This is my thread in which I’ll post my idle power efficiency measurements on different hardware I own or buy. I would want it to stay mostly a blog style thread. If you have some results you’d want to share DM me before posting.
Why?
European power bills are killing my wallet and I’m looking for a way to reduce my power bill.
Idle power usage is rarely talked about in mainstream reviews and and there is not a lot of resources talking this edge case. I’m inspired mostly by wolfgang youtube videos and this very good spreadsheet of low power builds. Check it out if you’re looking to build something power efficient.
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Today I did some tests on 3 PSUs I own. I mostly wanted to know how they compare to gold standard Corsair RM550x.
PSUs in this test:
- corsair rm550x (2021) CP-9020197-EU (80+ gold)
- old silverstone SST-ST30SF (probably v1) (80+ bronze)
- industrial seasonic PSU SSP-500ES2 (80+ bronze)
Testing setup:
- shelly plug s measuring at the wall
- asrock n100m
- 32gb 2400MTs DDR4
- samsung pm981a 512GB
- no network
- powertop --auto-tune
I’ve bough SSP-500ES2 a while ago because It was the only ATX PSU I could find which didn’t have FAN on the side. I have a 2U rack case which obstructs all sides of the ATX power supply and makes it unusable with most modern PSUs which have fan on the side. This compatibility feature is it’s only benefit.
All measurements are at idle and without display or keyboard connected.
system with SSP-500ES2 uses embarasing ~18.92W
system with SST-ST30SF uses ~8.04w
system with corsair rm550x (2021) uses impressive 4.90W
In this test my n100m with rm550x(2021) 2 less watts than my asrock n100dc-itx with some random 90w DC Fujitsu power supply. Difference may be explained by the fact that n100dc-itx tests were made with with 1GbE network connected but it still very impressive result for 500W PSU.
That’s all folks!
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My homelab hl15 recently arrived. I’m preparing a short review of it, but in the mean time I’ll post me power usage measurements I’ve made while testing this case.
I’ve loaded the case with spare hardware I had available. I’ve tested 2 HBAs I had available. Spoiler, both of them had major issues with hdd spindown.
Power measured by shelly plug s at the wall
Base specs:
PSU: Corsair RM550x
Motherboard: Asrock n100m
CPU: Intel n100m
RAM: 32GB ddr4 @3200MT/s
Boot ssd: samsung pm981a 512GB
Linux kernel version 6.6.13
other tested hardware:
realtec 2,5Gb ethernet nic RTL8125
LSI 9400-8i (8 port)
Adaptec ASR-71605 (16 port)
Kioxia cd6 7,68TB KCD61LUL7T68
Out of the box I couldn’t get system to auto enable ASPM on built-in realtec nic. I had the same issue with realtec 2.5Gb nic on add-in card.
Power measurements
| power |
ASPM enabled on all devices |
pkg c state |
Specs |
| 8,1W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a |
C3 |
| 5,5-6,1w |
YES |
n100m rm550x pm981a + (manually enabled ASPM on realtec nic) |
C8 |
| 9,27W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 |
C3 |
| 7,03W |
YES |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + ASPM on both nics |
C8 |
| 20,44W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 |
C3 |
| 22,80W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + ASR-71605 @pcie3x2 |
C3 |
| 16,57W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + Kioxia cd6 7,68TB @pcie3x2 |
C3 |
| 20,33W |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + HL15 Stock fans |
C3 |
| — |
— |
— |
— |
| 41w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 1x 7200RPM 4TB HDD |
C3 |
| 33,57w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 1x 7200RPM 4TB HDD [SPINDOWN] |
C3 |
| — |
— |
— |
— |
| 40,58w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 1x 7200RPM 20TB WD DC HC560 |
C3 |
| 34,3w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 1x 7200RPM 20TB WD DC HC560 [SPINDOWN] |
C3 |
| — |
— |
— |
— |
| 107w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 8x 7200RPM 4TB HDD |
C3 |
| 41,17w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + LSI 9400-8i @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 8x 7200RPM 4TB HDD [SPINDOWN] |
C3 |
| — |
— |
— |
— |
| 170,24w |
NO |
n100m rm550x pm981a + RTL8125 + ASR-71605 @pcie3x2 + HL15 Stock fans + 15x 7200RPM 4TB HDD |
C3 |
HBAs:
ASR-71605
Spindown on adaptec card causes drives to disappear from the system. Drives are not even properly spun down, power draw stays the same. You have to reboot to get them back. Adaptec card is one of the cheapest 16 port HBAs I could find. But there are major drawbacks.
LSI 9400-i8
This HBA can spin HDDs down but getting them back is very unreliable. They usually, eventually come back. But in my test it takes them usually about 90s. This is completely unacceptable and wouldn’t recommend this HBA if you want to spin down your drives.
I’ve tested HBAs both in HL15 and with sata splitter cables directly attached to HDDs.
Peak power draw of starting HL15 with this motherboard and 15 7200RPM HDDs = 303,64w (as measured by shelly plug s, readout over http api every 0,3s)
tl;dr power usage
HL15
- HL15 stock fans user about 11w of power
- With 15 7200 RPM server HDDs and minimal motherboard you can expect ~170W idle and ~305W of peak power draw during boot. (You probably shouldn’t use PSU lower than 550W in this server)
other hardware hardware
- LSI 9400-8i in pcie3 x2 slot adds 11,2W of power draw to this system at idle
- Adaptec ASR-71605 in pcie3 x2 slot adds 13,5W of power draw to this system at idle
- Kioxia cd6 7,68TB (@pcie3x2) adds 7,27W of power draw to this system at idle
- old HSTG 4TB 7200RPM hdd have nearly identical idle power consumption to modern high capacity server HDD (20TB WD DC HC560)
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