Asus X99 WS - Being re-used as TrueNAS Server, power usage

[bikerchris]

Hey all,

My god I've not posted here for ages, hope everyone is well?!?

So the title should explain, I'm kind of interested in anyone else's experience with power usage.

Here's my spec:

OS: TrueNAS
CPU: E5-1650 v4
RAM 64GB ECC Registered
HDD:
1 x NVMe
2 x SSD
8 x HDD's (half are set to spin down when no activity)

I know that the hard drives are going to be using a fair amount of power, but just wondering if these figures sound about right:

124-125 Watts - Idle, no activity
125-130 Watts - Watching a Plex video (no encoding, original quality)
~165 Watts - Watching Plex with forced encoding

I've done what I can to lower the power usage, but it seems most energy savers require Windows to be installed...doh! I tried the EPU...right before I read in the manual that the Win software is required...poo!

Thanks in advance

 

[bikerchris]

Thanks for that @nox_uk , yes one day I may give up on it and try some smaller units. I have a snapshot server that's i3-9100F based, and that isn't juicy at all, though I've yet to power test it.

 

[bikerchris]

Thanks for that @BongoHunter , I did have a look around the BIOS and did as much as I could. I think I even tried reducing the active cores, from 6 to 4, but I recall it didn't make much of a difference.

My RAM is 2133, good idea, I could try reducing it manually and I've seen that option within the BIOS

Crikey, does sound that most of the power usage is spinny things, when I rebuild, I'll try TrueNAS with just the OS drive plugged in and check the power usage for comparison.

Good idea about disabling unused devices...especially those silly serial ports! The BIOS does have a power profile, but it seems associated with the overclocking. I've disabled all auto overclocking, I could even disable the turbo mode I guess, in case it's running high at times.

Thanks again

 

[bikerchris]

Thank you @Rroff , I have seen S States mentioned in the BIOS, I just remember last time I fiddled with it, it buggered the machine up. I'll have another look though, thank you!

 

[bikerchris]

The price of electricity is about 17p per kw/h so that idle time is costing you about 50p per day. Is that really worth worrying about?

It's a very fair point, it's not that much in the grand scheme of things, I'm just trying to control regular costs, and £182 a year would be better spent on my alcohol budget.

 

[bikerchris]

Welcome to my...boat! Yeah my alcohol budget is higher than that too

I did think about hosted, but I've got a lot of data at rest, as well as a lot of work related files that I like to keep offline (ish). I am using the server for a few other things at least, like wifi controller NextCloud/Syncthing (not made my mind up yet) and it's a Plex server too, so at least I'm getting a few uses out of the expense.

 

[bikerchris]

Thanks @sja360 , yes I might try that. I did "un-standby" a few drives and noted the power went up around 5w per drive. If I'm feeling brave I'll unplug them all, though disabling those SATA's in BIOS might be a safer route perhaps?

That's very interesting @decto , thank you. I haven't seen many power options in TrueNAS, you have way more H/W in yours than mine, and yet less power?

I checked my supermicro i3-7100F setup, in fairness that's still running Win10, has 4xHDD's and the most basic of GPU's (GT210 or something?). That uses around 60W idle, with no HDD sleep modes active.

 

[bikerchris]

Seems like a lot although X58/X79/X99 did always have very high idle power usage.

My E3-1230V3, X10SLL-F, 16G, 8x 4TB (although now 4x10/14TB), 2x2.5" + 2xSSDs + Quad NIC + 660W Platinum PSU idled at 35-40W (30-35 without the NIC) when the disks were spun down, or 55-60W otherwise.

Cheers for that (sorry for delay, lot of building work), well perhaps it is fairly typical.

Oddly I now find it's far lower, though I have set a pool of 4 disks to standby when not used, so may be that helps.

 

[bikerchris]

X79 V2 (Xeons) have fairly decent idle power use if setup right (the Xeons have a ton of clock/voltage headroom out the box). X58, X99 and X79 V4 aren't the most optimal if you want low idle draw.

Thanks for an uber quick response. I did fiddle with the BIOS to lower the power, but oddly it seemed to break 2 x 8GB RAM sticks...it could have been coincidence of course, they were a few years old. To my knowledge, TrueNAS isn't great at adjusting CPU speed, though it's something I need to investigate further.