The build I am considering..

[spacecabbie]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Xeon E3-1230 V6 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (Need to buy)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (<-- just an idea i am very open for suggestions here)
Motherboard: Supermicro - MBD-X11SSM-F Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (Need to buy)
Memory: Samsung - 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (Need to buy)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (From Old Nas)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - PRIME Titanium 650W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (already owned)
*edited to show current owned hardware.
*Just to avoid some confusion I already have the hardrives and power supply to avoid costs i cannot switch those for other options unfortunaly.
*Update thanks for all the help and advices i wil be ordering soon and wil post a build report here.

After quite some reading on this forum and other sources I have the above build in mind I have a couple of questions:

I was wondering could any one give me a indication roughly what this would use in power?
The memory is quite expensive what is the downside of going with a cheaper one?
any other advice even though i want it to be powerful to handle couple of streams of transcode i also want to minimize idle power consumption I read some where this set would use roughly about 55w.
I could live with that but am afraid this set would use more.
If I want to get lower power consumption what would be the best to change?
I realize it is either powerful or low power usage, I am looking to find a decent balance.

 

[Chris Moore]

You are not going to be overclocking a Xeon CPU in a Supermicro server board, so there is no need for the liquid cooler. Just wasting your money and it is another thing to break. Use the Intel stock cooler and if you have a problem with the sound level, get a Noctua cooler for $65 instead.

 

[Chris Moore]

I was wondering could any one give me a indication roughly what this would use in power ?

I have 12 drives and a older gen CPU, so I am sure you will use less than 150 watts. Figure each drive will draw 6 to 10 watts and that gen CPU should be around 65 watts, then there is some power consumption by the system board and memory. It isn't an exact number but a good guess.

The memory is quite expensive what is the downside of going with a cheaper one?

That is the proper kind of memory, you might save a little money using 2 x 8GB instead but it is a server, so don't cheap out on the important stuff.

any onther advice eventhough i want it to be powerfull to handle couple of streams of transcode i also want to minimalize idle power consumption i read some where this set would use roughly about 55w.

You might get the number that low if you spend some time tweaking the system so that it spins the drives down, but FreeNAS doesn't do that by default. You will absolutely use more than that when you are streaming video because all the drives will spin up and the CPU goes to max, unless it is able to direct stream.

If i do want to get lower power consumtion what would be the best to change ?
I realize its eighter powerfull or low power usage i am looking to find a decent balance.

Not sure I understand where you are going with that, but if you want a freight truck, you have to buy the fuel for it. You are not going to get freight truck hauling power with economy car fuel consumption.

 

[spacecabbie]

Got it I am a bit shocked by your first comment I am hoping that's under load.
That's the system will use power when transcoding or under other loads is not at all a issue. But i need the idle power consumption to be low at least below 70w.
Btw According to a dutch forum about power efficient servers the drives are rated to take 2,7w is this wrong ?

You are right that power costs power LOL :) but the processor is a beast i am perfectly happy to change it for less powerful if it would make a difference in power usage.
In other words i am totally not sure what trade's of to make power vs power consumption and looking for tips.

 

[Chris Moore]

But i need the idle power consumtiom to be low at least below 70w.

I don't understand why the power consumption needs to be that low. The drives you have selected may be lower power than the models I am familiar with. I didn't look them up specifically.
The thing about FreeNAS is that it does not spin the drives down at all to save any power unless you go through and enable those features which will also require moving the system swap because the default configuration is to create swap space on each drive in the array. The way to spin the system down and use minimum power is documented in several different threads on the site, and it can be done, it just takes doing. I can't comment on it though because I have not attempted to do that lately. I did do it before though and to me, it was an irritation because it caused significant lag waiting for the system to spin the drives up when you want data. I want it now, fast fast fast.

 

[spacecabbie]

I don't understand why the power consumption needs to be that low. The drives you have selected may be lower power than the models I am familiar with. I didn't look them up specifically.

My current setup pulls 115w Its Old.
I am not that wealthy and i need to reduce monthly power costs.

The thing about FreeNAS is that it does not spin the drives down at all to save any power unless you go through and enable those features which will also require moving the system swap because the default configuration is to create swap space on each drive in the array. The way to spin the system down and use minimum power is documented in several different threads on the site, and it can be done, it just takes doing. I can't comment on it though because I have not attempted to do that lately. I did do it before though and to me, it was an irritation because it caused significant lag waiting for the system to spin the drives up when you want data. I want it now, fast fast fast.

200% agree as i said its a trade off and this one does not seem to be worth it. Its good to know though thanks for this info.

Like it is possible to build a NAS with 30w consumption but i have to go with micro non server board etc that's not a trade off i want to make.
Lets just say what I want and what I can get are different things this is why I like to get as much as pointers as possible to I can decide eventually what to go with.

 

[Johnnie Black]

My server idles @ 65w, see sig for specs, your CPU is going to use more power but it should idle at about the same, and my server has the HBA plus the 10GbE NIC that use a significant amount of power.

IMO you could use a lower power PS, 650w will be far from efficient at low loads.

 

[Jailer]

But i need the idle power consumption to be low at least below 70w.

It will be with what you have picked out. A better question to ask yourself is what is your intended usage? That will be a better determining factor on CPU choice than it's power consumption. A new Xeon and Pentium of the same core architecture will have near the same power consumption at idle and that's likely where it will be most of the time for the average home user.

 

[spacecabbie]

My server idles @ 65w, see sig for specs, your CPU is going to use more power but it should idle at about the same, and my server has the HBA plus the 10GbE NIC that use a significant amount of power.

IMO you could use a lower power PS, 650w will be far from efficient at low loads.

Coolness that is good to hear. Under load the power req go out of the window :) but then I want power.

 

[spacecabbie]

It will be with what you have picked out. A better question to ask yourself is what is your intended usage? That will be a better determining factor on CPU choice than it's power consumption. A new Xeon and Pentium of the same core architecture will have near the same power consumption at idle and that's likely where it will be most of the time for the average home user.

Yes this is why I have this processor it was recommended to me as one of the best for plex transcoding witch is the main use but this is usually in the evenings for a hour or 5 max the rest it will be idle.

 

[Inxsible]

You say you are not wealthy and you need to bring down power consumption. Yet you are building a machine worth almost $1400. That does not compute.

You'd be better served by either using used parts off ebay or whatever. I use a Pentium G3240 (53W) with 6 drives in a Node 304 box and Tyan S5533 board. I use the box as my media server (using plex), transmission, couchpotato and I have never had a problem.

Something tells me that you are going with this build because it was simply provided to you as "the best" and you haven't really chosen each of the components based on what you intend to do with the machine. Maybe you should revisit your choices.

 

[ChriZ]

You could also consider using less drives, but larger ones.
Less heat, less power consumption, less cost (and less usable space but not much less)
Also with that configuration you could save additional money by getting a 450w PSU.
Then ditch the liquid cooler to save some more money.
And finally you can use the money you saved to get another 16GB stick of RAM if/when you need it.
Re power consumption I have an older system with a 1230v3, 32GB RAM, a Perc RAID controller and 5 disks (One SSD and 4 WD Blacks 2.5"). It runs ESXi, has 4 - light- VMs running 24/7 and idles at about 70W so you should be fine in this regard.

 

[Chris Moore]

You could also consider using less drives, but larger ones.
Less heat, less power consumption, less cost (and less usable space but not much less)
Also with that configuration you could save additional money by getting a 450w PSU.
Then ditch the liquid cooler to save some more money.
And finally you can use the money you saved to get another 16GB stick of RAM if/when you need it.
Re power consumption I have an older system with a 1230v3, 32GB RAM, a Perc RAID controller and 5 disks (One SSD and 4 WD Blacks 2.5"). It runs ESXi, has 4 - light- VMs running 24/7 and idles at about 70W so you should be fine in this regard.

Interesting advice, a 2.5 inch drive uses significantly less power than a 3.5 inch drive, which is part of the reason why they're used in laptops. If you really want to go with a low power system you could build it with all 2.5 inch drives.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

It's a good mobo/CPU/ram choice for a medium sized plex system. Any bigger and you need to step up to E5s

Water cooler is overkill for a non-overclocked CPU I think. And I have a couple of h110is. They're good for 200W TDPs.

8 3TB drives. Are you sure that's where the bang for buck is? Taking into account port cost? Ie it's costing say 600$ to build the box before populating, so that's 75$ / drive. When you factor that into the $/TB, you might find larger drives 4+ are cheaper.

 

[spacecabbie]

You could also consider using less drives, but larger ones.
Less heat, less power consumption, less cost (and less usable space but not much less)
Also with that configuration you could save additional money by getting a 450w PSU.
Then ditch the liquid cooler to save some more money.

You are absolutley right but the drives are from my current setup the hardware listed is mainly an example of what it will be not everything on there needs to be bought.
This definitely a good suggestion this on my wish list for the next upgrade.
The PSU I won so I got that already i am mainly just buying the Mobo/CPU/MEM/
I'll edit the original post to take away that confusion.

Then ditch the liquid cooler to save some more money.
And finally you can use the money you saved to get another 16GB stick of RAM if/when you need it.

Again the Cooler was an example. Although i am open for suggestions here as i have yet to select one.

Re power consumption I have an older system with a 1230v3, 32GB RAM, a Perc RAID controller and 5 disks (One SSD and 4 WD Blacks 2.5"). It runs ESXi, has 4 - light- VMs running 24/7 and idles at about 70W so you should be fine in this regard.

THIS sets my mind at ease :) 70w would quite nice.

 

[Stux]

Again the Cooler was an example. Although i am open for suggestions here as i have yet to select one.
.

If the CPU comes with a cooler, then use that, unless it turns out to be unpleasantly noisy, or inadequate. If either of those, I would recommend a suitable Noctua. Can't go wrong with Noctua.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Corsair H110i's, but I use those when I'm 25-30% overclocking 8+ core i7s. No overclocking Xeon, ergo, no need for a water cooler :)

 

[ChriZ]

Interesting advice, a 2.5 inch drive uses significantly less power than a 3.5 inch drive, which is part of the reason why they're used in laptops. If you really want to go with a low power system you could build it with all 2.5 inch drives.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

Well, TBH, I was not advising to go for 2.5" drives. That particular system of mine is just a home server and I didn't need much space. Had 4 1TB 2.5" Blacks in hand when I built it and went for a Raid10 using them.
Nevertheless it is true that 2.5" drives consume less power. The drawback is that they are not available in large capacities (and if they are, they are much more expensive I believe).

Later edit: I just realized that the OP edited the first post and noted that drives and PSU are already purchased, so my advice is not viable any more.
The only part of the advice that is still valid, like everyone else in this thread mentioned, is that the purchasing of the liquid cooler would be wasted money

 

[Chris Moore]

CPU: Intel - Xeon E3-1230 V6 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (Need to buy)
Motherboard: Supermicro - MBD-X11SSM-F Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (Need to buy)
Memory: Samsung - 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (Need to buy)

That is all you need to buy. Not too bad. What is your old gear? Are you interested in looking at used gear to save money? Some really great prices can be had on eBay on gear that has plenty of capability.

 

[spacecabbie]

That is all you need to buy. Not too bad. What is your old gear? Are you interested in looking at used gear to save money? Some really great prices can be had on eBay on gear that has plenty of capability.

A TS-869 Pro with a Intel-Nuc as media server. no I shall go with new since the budget allows for it and then at least I have warranties and a mind at ease.

 

[Chris Moore]

Well, TBH, I was not advising to go for 2.5" drives. That particular system of mine is just a home server and I didn't need much space. Had 4 1TB 2.5" Blacks in hand when I built it and went for a Raid10 using them.
Nevertheless it is true that 2.5" drives consume less power. The drawback is that they are not available in large capacities (and if they are, they are much more expensive I believe).

Later edit: I just realized that the OP edited the first post and noted that drives and PSU are already purchased, so my advice is not viable any more.
The only part of the advice that is still valid, like everyone else in this thread mentioned, is that the purchasing of the liquid cooler would be wasted money

These 2.5 inch drives are 15mm thick, so they might not fit in every laptop, but they should fit in a NAS just fine and I bet they use less power than a regular 3.5 inch drive. Have a look: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA30R5HW9894
They even have a 5TB model: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822179104