Stand by, sleep or just power down to save $$$

[mrME]

Ok just got everything up and running... got good transfer rates 50-65 MB/sec , figured out to WOL and almost got Rsync working. Now here is my question.. Im trying to tweak the power down as much as possible. Using a Kill-a-Watt metter I got this thing to idle at 17 watts (loaded it with Win 7 before freenas) but when I use FreeNAS it will only go as low as 22 -24 watts when idle. Here is what I have done so far .....set HDD Standby for 120, APM at 128, I enable then disabled SMART(same either way power wise) and just left Acoustic lvl disabled. What else can I do to try an cut the idle power down.

Oh and this is just storage for an HTPC and a weekly backup of my main PC.

specs.....
ASROCK E350M1 {CPU fan lvl 1 in BIOS}
Pareema 4GB (2 x 2GB)
Intel EXPI9301CTBLK NIC
4 - WD20EARS 2TB HDD
picoPSU-150-XT PowerSupply
1 - Noctua NF-R8-1800 {lvl 1 manual speed control in BIOS}

 

[rallysquirrel]

What are you getting when FN is in use. I'm getting around 30W up to 40W using Kill-a-Watt using similar specs and have HDD standby at 5min. Didn't actually check idle yet.

 

[mrME]

It stays pretty much right at 34-36 W when in use. So that not bad compared to my other PC's which are 119 and 135W.

 

[kbarb]

@mrME :
Nice job on the build there. I'm more or less doing the same thing, partly for the same low power server reason.

So a couple quick questions . . .

For the WOL was there some tweak you did to Freenas to get it working ? I don't remember that being in the GUI - I think it's on the roadmap though.

Also, how is the picoPSU-150-XT working out ? I was thinking of using that one too.

Thanks,

Kent

 

[kbarb]

Oh, and about the WOL - I know how to initiate the magic packets and make the bios changes - I was just wondering what's necessary to do with Freenas. I couldn't quite dig that up in the forums.

-Kent

 

[Visseroth]

I believe all you need to do is turn WOL on in the BIOS to get it to wake the system up but if you really wanted to save power you could configure the system via cron jobs to shutdown at a certain time on certain days and the if your BIOS supports it (Which some do some don't) then configure a wake up or turn on time in the BIOS then your machine would shut off each nite at a scheduled time and turn on each day at a scheduled time there by eliminating many hours per day of unnecessary run time.

 

[mrME]

Ya all you have to do is turn on the WOL in the BIOS ...but ASROCK calls it "power on PCI" or something like that. I could never really get it working correctly with the on board Realtek NIC so thats why I got the Intel NIC. Ya what Visseroth said about cron jobs...just set one up for off time and your gonna have to use a Magic Packet program on your Windows or whatever OS machine to wake it. I used a program called EMCO wakeonlan to get the MAC id. As for the Pico PSU....that little thing is kick a$$..I just added a 5th 1 TB 2.5" drive via the Esata port and that little thing just works. The only complaint I have with it is that the power brick does run a little warm. .