Posting for those who may find this of interest given a number of posts I’ve seen on low power consumption systems for either media, home server or client.
I’ve just rebuilt my WHS2011 server by reorganising some parts I had in other systems so that I could use mediaportal and add in a TV and Sat card then distribute this around the house as needed.
Originally WHS would idle at approx 53W as the HDD’s wouldn’t spin down reliably though using lights out it would sleep for approx 50% of the time.
I also had a Vista Media Center which idled at 68W and would only reliably record if it didn’t sleep.
Given the increasing cost of electricity I’ve tried a few configurations and power supplies to see what impact it has especially at the low end of consumption. I was particularly interested how a low wattage 80Plus Gold PSU would get on and if it was worthwhile upgrading my systems. OcUK were out of the Seasonic 360W so I sourced the Huntkey 300W Gold elsewhere. All figures using a plug in meter which will never be entirely accurate but is useful for comparisons.
Idle reading taken when CPU usage is 1-2% and core clocked down to the lowest frequency with no disk activity.
Load readings taken with Prime95 running max heat + power on all cores.
If the reading fluctuated between 2 values the higher is reported.
System 1 – A test mITX Celeron 530 build with SSD to be used as a media portal / catch up TV / internet browsing client. Windows 8.
Tested this with all the PSU’s as the low usage baseline. Surprised to see the Pico was not as far in front of the other PSU’s. The oldest PSU, the Antec 430 from a Fusion case would cost £11 a year more to run 24/7 while the other PSU’s would cost £3-4 a year extra. Happy I found this as I was going to run the server and clients on PICO's which gets expensive.
System 2 – Media Center AMD X3 405E (45W) with SSD, TV card and HDD. Does have AMD785G graphics and HDMI but Windows 8 driver model is only 1.1 so no full screen on HDMI hence the HD6450.
Slotted the components out one at a time to check the idle power consumption differences.
HD6450 – 10W
Nova 500TV card – 6W
WD 3.5” 250GB HDD – 8W
System 3 – Home server AMD X2 250U(25W) 5 spinning disks and additional network card as onboard is not Gbit. – WHS2011
Included due to the number of drives as alternate workload.
Rebuild, not on the list.
Server AMD X3 405E (45W) , TV card, Compro 350 Sat Card. 5 HDD, 1 SDD – WHS2011
Drives actually spin down on this board.... so idle is 48W with drives spun down, 76W with all drives spinning and around 115W with prime and all drives spinning.
Need to find out if it will wake from sleep to record so I can use lights out on this too.
Overall, happy with 48W idle @ around £70 per year for TV recording, media server and backup. The clients are only on when being used and I’m looking at a RasPI for an XBMC front end though currently it’s buried on my desk.
Actual readings in this image here.
I’ve just rebuilt my WHS2011 server by reorganising some parts I had in other systems so that I could use mediaportal and add in a TV and Sat card then distribute this around the house as needed.
Originally WHS would idle at approx 53W as the HDD’s wouldn’t spin down reliably though using lights out it would sleep for approx 50% of the time.
I also had a Vista Media Center which idled at 68W and would only reliably record if it didn’t sleep.
Given the increasing cost of electricity I’ve tried a few configurations and power supplies to see what impact it has especially at the low end of consumption. I was particularly interested how a low wattage 80Plus Gold PSU would get on and if it was worthwhile upgrading my systems. OcUK were out of the Seasonic 360W so I sourced the Huntkey 300W Gold elsewhere. All figures using a plug in meter which will never be entirely accurate but is useful for comparisons.
Idle reading taken when CPU usage is 1-2% and core clocked down to the lowest frequency with no disk activity.
Load readings taken with Prime95 running max heat + power on all cores.
If the reading fluctuated between 2 values the higher is reported.
System 1 – A test mITX Celeron 530 build with SSD to be used as a media portal / catch up TV / internet browsing client. Windows 8.
Tested this with all the PSU’s as the low usage baseline. Surprised to see the Pico was not as far in front of the other PSU’s. The oldest PSU, the Antec 430 from a Fusion case would cost £11 a year more to run 24/7 while the other PSU’s would cost £3-4 a year extra. Happy I found this as I was going to run the server and clients on PICO's which gets expensive.
System 2 – Media Center AMD X3 405E (45W) with SSD, TV card and HDD. Does have AMD785G graphics and HDMI but Windows 8 driver model is only 1.1 so no full screen on HDMI hence the HD6450.
Slotted the components out one at a time to check the idle power consumption differences.
HD6450 – 10W
Nova 500TV card – 6W
WD 3.5” 250GB HDD – 8W
System 3 – Home server AMD X2 250U(25W) 5 spinning disks and additional network card as onboard is not Gbit. – WHS2011
Included due to the number of drives as alternate workload.
Rebuild, not on the list.
Server AMD X3 405E (45W) , TV card, Compro 350 Sat Card. 5 HDD, 1 SDD – WHS2011
Drives actually spin down on this board.... so idle is 48W with drives spun down, 76W with all drives spinning and around 115W with prime and all drives spinning.
Need to find out if it will wake from sleep to record so I can use lights out on this too.
Overall, happy with 48W idle @ around £70 per year for TV recording, media server and backup. The clients are only on when being used and I’m looking at a RasPI for an XBMC front end though currently it’s buried on my desk.
Actual readings in this image here.
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