High wattage hwC0D2 Intel

Support
1

Hi, i tried everything but using “powertop” i see that my audio device use a lot of power compared to all the rest:

 1.72 W    100,0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D2: Intel

Often goes to 2 W which is a lot, and never goes sleep. I’m using pipwire.
Any advice? I’m on latest kernel 6.15

2

Hi @Condorello and welcome !

Do you use TLP?

systemctl status tlp.service

See: Audio — TLP 1.8.0 documentation

Personally I set it to:

SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_AC=10
SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=10

I get a slight delay when the sound device wakes up, but it goes to sleep. 10 is recommended for pipewire that suspends and wakes the device very often.

3

Ok i moved both from 1 to 10, thanks for the trick!
Now somethimes seems to going sleep, i’ll report back in few days. Thanks!

4

Nope… it drain more than the cpu itself:

 2.09 W    100,0%        Audio codec hwC0D2: Intel
  1.05 W     26,9%        CPU core
5

Probably a regression from linux615. Did it work before? Try older versions. Note that linux615 is only stable, i.e: “public beta”, which means it is stable enough for the public, but not for production.

6

i went back to 6.12 but keep getting high usage imho:

  3.66 W     11,7%        CPU core
  1.83 W    100,0%        Audio codec hwC0D2: Intel
  1.83 W    100,0%        Audio codec hwC0D0: Realtek (pipewire )

How can i inspect why?

7

Onboard audio device might require 2 watts of power to drive built-in stereo speakers.
Device may need less power If headphones/external speakers are plugged in to 3.5mm jack.

Audio playback sinks should be suspended in PipeWire when no audio is playing

PipeWire Wiki - PulseAudio migration - module-suspend-on-idle
This module is implemented in the session manager with the suspend-node module. The default timeout for this module is 5 seconds.

To check sink suspend state:

pactl list sinks

Please post more information about system to identify onboard audio codec and check power requirements

inxi -SMAaz