How to "CPU State", such as C2 or C3?

[CAlbertson]

I was getting just horrible performance using an Intel D525 Atom moterboard because of the RealTek NIC. I fixed that problem by swapping in a new motherboard with Core 2 Quad CPU. The problem is the kill-o-watt metro never reads below 100W. I'd like to power down there of the four core in idle mode.

Question how do I get FreeNAS to let some of the core go into C3 or C3 states (basically power down or under clock)

Here is what I'm using. The specs on the Q6600 say it can do some power conservation modes but how to get FreeNAS/BSD to.
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

BTW is there an easy way to know if the disk is actually spinning down. I think it might be, I see about a 5W drop.

 

[cyberjock]

You change the C-states by using the powerd(enabled by a checkbox in the FreeNAS GUI). I can guarantee you that you won't save an appreciable amount of power with a Q6600 as it was Intel's first quad core CPU and was built by gluing together 2 dual cores. It wasn't until the i3/5/7 that Intel started experimenting with shutting down cores almost completely to save power and to allow for turbo operations(overclock) of single core workloads when TDP wasn't very high for the CPU overall.

 

[jgreco]

A 5W drop is what I'd expect to see from a single disk spinning down.

 

[CAlbertson]

.... It wasn't until the i3/5/7 that Intel started experimenting with shutting down cores almost completely to save power....

That is what I was beginning to suspect. I got the Q6600 as salvage. I think this is why people are tossing these out. 100W run 24x7 means 72 KWH per month.

 

[cyberjock]

Don't expect much less with the i7 series. Intel went with the i series as each 1% increase in power consumption lead to an increase of more than 1% in performance. The i3s are good chips for FreeNAS from my experience. The first gen i3 I have (530) can saturate 2 Gb LAN ports simultaneously.