Hi,
I have just built my first Unraid server and I am trying to make it as power efficient as I can given my current hardware.
This was basically a 0 cost build as I already had everything, I just bought a PSU so I can't pretend much, but I am sure it can consume less looking at stats.
My build it is as follow:
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K CPU
MOBO: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. MAXIMUS VI EXTREME , Version Rev 1.xx
RAM: 16(4x4) GiB DDR3
PSU: SF Series™ SF600 — 600 Watt 80 PLUS® Platinum
Storage:
4 x WDC_WD3000FYYZ
2 x WDC_WD20EZRX
(soon I will add 2 SATA SSD in RAID1 for cache)
USB: SanDisk Cruzer_Force
For the time being, I have not absolutely nothing connected as I wanted to minimized the search area for stuff that draw power, so:
Nothing plugged on to the USB (except the boot stick, obviously)
No PCI cards
Using only iGPU
All ports on the case are not connected
Only 2 FANs in use
Now, getting on my report, the power consumption I have observed:
While it is in use/under load: Around 100W
While in idle, with all the Disk spinned down and nothing on the server running (like VM, Docks, etc..): 60W
While sure, they are not astronomically high numbers, I know it can do better, at least while in Idle.
For now, I have tried adjusting all the settings I thought could do something in the BIOS. I then installed "powertop" on the server to watch for C states. But if you look at the pictures I have attached, the server only reach the C2 state.
Following this guide, I have taken a look at the Tunables, and so a bunch of "Bad" stuff it can be optimized (take a look at the attachment), but I have no clue on what it is what and how something can affect stuff.
The guide that I have linked showed that there is an auto-tune command, but can have drawbacks, especially for ASM Sata controller, which I am pretty sure I have. I saw there are lot of steps and manual things to do, but I would like some more guide on how to do stuff as I am pretty scared of fuck things up.
Any help it is welcome, thanks.
EDIT 1: Looking at CPU Frequency, while in idle, many threads still go for 3.5GHz and only few stay at 900MHz. It seems like there are some processes going on.
EDIT 2: I have tried to follow the guide as it seems my ASM1062 controller should support power management. For the time being, I just given the command on console and not saved to file.
The situation it is improved quite a lot. Now with disks spinned up (but idle) the server draw around 60-70W, while on Idle with all disks spinned down, it went as low as 35W. Good.
But the C state it keeps remaining on C2 and now I really don't get it (look at the picture).
All the Tunables are now in the "Good" state, except the "VM writeback timeout" (Picture uploaded).
The CPU freq now correctly stay as low as 800 MHz (Picture uploaded).
While checking this, the server as no video output connected and I was using SSH connection from my computer with no Web GUI open and all disks spinned down.
What am I missing?