Motherboard Low Power While Off

NateDZD

I just upgraded my motherboard from the AORUS B450 Pro WiFi to the MAG B550 Tomahawk, and I'm looking for a “feature” that was a part of my old B450 board, but that I can't seem to find in my new B550. The AORUS board maintained a kind of “low-power mode” even after I shut down the computer, enabling me to do things like charge my mouse overnight. My new board doesn't seem to have this capability, or at least, I can't seem to find it in the BIOS. Does anyone here know their way around the MSI BIOS well enough to point me in the right direction?

It wouldn't be much of a problem, but when my computer is in sleep mode, the RGB on my RAM sticks stays fully lit. I know how to disable it, but it's not consistent, and often I have wake my computer right after putting it to sleep just to change the RAM RGB settings so that it shuts off when I put the computer to sleep.

I know this is such a minor complaint, but any help would be much appreciated.

PowerSpec_MichaelB

Welcome back to the forum, @NateDZD. To restore your USB power functionality, you'll need to look for a setting under Advanced > Power Management Setup Sub-Menu and look for an option to disable ErP. This should allow your system to power USB devices despite being in the Shutdown (S5) state. Do note that you may see higher power consumption on your "powered off" system depending on the number of devices connected.

NateDZD

@TSMichaelB Thanks for pointing me in what looks like the right direction! I checked, and ErP was disabled by default. I tried enabling and disabling it again, but that didn't seem to do anything. I guess where I'm confused is that this option says “ErP Ready” which made me wonder if there's another ErP setting somewhere. I wasn't able to find anything though.

PowerSpec_MichaelB

NateDZD said:

@TSMichaelB Thanks for pointing me in what looks like the right direction! I checked, and ErP was disabled by default. I tried enabling and disabling it again, but that didn't seem to do anything. I guess where I'm confused is that this option says “ErP Ready” which made me wonder if there's another ErP setting somewhere. I wasn't able to find anything though.

Interesting, looks like you are missing the option for "USB Standby Power at S4/S5". I don't have a B550 board on hand to test with, but my Intel Z490 board has this setting, and it's common on many other boards across both Intel & AMD platforms as well as other brands. 

Can you provide a screenshot of the ACPI settings menu and USB Configuration Sub-Menu? While unlikely, it's possible they may have changed where the setting is located.

NateDZD

@TSMichaelB I didn't find any related settings.

PowerSpec_MichaelB

@NateDZD Yeah those are definitely lacking the option I am referring to. It's very weird to see this missing from a modern motherboard, especially considering I can see it on a different MSI board from roughly the same release period. I've also checked through their Dragon Center software to see if maybe it had a way to adjust these settings, but that does not appear to be the case. 

For reference, this is what I reckon you should be seeing: https://us.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_BIOS_Manual#txt16. 


Without the USB Standby Power at S4/S5 option, we have no control over forcing USB devices to remain powered while the system is in the S5 (shutdown) state. I don't know if this was an oversight by MSI that will be potentially fixed in a later BIOS update, or if the board somehow doesn't support this functionality. Hopefully it's something that can be resolved with a simple BIOS update, as I imagine this is a pretty important feature for a lot of people.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@NateDZD How about under the "Wake Up Event Setup" sub-menu? Do you have an option to wake on USB and does enabling this solve the problem?

NateDZD

@TSMikeW
That was it. I first tried switching the first option from BIOS to OS, but that didn't solve my problem. Enabling "Resume by USB Device" appears to have solved it. I'm a little confused though as the description says "system wake up from S3/S4," but I guess that also includes providing USB power while in S5? I'm not complaining, but I wonder if it's an actual fix, or if that just happened to tangentially solve my problem.

Still, if anyone stumbles across this thread with the same problem I was having, here's a possible solution if you're using the MSI Click BIOS 5 build from 05/15/2020.

PowerSpec_MikeW

It should certainly not behave that way, but it does make sense and is a work around for this motherboard. We'll definitely share it if anyone else runs into this issue in the future.

Daycation2MicroCntr

First, just wanted to say thank you for everyone that contributed to this thread - exceptionally helpful!

I have the same motherboard and the same issue. The observations/suggestions here are exactly the same for a new version of the Bios: A50, released in early 2021.