Hardware Recommendations for Low Power Server (TrueNAS + Proxmox)

[thomas-hn]

Hello,

in my current homelab a Proxmox system runs 7 VMs and 4 LXCs on an Intel Core i5-4690S @ 3.20 GHz with a load of around 40% over all 4 cores.
My plan is to get a new server which runs TrueNAS and Proxmox and the overall power consumption should be at a maximum of around 100 Watt, maybe, up to a maximum of 140 Watt. It is very important to me to not shoot over the maximum power requirements, because here in Germany to electricity is way too expensive.
For the hardware I really want to have ECC memory and for the CPU my preference is some kind of Xeon. Furthermore, the mainboard shall definitely be a model from Supermicro.

Do you have any recommendations especially about possible CPUs? Because of the virtualization I think it should have at least 8 cores, maybe with hyperthreading 16.
Do we find a CPU that is not too old, because newer CPUs usually are more efficient.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Thomas

 

[asap2go]

Hello,

in my current homelab a Proxmox system runs 7 VMs and 4 LXCs on an Intel Core i5-4690S @ 3.20 GHz with a load of around 40% over all 4 cores.
My plan is to get a new server which runs TrueNAS and Proxmox and the overall power consumption should be at a maximum of around 100 Watt, maybe, up to a maximum of 140 Watt. It is very important to me to not shoot over the maximum power requirements, because here in Germany to electricity is way too expensive.
For the hardware I really want to have ECC memory and for the CPU my preference is some kind of Xeon. Furthermore, the mainboard shall definitely be a model from Supermicro.

Do you have any recommendations especially about possible CPUs? Because of the virtualization I think it should have at least 8 cores, maybe with hyperthreading 16.
Do we find a CPU that is not too old, because newer CPUs usually are more efficient.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Thomas

How many drives and fans do you have and how much RAM are you planning to use? All of these have a significant impact on your remaining power budget.

 

[Dopamin3]

An alternative to Intel/Supermicro...

If you can live with a max of 128GB RAM, tossing in my recommendation for AMD AM4. Basically all motherboards (except for MSI) support unbuffered DDR4 ECC on AM4 CPUs (all AM4 CPUs support ECC except ones with iGPUs unless they are "Pro" models). You can consider something like a Pro 5750GE (35W, 8c / 16th, Zen 3 architecture, iGPU support). Alternatively most motherboards allow setting an "Eco" mode which runs the CPU at a significantly lower wattage. This would open you up to using a less expensive 5800X or 3700X or whatever to still get 16 threads with no iGPU. Zen 3 on Ryzen 5xxx is impressive even at lower frequencies, and Zen 2 on Ryzen 3xxx isn't bad either.

Asrock Rack has proper server boards such as the X470D4U(-2T) and B550D4U(-2T) which have a dedicated BMC / IPMI for management. And then you can have basic video output without needing a separate GPU or needing a CPU that has integrated graphics as well as proper IPMI management.

Staying on Intel/Supermicro I think you could evaluate some of their Xeon D offerings.

How many drives and fans do you have and how much RAM are you planning to use? All of these have a significant impact on your remaining power budget.

This is a good point too. You can pick the lowest wattage CPU but the rest of the system can add power, making that 100W budget difficult to attain.

 

[thomas-hn]

How many drives and fans do you have and how much RAM are you planning to use? All of these have a significant impact on your remaining power budget.

Thanks for the hint, I forgot to mention in my initial post. It is planned to have 6 HDDs and 2 SSDs, plus 3-4 fans. Roughly estimated this should bring in ~50 Watt.

 

[asap2go]

Examples for some Exos drives:
HDD idle 5W
HDD regular use 10W
6 HDDs total: 30-60W

120mm fan 4-6W
3-4 fans total: 12-24W

2 SSDs: 6-14W

Total wattage for storage + fans: 48-98W

Add 128GB RAM with 8W idle and 16W while burst refresh and you are up to 56W-114W.

Add some watts for networking, 5% efficiency losses of the power supply and another few watts for your motherboard chipset.

Less than 100W will probably be hard to achieve.