Allied Telesis Support Portal

What is Active State Power Management and how does it affect ATI NIC card?

Why does dell desktop freeze when ASPM is turned on?

Introduction

Active-state power management (ASPM) is a power management mechanism for PCI Express devices to garner power savings while otherwise in a fully active state. Predominantly, this is achieved through active-state link power management; i.e., the PCI Express serial link is powered down when there is no traffic across it. It is normally used on laptops and other mobile Internet devices to extend battery life.

However in some case the ASPM handles power requirement incorrectly and cause system to lockup with it trying to reduce or remove power from the PCI slots NIC was plugged in.

At this point, the workaround available is to disable ASPM from the BIOS.

Example

Below example show how to disable ASPM in a Dell BIOS
User-added image