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)