energy saving with new cpu

[Skippy4302]

Hi,

I am currently running Truenas on an old HP system with an Athlon II X2 250 CPU installed, however, my idle power usage is ~60 Watt, which I think is a lot. One of the reasons I wanted to set up a Truenas server in the first place was to use Nextcloud for photo storage without having to pay Google in the future, however at 60 Watt idle power and €0.23/kWh running the server is going to cost me more than 2 TB cloud storage from Google. Of course there are other benefits to owning a Truenas server (I am particularly enjoying the Plex plugin I got set up), but it just seems a bit wasteful to have this system on all the time.

Possible solution
I've tried reducing the power usage by enabling APM Level 128, this hasn't really made a difference and I've seen multiple users reporting the same so no surprise there.
The main power draw probably comes from the hard drives, they are old (2013) and spin at 7200 rpm, and the CPU, which is a Dual Core but with a TDP of 65 Watt. Since the APM setting did not affect the power draw much and I'm not looking to replace my hard drives as the server is more of a hobby project than something I want to invest money in (as of right now at least), I've looked at replacing the CPU. One I found very promising is the AMD Athlon II X4 620e, however, I have not been able to find it anywhere cheaply, whereas the Athlon II X4 610e can be bought from AliExpress for around 8 USD, but is a fair bit less powerful. On the bright side; the 610e has a TDP of 45 Watt and should at least theoretically reduce my idle power usage by quite a bit.

Possible drawback
Though the Athlon II X4 610e seems like a good option I am a bit worried that my performance might suffer a bit. I would like the X4 to be a bit better at video encoding so I can my watch movies when I'm not on my home network. I think it should be better because it's a 4 core CPU and it scores better in PassMark, but Plex also states on their website that "While overall processor performance (i.e. total PassMark score) is important, so is single-thread performance. Keep this in mind when comparing different processors.". And the single-thread performance on the X2 is actually a bit better. As for MineOS I don't know what's more important, core count or clock speed, maybe someone who knows this could shed some light.


Any response would be greatly appreciated.

- Jonathan


System specs

• 64-bit
• 8 GB non-ECC memory
• 500 GB Hitachi 2.5" HDD 7200 rpm (boot drive)
• 2x 1 TB Samsung 3.5" HDD 7200 rpm (mirror)
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 (3.00 GHz)

Usage

• Plex media server
• Nextcloud
• Probably MineOS and Homebridge in the future.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I would love to have that prices for electricity!

The first thing I would recommend is to check how much power the current system consumes without disks. Without that it will be difficult to judge what you gain from changing the CPU. What power consumption are you aiming for?

 

[Skippy4302]

I would love to have that prices for electricity!

The first thing I would recommend is to check how much power the current system consumes without disks. Without that it will be difficult to judge what you gain from changing the CPU. What power consumption are you aiming for?

Great suggestion! Thanks! Will try that now.
I would like to bring idle power consumption down to 30-40 Watt. Ideally lower but that’s probably not realistic.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I would love to have that prices for electricity!

I'm kind of terrified to ask how much you pay if you consider €0.23/kWh as "cheap"

 

[NugentS]

I am currently paying an average of about £0.065 per kWh in the UK. Its gonna go up in April to about £0.08 I suspect.

Mind you I have spent thousands putting batteries into the house so I can store very cheap offpeak electricity and use it during the day

 

[JohnK]

Great suggestion! Thanks! Will try that now.
I would like to bring idle power consumption down to 30-40 Watt. Ideally lower but that’s probably not realistic.

so, I absolutely love having NextCloud for photo storage. All photos on my Iphone get immediately uploaded and removed when I am on WIFI. No with that said, I would not trust my photos with your setup and probably would stick with Google Storage.

As far as low power consumption CPUs, I used an Atom for the longest time for my backup server.
Supermicro Atom

 

[Constantin]

Depends on location. Islands can have in excess of 0.50 $/kWh because they frequently rely on fuel oil gensets. This is why some efficiency features are first to be adopted by such locales, the payback is greatest there.

Boston is at around $0.25/kWh once you factor in T&D.

As for the OP, I'd also look into adopting He-filled drives once your current set dies since He-filled drives consume about 2W less, IIRC, than their air-filled cousins. See farmerpling2's excellent resource on this.

 

[Skippy4302]

Update:

I stripped everything I could from the PC, all but one ram stick, the storage drives, external devices and the main system fan.
With everything installed I averaged 68.07 W on startup, and 55.67 W on idle. This went down to 53.49 W and 43.27 W respectively so it's clear that the CPU is responsible for most of the power usage.
I found a comparison between the X2 250 and X4 610e, where a system with the X4 installed would consume an average of 16.25 W less. This leads me to believe that it wouldn't be unrealistic if my power consumption dropped down to 40-45 W (on idle) with everything installed. This is still a fair bit but with a 10 W power reduction, this would mean that I earn back the CPU cost in under 5 months. Assuming the system would be running full-time in both scenarios.

I think maybe I'll just buy the CPU and see if it works out, if Plex or MineOS performance is somehow much worse I'll just have to take that €7.80 loss. However, I doubt that it will be worse. Any final thoughts on this last matter would be appreciated though.

Thanks for all the response so far!

- Jonathan

 

[Skippy4302]

so, I absolutely love having NextCloud for photo storage. All photos on my Iphone get immediately uploaded and removed when I am on WIFI. No with that said, I would not trust my photos with your setup and probably would stick with Google Storage.

As far as low power consumption CPUs, I used an Atom for the longest time for my backup server.
Supermicro Atom

Hi,

Thanks for the reply!
Could you elaborate on why you wouldn't trust photo storage on my setup? Is it a security issue or is there a high chance of HDD failure?

As for mentioning the Atom, I'll definitely look into this a bit, wonder how much it can do and support being that low power. Also, I'll investigate pricing before making a decision.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I'm kind of terrified to ask how much you pay if you consider €0.23/kWh as "cheap"

It's €0.32/kWh and we recently had cases in Germany, although that seems to be stopped now, where people who's supplier went out of business were charged in excess of €0.90/kWh (although usually only for a couple of weeks).

 

[JohnK]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply!
Could you elaborate on why you wouldn't trust photo storage on my setup? Is it a security issue or is there a high chance of HDD failure?

As for mentioning the Atom, I'll definitely look into this a bit, wonder how much it can do and support being that low power. Also, I'll investigate pricing before making a decision.

1. Shortly yes. I had two of those 1TB Samsung drives and threw them away years ago after both failed around the same time. There is also a lot you can read here about supported hardware and what is not supported. Things like intel nics, ECC ram, more ram, etc. With Google you would get enterprise quality storage and is probably cheaper when you don't need a lot.
Then there is also the problem if you need more than 1TB. Not to mention that you don't really want to use all your space etc. Lots written about that.
2. I didn't use the Atom for transcoding, but it ran fine with Plex. Personally Ive also use my backup server with Plex. Worked fine.