That is with C-States and Asus energy saving stuff disabled and on stock clocks.
Both systems have the same networking cards plugged in.
The new one also has a VGA card of course.
Maxing out the download increases consumption by about 3-5W on both systems.
CPU usage on both is practically zero.
So now I have a router that is not terribly less efficient than the older system.
And if I need more performance it can ramp up a lot.
I can live with this.
Small update: I have done two minor changes and closed off the build, it is now officially done.
First I switched out the old craptastic corsair 60GB SSD for my Intel DC S3510.
Secondly the GPU I used to install the OS did not come with a low profile PCI bracket. So I removed the card from the system and while it is acoustically complaining on boot, it starts up fine and runs headless without any issue.
Here is the full spec list.
AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU
2 x 4GB SK-Hynix ECC DDR4 2133 memory
Asus Prime A320M-K motherboard
Intel DC S3510 SATA SSD
Draytek VigorNIC132 PCIe DSL modem/router
Intel Pro 1000 PT dual port gigabit NIC
Seasonic SS-350 ES PSU with Noctua NF-A8 ULN mod
Noctua NH-L9a AM4 low profile CPU cooler
2x Noctua NF-A6 60mm PWM fans
Inter-Tech 2U 2098-SK rack case
5.25" hot-swap bay for one 3.5" drive
Icy Dock EZConvert Pro 3.5" cage for one 2.5" drive
The two networking cards alone plus 4 fans are drawing quite a bit of those 35ish watts. Then there is the chipset, SSD, two sticks of memory and a PSU at maybe close to 85% efficiency at it’s current load. Knocking down at most 2 or 3 watts doesn’t make a huge difference at this point.
The other thing is: whenever I had stability problems in the past, easily half the time it was because poorly implemented energy saving stuff.
This is a router, it just needs to work, it is running on pretty low power already…
even in western australia where i’m paying i think 19c per KW/h, even the full 34 watts is what… $2.16 per month… shaving 3 watts would save me perhaps 21c per month.
Is that worth potential instability? I’d say no…
Never mind my wasted time tweaking for it. My free time, i value at far, far more than the hourly rate of 21c/month over the number of hours i’d spend tweaking it.
Yeah, so 4W for the memory, let’s say 1W per fan and since it is mostly idle maybe 1W for the SSD, the Vigor NIC is 6W TDP and that one is running constantly, same goes for the Intel NIC but only one port at the moment so maybe 3W(?) and the chipset is getting warm as well …
And suddenly we are already at 20W without counting for efficiency of a 80+ bronze PSU at extremely low load.
Even the Intel E3 1220L v3 with it’s 13W max TDP could not push it much lower.
