Idle power savings from E5 1620 v2 to E3 1230 v3?

[baratta930]

Hi all,

Being new to FreeNAS I built up a test system to play before switching over. I used a cheap Chinese X79 motherboard (ended up paying $40 for it!) along with an E5 1620 v2 and 32GB of UDIMM ECC memory I already had. I'm comfortable enough to switch over from my Synology toaster to a new setup but have two concerns with the current setup:

(1) Realtek nic does ≈900mbits/s for inbound traffic (≈100MB/s) but not so great for outbound @ ≈700mbits/s (≈80MB/s). So great writes but not so great reads (my Synology 416j beats it for large reads by 20+ MB/s)
(2) Idle power consumption isn't the best (≈70-75watts for base setup with powerd on, C2 cpu state set and no drives).

For (1) I can fix this with an Intel nic but apart from a couple of desktops in the house everyone is on wireless so it's not a huge deal. Stability long term worries me but no far it seems fine.

For (2) I thought about buying a used Supermicro x10slm + E3 1230 v3 setup. My memory is compatible and I'm hoping it will reduce idle power usage.

I can't find a consistent answer about people's x10 based setups and their idle power consumption. Some guys post about having ≈25 watts other post about 100watts. The part alone is supposed to idle at ≈20 watts and Haswell integrated more of the board components into the CPU package so it *should* beat an Ivy Bridge E5 by a lot?

40-50 watts saved is about $4-5/mo (won't break the bank) but heat generation is a pain to deal with as my networking gear is in a closet. It will heat up the closet a little too much for my liking (I put a 40watt bulb in there for 24 hours and it made a huge difference in the warmth of the closet!)

Anyone have any real results to share?

Thanks,

Berardino

P.S. if the idle power of x10 isn't that great I may just go with x9scm and save some $

 

[Ericloewe]

CPU alone is going to be a small difference, but the LGA1150 platform is going to be noticeably lower power.

 

[Chris Moore]

What kind of airflow do you have in the closet?
A quantity of hard drives will generate more heat than the CPU and keeping the hard drives below 40c is more difficult than keeping the CPU below 80c.

 

[tvsjr]

IMO, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And, if your closet is configured such that 40 watts (that's 136 BTU/hr.) is enough to dramatically alter the temperature, then your thermal management solution needs work.

 

[Chris Moore]

If you want to stay with something that will use your existing RAM, you could buy a system board and CPU like the one in my signature. The board goes for about $70 and the CPU about $95. It is only one generation older (LGA 1155) than what you were looking at and there are no changes that are significant to FreeNAS from the generation board you are looking at to the one I have. Works fine for a storage server and trans-codes well enough I have done one 1080 stream and 2 720 streams all at the same time with room to spare. I have also re-silvered a drive while simultaneously watching a 4k stream. Plenty of horse power to do the job there.
CPU:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon...-8MB-Cache-LGA1155-CPU-Processor/132439151249
System Board:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/TESTED-Sup...w-E97379-001-Heatsink-I-O-Shield/232430611431

PS: With 16 drives installed, doing a trans-code in Plex, it only draws about 150 watts. I don't make any effort to reduce the power

 

[baratta930]

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

The current closet is literally a closet (i.e. with jackets and stuff hanging in it :)). The door has slanted slats on it so there is some air exchange and it's tall enough (it's under a staircase so about 12' tall inside) that the modem, router and current Synology units haven't been an issue. I've come to terms that I won't be putting this new box in there so heat buildup isn't an issue anymore.

I realized tonight that using my re-flashed M1015 means that I can't spin down the drives to save power, so the CPU idle power is less of an issue as I'll be idling at over 30w just because of the drives. The case is a Define Mini, HDD temps haven't been a problem during testing but I'll keep an eye on it after I put the full 6 drives in. I may just move it all to my Define R5 and make the mini my desktop case again or maybe just get a 4u case, which of course will require a rack :)

Chris, the x9scm + e3 1230 v2 you linked to was my original plan (the board you linked to is in my watch list right now :)) Then I read that the v3 chips idle over 10 watts lower so started considering that. In the grand scheme of things 10watts isn't much (about $11/year) and isn't worth the almost $100 premium of an x10 + e3 1230 v3 over an x9 + e3 1230 v2.

Thanks all,

Off to eBay :)

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

The current closet is literally a closet (i.e. with jackets and stuff hanging in it :)). The door has slanted slats on it so there is some air exchange and it's tall enough (it's under a staircase so about 12' tall inside) that the modem, router and current Synology units haven't been an issue. I've come to terms that I won't be putting this new box in there so heat buildup isn't an issue anymore.

I realized tonight that using my re-flashed M1015 means that I can't spin down the drives to save power, so the CPU idle power is less of an issue as I'll be idling at over 30w just because of the drives. The case is a Define Mini, HDD temps haven't been a problem during testing but I'll keep an eye on it after I put the full 6 drives in. I may just move it all to my Define R5 and make the mini my desktop case again or maybe just get a 4u case, which of course will require a rack :)

Chris, the x9scm + e3 1230 v2 you linked to was my original plan (the board you linked to is in my watch list right now :)) Then I read that the v3 chips idle over 10 watts lower so started considering that. In the grand scheme of things 10watts isn't much (about $11/year) and isn't worth the almost $100 premium of an x10 + e3 1230 v3 over an x9 + e3 1230 v2.

Thanks all,

Off to eBay :)

You do not want to spin down your drives. It's adds excessive wear and tear to your drives and will kill them faster. I suspect buying new drives will cost you more than the power savings.

 

[baratta930]

Hi SweetAndLow,

I know the risks but I've been doing it for years without issue (knock wood). I have some cheap 2TB seagate drives with over 47000 hours on them and 55000+ load cycles. I even have some 3tb ST3000DM001 drives (the high failure rate ones) that have over 28000 hours that have spindown setup since installed (I set it to 30 minutes of inactivity right now but was more aggressive before).

They will fail early, no doubt and will most likely fail all of a sudden (can't spin back up) but I have good backups (and backups of backups) so in the past was willing to take the risk in order to have the system go idle most of the night without having to shutdown overnight. My thought was if I was getting 4-5 years out of a $80 drive it was a good deal. So far that has been true ...

Since spindown doesn't work with my HBA and Freenas it's a moot point now :)

Thanks again,

Berardino