[Guide] Improving Battery Life on Windows [+Enabling Deeper C States]

That is amazing... 18hrs on a 60WHr battery equals a discharge rate of about 3.3W for local video playback... That's on par or even better than what I achieve on my m3 tablet with a 13 inch 1080p screen... What is your complete 100% idle with 0% brightness? My laptop idles at 2.5W

My previous notebook with the 8250U would IDLE at 3.3-3.5W...

 

Hey @Che0063 I was having deep idle state issues again after my most recent Windows v1903 update and system debloat and finally figured it out (again) as this time there was an extra step aside from the "HIPM/DIPM" trick alone. See my quote I just posted on the Throttle Stop thread:

 

Thanks a lot, that's what I had meddled with some time back, I thought it was specific to only my machine. I have mine set to 10ms. (100ms still had my C7 jumping up to C3 every few seconds) I'll add it on in a few weeks time, I"m buried under examinations.

 

Hi Che0063!

Its a great guide you've put together, luckily I have the mi notebook pro as well, so it was really easy to follow along. Your username is familiar from the MIUI forum (EC table thread).

Battery life definitely ugraded, idling C0% and PKG Power hovering around 0.5-1.5!

 

I've been trying to follow your guideline in determining whether or not my notebook is behaving correctly in terms of idle power consumption...but if I am reading this correctly, the 8750H should be idling under 1W, correct? And it should be in C7 most of the time, correct? The absolute lowest package power recorded I'm getting is about 1.1W, and it seems most of the time the CPU is in C3.

Your insight would be appreciated



I have not done a clean install, it's running the OS image that the machine came with. I've disabled 3rd party services and startup apps as much as I could.

I undervolted by 140.6mV

 

This is what my i7 7700HQ looks like when truly idle:



EDIT:

Also, if you have an external monitor plugged in via HDMI it may prevent idle states deeper than C3, at least it does on my machine which has a dedicated onboard dGPU.

 

I had nothing plugged into the laptop when I did this test. Just the laptop fully charged, unplugged by itself. No USB, no HDMI, no DP. It just seems to never go beyond C3. And idle package power never goes below 1.1W.

 

Are you running on HDD or SSD?
SATA or NVMe or both?
Are you running in AHCI mode?
Did you set your " AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM" option in your Advanced Power Options to " Lowest" AND set your " AHCI Link Power Management - Adaptive" setting to " 10ms" or more?

Also, why are you using SpeedStep and not Speed Shift EPP?

 

Two NVMe drives only. One SK Hynix drive that came with the machine, and an Intel 660p I added just yesterday (adding this drive did not change the CPU package power at all).

Not using SATA at all, as I've elected for the 90Wh battery option. So, no SATA drives at all in the system.

I have not yet touched those settings. But, given that they have "AHCI" in their naming, that sounds to me like they might not be applicable to this situation and only applies to SATA drives.

I didn't touch those settings at all in ThrottleStop. The only thing I changed in ThrottleStop was undervolting the vCore and vCache by 140.6mV. The BIOS appears to have had Speed Shift enabled by default already.

 

Are you running in AHCI mode or using Intel RST for your SSDs? I run in AHCI mode with no Intel RST drivers on my lappy.

EDIT: you said you are on 2x NVMe drives, but are they both PCIe or is one on a SATA port? AHCI and Intel RST mentioned above should only apply to SATA connected drives, even if they are using an NVMe physical interface. I may have made a dumb with this detail considering I haven't had to dig very deep into my system in a while since it's been running pretty well for me. My system has 1x NVMe m.2 SSD running on PCIe and 1x SATA SSD running on SATA port.

^^^^^^^^^^ that's the most important detail in all of this imo. That is what kept my laptop from getting into C7 consistently. Activate those power options in your advanced power settings so they show up, then set them accordingly like I mentioned.

I would also un-check the SpeedStep and check the SpeedShift EPP box and set it to "0" for best performance and low consumption. I agree with UncleWebb's theory. There is no gain in forcing your CPU down to 800MHz on newer gen Core iX CPUs.

As you can see from my screenshot, your CPU can idle at <1W and still hold a 3+GHz clock speed when not loaded heavily. All of my screenshots I am showing you are me running on an EPP setting of "0" which gives desktop-like responsiveness.

 

The only option in the BIOS I can find that can be set to "AHCI" is "SATA Operation Mode". Is that what you're referring to? The default value appears to be "RAID On"

I tried changing it from "RAID On" to "AHCI" and now it doesn't boot...interesting. Why the heck would a setting called "SATA Operation Mode" affect NVMe storage?!

 

Yes, that is expected behavior. See my edit I just noted on my quote:

 

Both drives are PCI-e x4 NVMe M.2 drives. Neither of them are SATA-based. Both get over 2 GB/s reads and writes.

 

Okay, well regardless: to get optimal power consumption you should try to get your machine into AHCI mode. However, before moving forward I would suggest either backing up your entire system, being prepared to make a clean vanilla install, or at least preparing a USB flash drive with some basic recovery tools like GParted / Ubuntu Live / Windows 10 Installer / etc.

EDIT: You may also want to download and have some NVMe & Intel RST driver files on hand ready to go just in case.

I prefer to use Easy2Boot as my flash drive host tool of choice that can launch all of the above as if they were discs iirc.

You can google for no-install methods of switching from Intel RST (RAID) mode to AHCI mode:



https://www.tenforums.com/customization/104898-switch-raid-ahci.html

 

This guide successfully got it booting in "AHCI mode": https://tunecomp.net/enable-ahci-without-reinstalling-os-windows-10-7/

I also did the tweak of turning Link Power Management to Lowest. However, it appears to have made things worse: now it's not going below 1.7W at idle... and CPU is now stuck in C2 instead of C3:

 

What is your "AHCI Link Power Management - Adaptive" setting set to?

 

100 ms

 

Okay, additionally, are you checking your idle states with Chrome closed and minimal background apps running?

Do you have Chrome's "run in background" option disabled so that when you close Chrome it terminates all of it?

Also, have you gone through your NVIDIA settings and selected to use your iGPU as the global default for all applications unless explicitly set to use your NVIDIA dGPU?

I find that turning on the NVIDIA tray icon helps during this process as well in case you have some misbehaving apps. (For me, NordVPN likes to keep my dGPU active sometimes when it shouldn't be.)

This is what it looks like when not active:


And this is what it looks like when it IS active:


And when I left click once on it, it opens and tells me what is using it like this:

 

Have you turned on the Speed Shift EPP setting "Enable Speed Shift when ThrottleStop starts" in the TPL window of Throttle Stop?



And then checked the SpeedShift EPP box on the main UI of Throttle Stop while also unchecking the SpeedStep setting check box?

 

I tried those, made zero difference. Here's a snapshot of task manager: https://i.imgur.com/91t36xz.jpg (sorted by CPU Usage)

 

Here is my system with Chrome minimized (and 39 tabs open):



Are all of your Task Manager entries listed as either Low or Very Low power usage?



For a while my Antimalware Windows service would run hard every time I rebooted my machine and cause High or Very High power consumption (although not much actual CPU or Disk load). It would eventually stop itself and finish after an hour or more generally, but the whole process happened every damn time I restarted my laptop. It stopped after I did a deep clean of my services and other junk recently.

How many total processes do you have running? (again this is mine with Chrome open and 39 tabs)


Additionally do you have an OEM power manager? I believe some Dell XPS series laptops had issues getting into deep sleep states with certain performance schemes runnning or something. It's certainly not unheard of for "gaming enhancement" softwares to cause such issues.

EDIT:

Also @MacHater did you follow this guide where it counts? I see you are runnign on a 240Hz screen, did you enable the "Power Savings" and "Self Refresh" options for your iGPU?



I'm not sure if having 4x the refresh rate has anything to do with it or not, but it seems plausible it could keep your CPU from being able to rest as easily as mine. Also, when is the last time you updated all your drivers and your BIOS?

And, I know you swapped from Intel RST raid to AHCI boot mode, but have you tried switching the driver to NVMe drivers and completely disabling Intel RST?

It's beginning to seem that starting with a clean vanilla install would be easiest / best solution all around to rule out certain things, but it sure would suck if it didn't end up solving your issues.

 

They're all showing as "Very Low". Like I said, I did this test with absolutely nothing running, not even Chrome. And no matter what combination of settings and drivers in AHCI mode, it was consistently performing (power consumption wise) much worse than in the previous mode "RAID On". I switched it back to "RAID On" in the BIOS, and the power consumption went back down to 1.1W from 1.7W.

I don't see any special power profiles or anything like that. It's just balanced.

 

See my edit on my previous response to you. What is your total process count in Task Manager under the performance tab?

EDIT:

Here is my Device Manager:









SEE HERE:

https://www.dell.com/community/Lapt...AID-ON-Storage-Drivers-M-2-Lanes/td-p/5072571

 

72 background processes, most not using any CPU % at all. Most of them are just Windows services. There's about 3-4 DELL/Alienware specific software, again not using any CPU %.

 

They don't necessarily have to be consuming CPU cycles to prevent the deeper sleep states. It's got to be a technical setting or a bad driver somewhere. If your newly installed drive is blank, you could use Partition Wizard Free to clone your primary SSD over to it as a backup then perform a clean Win10 install on your main SSD and see if there is any improvement. Worst case scenario, you just clone your backup back over to your primary SSD and continue troubleshooting.

I assume you are on a GPT UEFI install correct? Did you try reinstalling the NVMe specific AHCI drivers for your system? Or have you tried using Samsung's NVMe drivers perhaps?

Also, did you try setting your power settings like this (including the NVMe Idle Timeout since both of your drives are NVMe based)?:


In my BIOS I have the following set:


EDIT:

Also, have you tried completely uninstalling the Alienware specific software (I am assuming you have Alienware Command Center)? And have you went to Intel's website and tried doing a manual driver check and update using their utility?

EDIT EDIT:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...trol-of-the-i7-8750h-advanced-version.823065/

 

@Maleko48 I have tried every possible combination short of a clean install, which I feel is absolutely overkill. I barely touched this machine as I just got it not too long ago, and it shouldn't need this thorough of adjusting to get it working as intended, correct? All I did was install the latest drivers possible, and Steam, Origin, some games (I don't have any of these running at startup, nor when I'm doing power consumption testing), as well as the Intel NVMe drive. Latest Windows Updates, running on 1903. And of course, the 140.6mV undervolt in ThrottleStop.

And until someone else with an 8750H shows what idle wattage is like, for all I know this could be working as intended already. After all, it has more cores and threads than both the 7700HQ and 8550U. However, the article mentioned that "H / HQ", 4th gen and higher CPUs should be idling under 1W, otherwise "there could be problems", which is what raised eyebrows for me and hence asking on here.

The OS is bare bones stock, yes it's UEFI mode with GPT partition, Secure Boot enabled.

I don't have any Samsung drives in this machine. SK Hynix != Samsung

 

I wouldn't be as concerned with the actual wattage as I would be with the fact that the C7 package state is not being used. That right there is the primary indicator that your modern system is not operating as efficiently as it could. While it is idling at a decently low level considering it has extra cores and performance per core compared to my CPU while using the same 14nm process technology, I suppose there is not a ton being left on the table, but it would drive me crazy personally. A clean vanilla Windows 10 install is well worth the time and trouble on a newly acquired system imo. Factory installs are garbage.

In general, NVMe drivers are interchangeable and can be forced with manual driver swaps / installs if you know what you are doing, though I really don't know if that would solve your troubles. You could try asking some people from that MSI thread with the 8750H I put in my edit edit above.

 

Please click on Turn ON button to activate TS. Uncheck C1E and Speedstep. Check off Speedshift and apply correct value. 80 means on demand aggressive clock speeds, 0 max performance all the time, 180 and above is battery saver mode which also turns off turbo boost, so if you want turbo use 150 to boost the cpu clocks between 2.8-3.5GHz on all cores which depends on CPU model. I only have 6700HQ, so it boost to 3.1GHz on all cores only.

 

I tried installing a clean install to a separate partition just to see what happens...and it's not looking good:


Still stuck in C3.

I read somewhere that this could be caused by a bugged BIOS and only a BIOS update can fix it. I did see others with an 8750H report idle wattages in the 0.5W range so mine is definitely a tad high.

 

Regarding a bugged BIOS, that is certainly a possibility knowing Dell. It could also be immature drivers published by Dell as well. Unfortunately I can only help you so much since I don't have that same model / class of Dell laptop and my system is pretty heavily modified as far as my software / Windows installation goes. Excluding a bugged BIOS, there is a good chance some of us here can help figure it out or possibly pin down the root cause if you want to keep trying for it though.

 

Yup. Most 8750Hs idle at 0.3W. You need to find out what's causing your CPU to lock up to C3 state and not into C7. Massive battery saving potential here. I can't give you any tips except to say that every system is unique.

I have seen many screenshots of 8750Hs on the ThrottleStop Thread. I'm jealous at their C states, on some Dell machinese (I think it was the XPS) C10 is enabled, enabling further battery savings. I assure you 0.4W is possible.

If you think that new machines shouldn't need any tuning, you'd be surprised. On my tablet, it took me weeks to find out that the Hinge Angle Detection (mine is a 2in1, so it needs to know when to disable the keyboard) was causing the CPU to get stuck in C2 state.
A few years back on my Aspire E15 it took me months to finally pinpoint that there was likely a hardware issue (or maybe bios) that was causing excessive system interrupts, resulting in the CPU being stuck in C3. I got that laptop returned.

 

So after yet another weekend of tuning and pruning I have managed to get my system's true idle down to a consistent 0.3W to 0.4W (not doing anything at all, with no applications open; ie: useless really). With Chrome and ~35-40 tabs open and still doing nothing, it idles in the range of 0.5W to 0.9W. Finally when typing and using my keyboard / trackpad to type this into Chrome, it seems to use in the range of 1.0W to 2.0W. When holding the backspace on my keyboard to kill a paragraph my system tops out at 3.0W. Watching a YouTube video takes about 2.5W to 3.5W on 720p and about 3.0W to 4.0W on 1080p (minimal colors and movement though). My highest burst while doing all of this was less than 9.0W (turbo boost disabled, 2.8GHz maximum CPU speed for my most conservative profile).

 

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to put together such a great guide ! It has been very helpful !

I suggest an addition note to allow and set hidden power settings easily using this excellent tool :
Windows power plan settings explorer utility
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/windows-power-plan-settings-explorer-utility.416058/

 

Hey,

i wanted to share my expirences with "Improving battery Life on Windows" and ask if there is anything else I can do to enable deeper C states. But let's start from the beginning.

System:
- Clevo N857HJ
- i5 7300HQ; 8GB DDR4 RAM; GTX1050 4GB
- Windows 1903 Pro freshly installed last week
- MX500 1TB M2 SATA SSD

Improving battery Life:

1. From basic, to advanced.
- Disabled non needed autostart programs
- Disabled non needed services via the Black Viper’s Service configuration list
- Disabled non needed services via msconfig
- Disabled non needed schedueld tasks

2. Disable eye-candy (Skip if in a hurry)
- Basically done everything except some, because it didn't had an noticeabled effect on PKG Power and I like some "eye candy"

3. HIPM+DIPM+DevSleep (important)
- Done via registry
- Config from power management:




Note: I have no PCIE SSD installed. Just a M2 SATA SSD. Lowering AHCI Link Power Management Adaptive "on AC" to 5ms didn't had any effect on PKG Power.

Note: After a system reboot the AHCI Link power management option and adaptive AHCI link power management - adaptive is automatically set back to value 1 in registry.

4. Undervolt (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT)
- Done: CPU+Cache -95mv; Intel GPU -120mv via ThrottleStop

5. Enable Speedshift (Meh)
- Done: on AC 80; on Battery 188 via ThrottleStop

6. Check/Enable deeper C States [Intel] (VERY IMPORTANT)
- I still havn't figured out how to enable deeper C states on my notebook. I think this is the issue for the high PKG Power value. My notebook is basically stuck at level C3. But lets start with what I tried so far:
- Updating drivers delivered from clevo (sadly the newest one from their website are from 2017) ==> no effect on C states or PKG Power
- Updating intel driver: Updated bluetooth driver, wifi driver and intel HD graphics driver ==> no effect on C states or PKG Power
- Installed Intel RST tool/driver and disabled LPM ==> C states got stuck at C2, so it made it worse
- Installed Intel RST tool/driver and enabled LPM ==> C states are back again with max. C3
- Uninstalled Intel RST (still uninstalled now because it didn't had an improving effect) ==> C are again still at C3
- BIOS Options: None; Sadly my AMI BIOS seems to be pretty much locked down. I don't have any CPU related setting for undervolting or C state configurations.





Does anyone got some ideas what else I could try?

After installing Intel RST the IDE ATA controller driver changed from standard to the intel one. The SATA M2 driver for the MX500 is/was still the default microsoft one. Is there a Intel oder Crucial specific M2 SATA driver I can try?

7. Intel Graphics
- Everything set to maximum battery life

8. Fans are fine

9. No other devices connected

10. I ncrease the longevity of your laptop battery.
- Enabled BIOS FlexiCharger: Charging starts at 60% and stops at 80%.

Edit: Some more info:

During idle with firefox and throttlestop open


All processes are running in task manager with power consumption "very low"

 

Welcome to NBR.

No. 6 is your massive issue. 1.4W on idle is entirely unacceptable. You should be aiming for 0.4W or even 0.3W. If you solve your C state issue, you should get massive increases in battery life.


Just clarifiying, is this what you mean?

Everything looks good from here. At the moment it seems that your C states can be fixed with drivers. But if you want to solve this, can you try a linux live cd or whatever they are called thesedays? If you put the image on your USB, run linux without the M.2 SATA SSD and see if the issue still occurs. IIRC you can check with "PowerTop"

Also are you sure that you cannot go any lower for your undervolt? Most HQ cpus can go down to 140mv or more.

 

Thanks for your reply!

Not exactly. After installing Intel Rapid Store Technology driver the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller changed to a intel one. The disk driver for the mx500 ssd I think was still a Microsoft generic one. Is there a special driver for ssd drives?

Done and seems to be pretty good. I used a ubuntu live boot usb device and installed powertop. Seems like with ubuntu my cpu uses even C10 states in IDLE!



What can I do next? It seems like the SSD is the issue?! I still got some bunch of drivers I could try (Cardreader, Audio, Fingerprint, Touchpad, LAN, Chipset, SGX). I didn't run their installer so far because
a) Intels driver update utility didn't recommend a new chipset or SGX driver or
b) the ones installed from Windows Update seem to be more up to date.
Should I try them?

Sidenote: I got a new BIOS + EC Version from manufacturer. If I don't have to I think I shouldn't flash a new BIOS or?

Not 100%. I did the undervolting with Intel XTU 2 years ago. Because I know found ThrottleStop (XTU is a mess) I will try / test again. A quick test resulted in a bluescreen with -135mv on CPU and Cache. I'm now at -125mv an will test IDLE, low frequencies (watching video etc.) and prime stress test.

 

Your IDE ATA/ATAPI controller should NOT be the generic standard Microsoft one. It should be by Intel Corporation like mine, because we both have M.2 SATA SSDs. If you don't want to hunt around you could try a driver updater utility (but definitely don't pay for one, and uninstall immediately after done)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you seem to be having the same issue in Linux. your PACKAGE C states (on the left) indicate that it is limited to C.2 (pc2) i.e. not working. Your CPU cores remaining in C10 is perfectly normal.

 

After hours of searching for intel drivers, I used a driver update utility to find other outdated drivers. It came up with Realtek drivers for LAN and Card Reader. After installing the LAN driver an rebooting the notebook my Package finally IDLEs at C8 states and power consumption is even in non C8 states massively lower. While charging my packages IDLEs in C2/C3 at 0.8w. Fully charged and on battery my package IDLEs at C8 and mostly 0.4w or even 0.3w. Take a look:



Thanks for your help! So I can conclude:
- Intel Rapid Store works for me if LPM is enabled
- Take always a look at other devices (e.g. Realtek devices) and update them

Is there anything more I can optimise? Should I do perform the BIOS and EC Update from my manufacturer (maybe because of Meltdown or Spectore Microcode Updates?)?

 

Great to hear that! I'll add your findings to the main post. That being said I still feel like there are excessive background programs. Your C0% should be lower still.
I wouldn't bother with the BIOS. yOU've fixed everything you can.

 

Thanks for this post

My laptop first idled 15-20W, and now is consistently 3-4W. It also can reach C8 state, where beforehand it couldn't get any further than C3.
Battery life increased from 3 hrs to 8+ hrs.
Unfortunately, updating the drivers didn't seem to work. So I just used the built in windows reset option, and this fixed the issue somehow.
I think a windows update caused it to get stuck in C3.

 

New discoveries - some poorly-optimized drivers can be the cause of even more battery woes. I thought I got my package C states down well, but apparently not. My Goodix Fingerprint driver, as well as the Axes Accelerometer caused C0% to be 0.5% higher, and causing a system-wide 0.2-0.5W increase in idle power.

C state heaven:

 

Did you disable/remove them or just update the drivers?

 

Just disabled. There are no available driver updates. My theory si that, by disabling the drivers, the CPU is no longer trying to communicate with the device and wasting CPU cycles.

 

Thanks for the Guide!

I have an Ideapad 330S and I've been struggling with getting good C-states on it. I got it into C3 which is 0.2W lower than stock C2 but it still draws 1 Watt at idle. It does go into C8 no problem (0.3 W) after disabling the Wifi adapter in device manager. This Laptop came with a Qualcomm QCA9377 which I have since replaced with an Intel AX200 but that didn't fix the problem.

Please help me... I tried everything from updating drivers to fiddling with services.

 

Thank you for the detailed guide!

My laptop (see my signature for specs), now idles at 0.8-1.5 W, both on battery and AC power, with no programs open (it gets to 3-5W if I open Firefox with 2 windows and ~20 tabs).

I have a Lenovo USB-C Hub with LAN, a few more USB ports, and an SD card slot. Without it I can see my CPU entering C8 state, but with the Hub connected, I only have C2 and C3 deep states.

Recently I updated Intel RST driver directly from the Intel website. Now I think I shouldn't have done it
Lenovo-provided IRST driver is older than that one, so now I can't change the driver. So probably I should wait until Lenovo issues a newer driver.

P.S. I forgot to mention that MSI Afterburner takes extra 4-5 W in idling! For battery only use I just disable it. Otherwise, battery drains in 3-4 hours, instead of usual 7-8. I didn't notice after which MSI AB update this started.

 

Welcome to NBR. If two separate WiFi cards both exhibit the same issue, I can only imagine that the issue lies somewhere within your M.2 (?) to CPU interface. The AX200 is connected over PCIe 3.0 x1 for WiFi and USB 2.0 for Bluetooth. QCA9377 is connected over I²S, PCIe 2.1, PCM, or UART, for Wifi depending on your configuration. It can be hard to tell. As a previous owner of the (crappy) QCA9377, I can say that I haven't had problems with it.

I'd suggest updating your Serial IO, M.2, PCIe, or any interface drivers.

I'm happy to have helped.

Unless you are about to die from missing out on a special Lenovo feature, there is no need to stay with Lenovo drivers if Intel's drivers are working fine.

MSI Afterburner is likely keeping your GTX 1050 "on". I'm guessing that the software is keeping the GPU on but putting no load on it. When you aren't playing games, Nvidia Optimus (theoretically) disconnects power to the entire GPU, thus saving power.

Over/under-clock/volt settings should remain closing MSI Afterburner.

 

Yeah, I am more a conservative 'don't touch it if it works' guy

This is a known issue, as I found, of MSI Afterburner conflicting with NVidia Optimus. Devs say AB is not supposed to work with laptops. Looks like they changed some mechanisms of polling the GPU, so AB requires now more power even though it says the dGPU is idling.

That's a very good news! However, MSI AB seems resetting to previous profile whenever I restart it. GPU-Z confirms that, showing frequencies of previous profile after I close AB and run a game. Weird!


---

Another thing I remembered about power saving, you probably would like to add this to your guide: powercfg

This is a built-in Windows command-line tools that allows you to do many things. Personally, I use 'powercfg /energy' command to generate a report that states all different power issues, including those related to CPU, detailing which processes are power hungry.
Also I used 'powercfg /requests' to find and disable all USB-powered requests coming from connected devices. I disabled the mouse requests so it didn't wake up the laptop during sleep (that case was with my old laptop which wasn't supposed to have Windows 10 installed So its CPU didn't properly support selective USB suspend option).
But still this is a very useful tool to trace down any power hungry peripherals.
An example of commands and their description you can find, for example, here.

 

One more investigation result.
On my laptop (Lenovo 720S-15IKB) I have two USB-C ports. One is USB 3.0, another is USB 3.1 (Thunderbolt).
Without anything connected, I have 0.8 W, C8 deep state active.

So, if I connect my USB-C Hub to Thunderbolt, CPU power goes from 0.8 W to 1.8-2.0 W stable, no C8 deep state.
However if I connect it to USB 3.0, the power raises to only 0.9-1.0 W, but no C8 deep state active.

Looks like this is a common 'feature' of Thunderbolt to drain more power.

I am puzzled though, why connecting the hub causes deep states to go away.
So in this hub there are 2 USB 3.1 Type A ports, 1 full SD card slot, 1 HDMI port, 1 USB 3.0 (?) power-delivery port, and an RJ-45 port.
Probably, it is because of the power-delivery port. Or due to HDMI (which should start communicating with the iGPU, right?)

 

You're not alone. It puzzles me too. Any device I plug in anywhere causes the C states to go ever so slightly higher - that includes the most basic mouse/keyboard.

Still at a loss as to why my m3-7Y30 idles at 0.4W, whereas my friend's m3-5Y10c from two generations ago idles at 0.2W.