How to reduce my Idle Power consumption on my tower server system

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Hi, I am trying to reduce the idle power of my server system and i am looking for information, specially bios configs that could help.

My system is a regular commercial tower (self assembled) with :

  • MoBo : Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO AC
  • 64 GB of RAM (2x32G TEAMGROUP 3200Mhz)
  • CPU : 5600x
  • GPU : 4060 (90% idle)
  • 3 fans 120mm
  • 2 SATA SSDs (1Tb teamgroup + 2Tb Patriot )
  • 3 HDDs in software RAID 5

i am using one usb port to power a raspberry Pi (3b+)

I didn’t tweak anything in bios other than remove the RGB, My idle power is about 70W (captured through a smart plug),

I use this server to run a lot of containers, exactly 120 containers but all of them are mostly idle, and i barely use them on daily basis.

My goal is to drop the power down to 30w on idle which is reasonable considering what i have connected to it.
What can i do ?

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Using amd pstate? Set governor to powersave.

Use aggressive spin down for all your hdd.

Disable smt for more power saving.

Can you run your ram slower?

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How did you come to the conclusion that 30W is reasonable for this system?

I have seen a B550 mobo (matx) + AMD Ryzen 5700G, 2x32GB RAM, single nvme (1TB) at ~22W.

  • Full ATX mobos typically consume more power (due to more enabled ports and features)
  • Discreet GPU uses power (15W+ idle)
  • HDDs use power (up to 8W each)
  • fans use power (several W each)

I think your system is performing as expected for the hw configuration. I would not expect software configuration changes to significantly lower power consumption.

Aggressive HDD spindown works and lowers power consumption to ~1W/drive. However, they need to spin up first when used.

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  • switch the 5600x for a 5700g (monilithic chip which means more efficient)
  • Turn on aspm features on the motherboard (but also test if this doesn’t cause issues with hard drives! make sure all cpu powersaving is also enabled, like C states and turbo.
  • Run powertop and enable power saving features
  • Check your root complex to see if there might be a part that is stopping the pc from going into power saving mode.
  • turn off fans/slow down.
  • switch power supply, this can make a large difference! but probably doesn’t at 70W, this becomes more of a thing under 35W. but if you have a 1000W power supply then that will be a big chunk of inefficiency.

I have a nas with a more efficient intel 12400, 3 hard drives (no spindown) and 2 sata ssds and that uses about 34W idle (the motherboard doesn’t support some power saving features). but you have a more power hungry amd chip with a gpu.

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In my experience this will save a few W, but not 10s of W. So most useful for mini-computers (think N100 and equivalent where power consumption can go from ~9W to ~6W).
On the other hand you need to expect all kinds of weird behavior to start because of it (devices not waking up when needed, system slowing down in unexpected ways).
Just setting expectations.

This always ends up disconnecting keyboard and mouse after like a few mins with the annoyance that comes with it. Caveat emptor!

Still, you should try it and report results here!

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With just your fans, hard drives, and solid state drives wouldnt they be somewhere around 12-15w at idle with just those components taken into consideration?
RAM doesnt really idle, it has to be constantly refreshed to keep from losing its data. The larger capacity and more sticks the more your power draw will be. Google searching shows this should only be about 2w per stick though. That seems low to me what IDK.

I would think the biggest thing you could do for idle power considerations would be to lose the RTX 4060. Can you get a ryzen CPU that has an iGPU in it? Or change to an intel system with an iGPU?

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