Dell WorkStation 210 Personal Computer User Manual


 
Using the System Setup Program 3-15
NOTES: Some 3D graphics cards do not support DPMS. Refer to the documentation
for your particular 3D graphics card for information.
The
power management
feature monitors activity of a mouse connected to the Personal
System/2 (PS/2)-compatible mouse port.
By setting Power Management to Maximum, Regular, or Minimum, you can set
predefined time-out periods (see Table 3-2) for the two successive monitor shutdown
stages,
standby
and
off
.
NOTE: Each monitor manufacturer defines the details of the shutdown stages for its
own monitors. But in all cases, power consumption decreases with each stage from
“on” (full power) to “standby” (reduced power; the display image usually disappears)
to “off” (where power consumption is minimal). To define these stages for your mon-
itor, see the documentation that came with the monitor.
For most DPMS-compliant monitors, any subsequent activity—including moving the
mouse—returns full power to the monitor.
Check your monitor documentation for information on how your monitor is designed
to operate.
For most systems, enabling Power Management at any level causes EIDE hard-disk
drives to switch to low-power mode after about 20 minutes of system inactivity.
NOTE: Not all EIDE hard-disk drives support this feature. Enabling this feature for
drives that do not support it may cause the EIDE drive to become inoperable until the
computer is restarted and
Power Management
is disabled.
In low-power mode, the disks inside the drive stop spinning. They remain idle until the
next drive access, which causes them to start spinning again. (Because the disks take
a few seconds to regain full speed, you may notice a slight delay when you next
access the hard-disk drive.)
Disabled Never Never Never
Maximum 20 minutes 10 minutes 1 hour
Regular 20 minutes 20 minutes 1 hour
Minimum 20 minutes 1 hour Never