PE2950 (III) - Does anybody know how the power consumption is split?

[BlizzardX]

Hello,

Picked up a cheap PE2950 (v3) locally for NZD $60 which is about 25 quid. Got it to try and see if I could do something, which was reduce the noise it runs at and was curious about consumption.

I've fixed the fans and the BMC thresholds so now it sits at around 2500rpm per fan and I can sit next to it and it doesn't bother me! It is however, using 150w in idle with a single cpu at the boot screen.

My Dell R410 use 60w when booted in the vSphere and running some VMs, so what is using all the power? The CPU is the older low voltage 50w TDP ones without power control so always runs at full power but what else uses this to suck 150w? Is it simply the inefficient 5000p platform? Only 2 sticks of DDR2 FB-Dimms installed and removing one only dropped the consumption by 5w... If I can get the consumption to 100w then I'm happy is it is the same as the current domain controller and TVServer and I will replace that with this PE2950... so any thoughts, help etc. or is it simply a matter of them being power hungry and you can't do anything to reduce consumption?

I need two PCIe slots which is why this interested me.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[BlizzardX]

Hi Leigh,


I've actually got the server, but I am wondering if there are tweaks I can make to the actual unit via the BIOS, added hardware etc. that might reduce the power consumption down.

How much power would the Perc 6/I and SAS backplane take? I could utilise the two SATA connectors and 4 pin molex to power the two SATA drives I need... Would that make a difference?

 

[BlizzardX]

I would test when it is actually booted into an OS rather than in the BIOS - everything runs at full power there.

Yeah that was the plan, I just haven't freed up a spare HDD yet & I can't seem to set it to use my Synology as the iSCSI device.

 

[BlizzardX]

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/power-cooling/w/wiki/best-practices-in-power-management
check this out, for the cpu, when i set that it moved the base clock from 2.2ghz to 1.2 so i kept that and changed the fan profile and that made a difference

I've hard modded the 4 fans and the BMC to bring the noise and wattage from those under control (25w per fan at full chat!), I think I will see the power consumption drop when Server is installed, but if I keep it I will then purchase one of the newer low voltage xeons that has speed states as that should bring it back lower.

All the system will do is act as the primary domain controller with essentials role & my TVServer for the custom SKY NZ build I have... nothing much done and all my storage is handled by my custom Xpenology build with 12 hotswap bays.

 

[BlizzardX]

So, windows is installed and currently updating. Utilisation across the 4 cores isn't particularly high but the system is now consuming 162w @ 90% efficiency according to my power meter.

Would upgrading the e5130 1.6GHZ with power steps to a new L Harpertown make much difference? If this is the case, then pretty much I can ditch this then as it won't meet my power needs. I expected this, but at the price I paid I could afford to take the chance.

I can get HP DL180 G6s for around 125gbp here in New Zealand, but I've heard their fans are ridiculous and if you try and install any expansion cards not recognised by the BMC the fans go to full speed mode... Any mods that I can use to drop that down? The System will be in rack under the house, but will still be heard if the fans spin up to full!

 

[BlizzardX]

What disks are in there as 10k/15k drives can use some power?

A single 7200 rpm SATA drive, not much else!

I removed the Perc 6/I and really didn't make much difference to the power consumption at idle. I suspect that even if I bought one of the more power efficient chips (with low TDP too) that it may drop to 120w but I don't think its going much lower.

I'm now looking out for an LGA1366 setup to replace this, but in NZ they cost a lot and shipping from EBAY generally kills the cheaper deals from the states/UK.

 

[BlizzardX]

You're seeing high power draw because 2950s are ancient. You can normally change how the redundant power supplies are configured to have one be a standby instead of balancing 50% across each, but the total draw will be the same.

Knew they would be but wasn't sure exactly what I could get it down to. As said, my two LGA1366 servers pull around 70w each at idle in dual cpu mode, but prices in New Zealand are costly for this tech. Even the ancient PE2950 normally sell for around $300-400 each, so picking this up for the bargain value of $62NZD was worth it for a trial.

I'll now probably just wait for the larger ram to arrive and then punt it off to get my money back, perhaps a little more!

Is the 5000x chipset just a power hungry beast, as I can't imagine the 50w cpus are.

Anyhow, thanks for all the assistance people, much appreciated.

Now on to trying to bag a good deal on Rx10 series from Ebay, main killer is shipping... Prices are actually cheap!