I’ve built a new home server to replace my laptop and after setting it up for the first time it drew about 25watts of power from the wall when idle, which was very respectable. After that I got some networking issues in Windows (NIC wouldn’t start). Trying to fix this I firstly updated the bios and than windows itself (didn’t install/change much). Now it idles at 60/50 watts? I’ve gone over most bios settings to check since everything was reverted back to default but I’m pretty sure nothing changed. HWmonitor reports 880mhz when Idle and 2/3 watss consumption so it must the something in the motherboard.
What have I done so far?
Enabled all the Intel power saving features in BIOS and enabled fan stop on all fans (including CPU) when CPU is under 45degrees.
Made a custom Windows energy scheme with minimum cpu usage at 5% and HDD stop after 20 minutes, all other are balanced plan default.
Minimized what the amount of programs running (Emby and Parsec is all)
I’ve reinstalled Windows, cleared CMOS everything, It’s driving me nuts. Can’t flash old bios back due to security risk so Gigabyte stopped support. What are settings I should really check that can have a big influence? In CPU settings everything related to lower power consumption like speedstep and RtH are enabled. Furthermore I’ve disbled the mobo LED, disabled audio chip, enabled platform power management and disabled any enchanced cpu power stuff. Dummy loading is also disabled.
I was so happy how it was at first, it performed to spec when stressed and afterwards dropped down to 23watts idle and now it consumes much more, not ideal when I want to run it nearly 24/7.
unplug from the wall (unplug the power-meter as well)
discharge caps - push power button
plug in
switch on
measure idle power
I have a similar issue with my new home server and I am pretty sure there is nothing wrong with the PC itself.
Not 100% sure but It’s seems like it’s just the power meter doing a shitty job.
Just restarting many times is enough to make the power meter read almost 2x power draw sometimes. (And no, the measured power factor isn’t changing - so that’s not it)
At first I also thought a bios config I toyed with was the issue but it was just a coincidence.
TL;DR:
It might be just your meter. Try re-plugging many times to check if the power consumption really stays higher.
regers to an 11400, but same chipset, same process, you may have the same settings to tweak in the bios …
25W at idle with two HDDs and one NVMe looks on the low side, the HDDs alone are probably pulling 8W, the NVE another 3 … but from 25 to 65 it is really a big jump …
Could you try running hwinfo (the same tool in the reddit) and post results? At least we would be able to validate your kill-a-watt readings …
The hard drives are set to stop spinning after a few minutes, always measured when they were on standby. Taking in the low reported CPU power draw + drives in standby + ram I can’t think what component is pulling the extra power. Even the fans are stopped at this state (Although CPU fan is on, I doubt if I should enable fan stop on that one since its a stock cooler.)
Well, 2W for the proc package is really low … and the kill-a-watt was reading 60-ish?
I would try disconnecting everything (USB/non boot drives, network) and measure … then add one component at a time to see if it makes any difference …
