Dont sleep while processor is working?

[OBjuan]

I do a lot of computer animation, and I am often wanting to set off a render overnight, where the computer thinks hard about turning wireframe triangles into pretty pictures.

Problem is I was waking up to find that my render had not proceed very far at all, and gone to sleep. If I go to power settings and tell it to 'Never Sleep' then my render makes it all the way through.

But I don't want to be a sweatshop labor boss and never let my sweet worker bee get any sleep. I want it to work till it finishes the render, and then go to sleep. That's how it used to work on my old Win XP box.

Is there a way I can set sleep to say, only kick in if cpu usage is below a certain percent?

 

[Wullail]

Don't know if this still works...used to use it in Windows 7 Timed Shutdown - Automatically shutdown your computer with a variety of triggers

It will (used to) shut down my PC when CPU use went down...I used to use it when I was encoding video overnight.

 

[BazzaG]

Perhaps SmartPower:

SmartPower

Free for personal use.