Stankyjawnz

Thanks for your reply. The fact that you report your cores could go so low is promising. I had similar results with the powertop --auto-tune script, I didn't find it that useful on its own, and it actually kept causing the ethernet controller to hang. I did find the tool itself to be fairly useful just to see what it reports as "bad" to see if there were more things to turn off in bios, etc.

I had a question for you, there are very few people who post builds online using a 9500 HBA. It is fairly well known the older LSI chipsets do not allow systems to achieve low idle power consumption because they prevent the cpu from entering lower power c-states. It seems like with the 9500 hba broadcom made more of an attempt to reduce power. Have you ever looked into what cpu c-states your server reaches with powertop? I actually have a very low performance needs (spinning rust) however there could be break even in multiple years if the 9500 can allow the system to idle well.