Chapter 1: Introduction
1-7 Power Configuration Settings
This section describes the features of your motherboard that deal with power and power settings.
Microsoft OnNow
The OnNow design initiative is a comprehensive, system-wide approach to system and device power control. OnNow is a term for a PC that is always on but appears to be off and responds immediately to user or other requests.
Slow Blinking LED for Suspend-State Indicator
When the CPU goes into a suspend state, the chassis power LED will start blinking to indicate that the CPU is in suspend mode. When the user presses any key, the CPU will wake-up and the LED will automatically stop blinking and remain on.
BIOS Support for USB Keyboard
If a USB keyboard is the only keyboard in the system, it will function like a normal keyboard during system boot-up.
Main Switch Override Mechanism
When an ATX power supply is used, the power button can function as a system suspend button. When the user depresses the power button, the system will enter a SoftOff state. The monitor will be suspended and the hard drive will spin down. Depressing the power button again will cause the whole system to wake-up. During the SoftOff state, the ATX power supply provides power to keep the required circuitry in the system alive. In case the system malfunctions and you want to turn off the power, just depress and hold the power button for 4 seconds. The power will turn off and no power will be provided to the motherboard.
Wake-On-LAN (WOL)
Wake-On-LAN is defined as the ability of a management application to remotely power up a computer that is powered off. Remote PC setup, up-dates and access tracking can occur after hours and on weekends so that daily LAN traffic is kept to a minimum and users are not interrupted. The motherboard has a 3-pin header (WOL) to connect to the 3-pin header on a Network Interface Card (NIC) that has WOL capability. Wake-On-LAN must be enabled in BIOS. Note that Wake-On-LAN can only be used with an ATX 2.01 (or above) compliant power supply.