I often find it running hot and battery run down in my backpack if it is in Sleep state. I've no choice but to do full Shutdown or Hibernate before carrying it anywhere. Essentially the Sleep on it is high power consuming Sleep.

S3 should be a core basic fundamental feature of all laptops sold. S3 sleep is not implemented by ASUS at all in the firmware of this laptop!

I measured actual power consumption of Modern Standby with a power meter and found it to be a shocking 30W, sometimes dropping to 6W. But it frequently wakes up automatically without me telling it to and it shoots up to 30W. Then I measured the power consumption of several other normal laptops which do not have Modern Standby and which do have proper S3 sleep and they report just 1W while in Sleep. Also they never wake up on their own without my permission.

Not implementing S3 sleep and only giving Modern Standby is a violation of ACPI power management standard. If ASUS does not fix this with a firmware update for TUF A15 which adds back S3 sleep, I will be deeply disappointed and won't really be satisfied with this laptop. It would be hard to recommend ASUS as a brand to anyone or buy another one ever again.

I found this laptop lacked S3 sleep after I purchased it. I feel cheated. :(:(:(:(


Even after installing UEFI Boot manager like rEFInd and installing the ACPI Patcher module to disable Modern Standby and bring back S3 sleep, and clean install of Windows on another partition, it doesn't work because S3 is just not implemented by ASUS at the firmware/BIOS level in this model. The only option is the Modern Standby (S0ix) which continues to consume considerable amount of power in "Sleep" and unnecessarily wakes up.

powercfg /a reports no S3 sleep possible. I have tried Registry keys to disable Modern Standby (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power - DWORD: PlatformAoAcOverride ) but that disables all Sleep entirely, it does not bring back S3 sleep even after re-installing Windows. I have tried Group Policies also to make S3 available in Windows but to no avail.

I wish I could return this ASUS TUF A15 2021 model. The laptop is about a month old, in warranty but out of return period. I found this just after the return period. Nowhere in the reviews was this mentioned that it has ONLY Modern Standby. I would not even have expected a high power consuming GAMING laptop to have Modern Standby - usually thin and light ultrabooks are the ones to have it for instant resume. No S3 sleep at the firmware level at all is just not acceptable and if ASUS claims to care about customer feedback, they will update the UEFI BIOS of ASUS TUF series with S3 sleep added back. I hope this feedback is sent to ASUS's engineers who built this extremely disappointing notebook. 😞
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15 REPLIES 15

vaibhavgarg26
Level 7
I am in the same boat with the Asus Zephyrus DUO SE .. a top-of-the-line model..

I have investigated a lot and have not found a way to enable S3 Sleep.

What the hell is going ok..?

I wonder how many ASUS models there are with only Modern Standby. Anyway it is not acceptable because it consumes significant power. I have measured it and am still measuring it daily and it's more than 30Watts most of the time. Vs 1W in S3. S3 should be added back via a BIOS UEFI update. Only then I can recommend ASUS as a laptop brand to anyone.

I have the same problem, Asus can`t help. My notbook is very hot ! I use hibernate but Asus should consider our opinion and bring back s3 state !

EMailed ASUS Support, definitely no result and no effect. It seems ASUS doesn't care about whether you get a toasty backpack and fast-draining battery or not. The only choice is to use Hibernating.

xpclient
Level 8
Btw here are my results measured with a power meter:

ASUS should consider re-implementing S3 as a firmware update and letting us switch/choose between S3 or Modern Standby. Linux could also benefit from S3.

Modern Standby is not a sleep state at all. It is an Awake state with only screen turned off but everything else beyond our control as power consumption is high. This ruins the whole experience of using the laptop and I would definitely not be comfortable recommending ASUS as a brand if they ignore this.

This issue has gained mainstream press attention too on reputed sites like NotebookCheck: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Modern-Standby-is-causing-some-XPS-Lenovo-and-Asus-laptops-t... so I don't understand why ASUS is keeping complete silence on this.

I am extremely unhappy with the user experience provided by Modern Standby, but it is especially worse on a gaming laptop with a power-hungry CPU+GPU.

xpclient wrote:

I am extremely unhappy with the user experience provided by Modern Standby, but it is especially worse on a gaming laptop with a power-hungry CPU+GPU.


Bought an ASUS one because I thought they had better power management being in the gaming business for so long and all the reviews of older laptops seem to have low idle power usage too but not this time. Sigh

ASUS FX506HM also not support S3 sleep. Beacuse of that there is also no power management tab in "Device manager", so I can't even disable wake up from mouse and I must to switch off my mouse, in order to prevent accidental wake ups. This is so inconvenient (Often I'm using my laptop in bed, before asleep).
After a two weeks trying to adapt, I am now using again my old 6 years old i7 6700hq laptop.
Please ASUS, implement S3, via BIOS update!
Thnaks, Ivan

It works on Windows 11.

90221

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power" -Type DWORD -Name "PlatformAoAcOverride" -Value 0 -Force
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP ALLOWSTANDBY 1
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP ALLOWSTANDBY 1
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETACTIVE SCHEME_CURRENT
Restart-Computer

90222

P.S. I like the modern standby. The energy savings are nonsense.

abactuon wrote:
It works on Windows 11.

90221

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power" -Type DWORD -Name "PlatformAoAcOverride" -Value 0 -Force
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP ALLOWSTANDBY 1
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP ALLOWSTANDBY 1
C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe /SETACTIVE SCHEME_CURRENT
Restart-Computer

90222

P.S. I like the modern standby. The energy savings are nonsense.


Are you telling me me you have both A15 and F15? One is AMD Ryzen the other is Intel. They are different and use different firmwares!