Very High Powerconsumption


derWinky

Recommended Posts

Hello,

I built an unraid Home-Server for myself and it´s running fine mostly. The only thing that really bothers me is the extremely high powerconsumption.

 

My Config:
MoBo: X99 MSI Gaming Pro Carbon
CPU: Intel i7 6900K (No OC, set to defautlt settings of the Motherboard)
GPU: Nvidia GT710 (6900k has no iGPU, PC won´t start without a GPU)
PSU: Corsair RMi 750W
Case: Fractal 7XL
Cooler: Alpenföhn Brocken 3
RAM: 4x 8GB 2400MHz
HDDs: 2x Parity 3TB and about 10 or 11 drives with a mix of 3 and 2TB adding up to 27TB of total storage
SSD: 1TB Corsair MP510 Cache
HBA: Dell PERC H310 RAID Controller
NIC: Intel X550-T2 2x10G
 

Hope I didnt forget anything important. I will provide screenshots when I get home today.

The Server is a mix of parts I specifically bought new and stuff I got for free or reaaaaaly cheap.
The HDDs were all for free, old drives from our companys server. Thats why it´s a bunch of low capacity drives instead of like 3 16TB drives.
I started out with an i7 4790 and 32GB of RAM which were also for free and I just had to get a z97Board for it. 
I later got an offer from a friend of mine to buy his set of x99 board, 6900K and 32GB RAM for just 250€ so I sold the old i7 4790 set and bought the 6900K set and put that in my server.

A few months ago I discovered the Corsair PSU plugin and was shocked by how much power my Homeserver draws even when in idle doing basically nothing.

It´s consuming 115-130 Watts when doing pretty much nothing, and thats just the number the PSU shows. Powerdraw from the wall should be even more.
It´s about 100W or more on the 12V Rail, depending on how many drives are spun up about 10-35W on 5V and I dont remember how much, but very little on 3V.
Again, I will provide a screenshot as soon as I get home today.

I expected my server to be not exactly power efficient with a 6900k and somewhere around 13 Hard drives. But 120W in idle doing nothing is way too much.

Spun down harddrives shouldn´t take that much power, and the CPU is mostyl sitting there doing nothing since I dont run any VMs right now and I only use a Plex Container so I have no idea where the 100 Watts are going.

 

Until now I also didnt find a tool that shows me which part of the PC consumes how much power, kinda how HW Monitor on windows shows you how much power your CPU and GPU are consuming.

 

I was thinking about replacing my current server with something like a Z570 board with an integrated 10G Nic, 10700T CPU for performance while also being way more energy efficient and not needing a dedicated GPU unless I want to pass it through to a Windows VM replacing my living room PC and get like 3 16TB drives and call it a day. Unfortunately that setup is way too expensive for me right now.

 

Hope some people here can help me out.

Link to comment

These are your problems:

 

MSI X99

This board has multiple extra chips like ASM1142, VIA VL805 etc and the 2011-v3 socket has no focus on low power consumption. Here is a comparison to the 1151 CPU:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05/intel-core-i7-6950x-6800k-test/6/

IMG_20210819_215143.thumb.jpg.43ef2d6f14705e7c70eb6bdb303ad314.jpg

 

So you are loosing 20 to 30W only because of the plattform.

 

GT710

Can't find any tests but regarding the node a GTX 1050 should have less power consumption as it's even better than the GT 1030:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-ti/28.html

IMG_20210819_215938.thumb.jpg.4955dbbe9518c634bb64f92fda01ff6e.jpg

 

Compared to a CPU with iGPU the disadvantage should be 10W to 20W, depending if the GPU reaches its sleep state (not sure how good this works in unRAID).

 

Corsair RMi 750W

This power supply is bad for low power consumption scenarios, but as your system has a high idle consumption, it's disadvantage is only ~2W. In low power scenarios like 15W it would be +4W compared to the RM550x 2021

 

10 or 11 drives

In spindown state, those add 0,5 to 1,5W each, compared to a setup with a lower count, but bigger drives. Of course spinning drives consume much more (you did not mention their state).

 

Dell PERC H310 RAID Controller

Adds 5 to 15W

 

Intel X550-T2 2x10G

Adds 5 to 10W

 

13 hours ago, derWinky said:

Z570 board with an integrated 10G Nic, 10700T CPU

The 10th gen has a higher consumption compared to the 8th or 9th gen. T CPUs do not save power in idle. They are only limited in total power = they are simply slower = never buy a T CPU!

 

My setup consumes 20W in idle:

C246N-WU2

64GB ECC RAM

8x 12TB Ultrastar (add 5W)

Xeon E-2146G

10G QNAP (adds 6W)

 

This was with my less efficient Corsair SFX 450W Platinum. Next upgrade will be the Corsair RM550x 2021.

 

My proposal would be the C246M-WU4 (ECC Support for Pentium Gold and i3) or W480M Vision (+2W, ECC Support only for Xeon and 2.5G LAN). Both are the "best unRAID boards" on the market regarding power consumption and features if 2x M.2 and 8x SATA is sufficient.

 

I don't suggest 11th or 12th Gen as power consumption is higher, Intel skipped GVT-g support and ECC is only possible with Xeon CPUs.

Link to comment
9 hours ago, mgutt said:

These are your problems:

 

MSI X99

This board has multiple extra chips like ASM1142, VIA VL805 etc and the 2011-v3 socket has no focus on low power consumption. Here is a comparison to the 1151 CPU:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-05/intel-core-i7-6950x-6800k-test/6/

IMG_20210819_215143.thumb.jpg.43ef2d6f14705e7c70eb6bdb303ad314.jpg

 

So you are loosing 20 to 30W only because of the plattform.

 

GT710

Can't find any tests but regarding the node a GTX 1050 should have less power consumption as it's even better than the GT 1030:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-ti/28.html

IMG_20210819_215938.thumb.jpg.4955dbbe9518c634bb64f92fda01ff6e.jpg

 

Compared to a CPU with iGPU the disadvantage should be 10W to 20W, depending if the GPU reaches its sleep state (not sure how good this works in unRAID).

 

Corsair RMi 750W

This power supply is bad for low power consumption scenarios, but as your system has a high idle consumption, it's disadvantage is only ~2W. In low power scenarios like 15W it would be +4W compared to the RM550x 2021

 

10 or 11 drives

In spindown state, those add 0,5 to 1,5W each, compared to a setup with a lower count, but bigger drives. Of course spinning drives consume much more (you did not mention their state).

 

Dell PERC H310 RAID Controller

Adds 5 to 15W

 

Intel X550-T2 2x10G

Adds 5 to 10W

 

The 10th gen has a higher consumption compared to the 8th or 9th gen. T CPUs do not save power in idle. They are only limited in total power = they are simply slower = never buy a T CPU!

 

My setup consumes 20W in idle:

C246N-WU2

64GB ECC RAM

8x 12TB Ultrastar (add 5W)

Xeon E-2146G

10G QNAP (adds 6W)

 

This was with my less efficient Corsair SFX 450W Platinum. Next upgrade will be the Corsair RM550x 2021.

 

My proposal would be the C246M-WU4 (ECC Support for Pentium Gold and i3) or W480M Vision (+2W, ECC Support only for Xeon and 2.5G LAN). Both are the "best unRAID boards" on the market regarding power consumption and features if 2x M.2 and 8x SATA is sufficient.

 

I don't suggest 11th or 12th Gen as power consumption is higher, Intel skipped GVT-g support and ECC is only possible with Xeon CPUs.

Thx a lot for your answer.
ok, so the T CPU is pretty much out the window. I know theres pretty much no difference in idle but under low loads the T CPU should probably still be more efficient since it doesn´t boost as high and has a way lower base clock. So under low load scenarios of running a few docker containers and having a Ubuntu server vm sitting there doing not that much I still think it would be better than a non T CPU, but since I´m also thinking about putting at least 1 proper GPU in to replace the PC in my living room and just have a USB HUB and a HDMI Cable run into my living room instead, I think I would be better off with a 11700 or whatever anyway. Or maybe an 11700k and just downclock it a little bit so It doesn´t peek that high. Don´t know how good that works in gigabyte´s bios, works fine on the MSI z490 I use for my 10900K.
The Gigabyte Boards you posted look really nice but I think they aren´t what I need or want. I´d gladly change the little more powerconsumption and non ECC support of Z590 +11th Gen if it means I get an integrated 10G NIC, so I dont have to waste a PCIe Slot, Gen 4 on Top PCIe and NVME Slot, more upgradeability with more PCIe Slots and better gaming performance if I need it.

 

But again. The upgrade probably won´t happen anyway the next few months because I dont have that much money right now.
The reason why the server is the way it is riht now is because I got the parts either drit cheap or for free. The only thing I paid full price for was the Case with extra HDD Trays for about 200€. The RMI750 was the old PSU of my main PC before I upgraded my main PC to an HX1200W because of the 10900k + Nvidia 30 series GPU (still didnt have one -_- ) so why sell this psu and buy a new one for teh server when I can just use that one, I got the 6900k, X99 MSI Board and 32GB of RAM for about 200 or 250€, the cooler was like 30€, the 10G Intel X550 T2 90€ and the Dell HBA 35€ and the HDDs were all for free. And besides the high power consumption it is a really feature rich and powerful Server with a lot of storage. Because I dont run it 24/7 the power consumption isn´t even that big of a deal, but if I get to build a new server any time soon, I´d like to build it efficient enough leaving it on 24/7 doesn´t drain my wallet^^.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, derWinky said:

but under low loads the T CPU should probably still be more efficient since it doesn´t boost as high and has a way lower base clock

No, because the CPU needs longer to finish a process, it consumes as much as the boosting CPU (for the total process). But even if boosting is outside of the efficiency sweet-spot and needed a little bit more energy, all other components are longer active (chipset, SATA controller, RAM, SSD, HDD...).

 

T-CPUs are only useful if you need to build a super compact PC with tiny cooler.

 

1 hour ago, derWinky said:

just have a USB HUB and a HDMI Cable run into my living room instead

Don't forget the maximum cable lengths.

 

1 hour ago, derWinky said:

just downclock it

It depends on your target. Downclocking can raise instability, but saves energy. The other option is to limit the TDP or disable turbo. But if you like to play games, that's nothing you really like to do 😉

 

1 hour ago, derWinky said:

Z590 +11th Gen

11th Gen means no GVT-g, no Legacy Mode, no Plex Tone Mapping and high power consumption. But of course "high" depends on your definition of the word as it adds "only" 12W in idle compared to the 9th Gen:

https://www.computerbase.de/2021-03/intel-core-i9-11900k-i5-11600k-test/5/#:~:text=44 Einträge-,Test%3A Leistungsaufnahme,-– Leerlauf (Steckdose)

image.png.6b289b5c3be32005e3e7d7ea2059bfcb.png

 

 

1 hour ago, derWinky said:

I dont have to waste a PCIe Slot

Yes, but finally most of the lanes are shared:

image.thumb.png.306403841fa63fab4b3e14d31b3599b9.png

 

The bottleneck is still the DMI 3.0 which uses only PCIe 3.0 X4. Something which nobody understands as 11th/12th Gen supports PCIe 4.0. This means two M.2 SSDs, the X4 PCIe Slot and the 10GBe are all using a total bandwidth of ~4GB/s. And note: With three NVMes, two SATA ports are disabled, so this board has only 4 SATA ports in total.

 

The only nice thing about the recent Z590 is the M.2, which is connected to the CPU (but sharing bandwidth with X16).

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
2 hours ago, mgutt said:

No, because the CPU needs longer to finish a process, it consumes as much as the boosting CPU (for the total process). But even if boosting is outside of the efficiency sweet-spot and needed a little bit more energy, all other components are longer active (chipset, SATA controller, RAM, SSD, HDD...).

 

T-CPUs are only useful if you need to build a super compact PC with tiny cooler.

 

 

 

 

 

OK so a non T CPU it is then.

2 hours ago, mgutt said:

Don't forget the maximum cable lengths.

I already have a 5m active USB 3.0 Cable which I would use to connect a 4 or 5 Port Hub for mouse, keyboard maybe a wireless controller and a wheel for Racinggames and I have a 7.5 and 10m HDMI 2.0 cable lieing around which have worked fine in the past, otherwise I will just buy a better cable. like this one: https://www.amazon.de/HDMI-Glasfaser-Kabel-unterstützt-4K60/dp/B08LYQN5YX/ref=sr_1_26?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&dchild=1&keywords=HDMI+2.0+aktiv+kabel+10m&qid=1629452829&sr=8-26
The distance shouldnt be that much of a problem since my living room is right next to the room I use for my networking stuff.
 

 

2 hours ago, mgutt said:

It depends on your target. Downclocking can raise instability, but saves energy. The other option is to limit the TDP or disable turbo. But if you like to play games, that's nothing you really like to do 😉

 

I dont know how well it works on gigabyte boards, i´ve been looking at this one here btw ( https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-z590-aorus-master-a2468074.html?hloc=at&hloc=de )
But on my MSI Z490 Gaming Carbon for my 10900k this has worked just fine. I had a 3090 for a few months and set my CPU to clock up to 5.1GHz on all cores to get max performance. Sold the 3090 because it´s just way too expensive and I´m using a Quadro P4000 until I find a 3070 or somthing in that neighbourhood for a decent price.
Since 5.1Ghz on a 10900k is completely wasted on a Quadro P4000 Ihave now set it to 4.8Ghz all core for lower power consumption and lower temps and thus noise. Also unervolted it a bit using an offset. The CPU still uses the differenet states just fine and clocks down to 800ish MHz when idle. If it works like that on the gigabyte board setting the CPU to a max of like 4.4Ghz or something would be fine. I want enough power so I can do everything I want with no problem, but I dont need that much power and high clockspeeds and it´s the last few 100MHz that make up so much of the high powerconsumption. The difference between 4.8 and 5.1GHz on my 10900k in cinebench is about 80 Watts. Most stuff I´d run on the Server wouldn´t take that mucgh power by itself or would be using multiple cores anyway so I´m not really bottlenecked by not using max turbo speed. Or maybe just diable the turbo or something. The only usecase that would really benefit from those higher clockspeeds ist if I replace my livingroom PC and use a VM for gaming. But since that would be Gaming on a TV at either 1080p120Hz oder 4k60Hz that shouldnt be a problem at all. Even at just 4GHz the CPU performance would probably be fine for most games I play.

 

 

2 hours ago, mgutt said:

11th Gen means no GVT-g, no Legacy Mode, no Plex Tone Mapping and high power consumption. But of course "high" depends on your definition of the word as it adds "only" 12W in idle compared to the 9th Gen:

https://www.computerbase.de/2021-03/intel-core-i9-11900k-i5-11600k-test/5/#:~:text=44 Einträge-,Test%3A Leistungsaufnahme,-– Leerlauf (Steckdose)

image.png.6b289b5c3be32005e3e7d7ea2059bfcb.png

I don´t really understand that point. Hope you can maybe explain that to me :)
The CPU has an integrated GPU, why does it not support GVT-g? Did Intel replace it with something else or is the modern iGPU just missing functionality? What are the things I might need GVT-g for? 
I had no idea Intel completely locked out legacy boot options on 11th gen. While that´s not exactly a positive thing would it really be much of a problem?
Unraid works on UEFI, right? I think I´m booting from legacy atm but I think switching to UEFI wouldn´t be too bad or are there many known issues when using UEFI for boot?
The tiny bit of more power consumption shouldnt be that much of a problem. It should still be waaaaaaay more efficient than my current setup.
And what do I need Plex Tone Mapping for?
ATM I just have Plex running in a container without any special config of using an iGPU I dont have or the GT710.
When I first built the server I was running a i7 4790 and followed a Plex install tutorial which mentioned using the iGPU for transcoding or whatever.
Since I switched to the 6900k I obviously dont have an iGPU anymore and Plex still runs fine.
I mostly just stream 1080p Anime and not stuff like 4k HDR movies. Maybe that´s why its working fine without any extra device? Explanation would be appreciated.
I´ve seen videos of ppl talking about something something Plex encoding on iGPU vs Quadro and stuff and shown examples of the result on youtube and i was sitting here like... looks the same to me anyways. Mabye it makes a bigger difference in person or when using other content.
I just installed plex, pointed it to my library of Anime and streamed it to my TV and Tablet. I´ve just had one Show so far where quality was a bit whack, other than that it´s been fine.

 

2 hours ago, mgutt said:

Yes, but finally most of the lanes are shared:

image.thumb.png.306403841fa63fab4b3e14d31b3599b9.png

 

The bottleneck is still the DMI 3.0 which uses only PCIe 3.0 X4. Something which nobody understands as 11th/12th Gen supports PCIe 4.0. This means two M.2 SSDs, the X4 PCIe Slot and the 10GBe are all using a total bandwidth of ~4GB/s. And note: With three NVMes, two SATA ports are disabled, so this board has only 4 SATA ports in total.

 

The only nice thing about the recent Z590 is the M.2, which is connected to the CPU (but sharing bandwidth with X16).

I think that would still be fine.

In an ideal world I´d get a 3060TI for the top x16 Slot, something like a corsair MP600 Pro 1 or 2TB for the top NVME Slot. 10G NIC is already integrated, 3x 16TB/14TB drives so I wouldn´t even populate the 4 SATA Slots left after other limitations. I´d only use 2 m.2 SSDs anyways which should leave me with 6 SATA Slots anyways according to the manual and as far as I know using 2 PCIe SSDs also doesnt disable one ot the other PCIe Slots like it does one some other boards.
Maybe I´d add a 2nd 2TB NVME SSD like a MP510 or P5 to the 2nd NVME Slot.
The bandwidth limitations also shouldn´t be a problem because I really can´t think of a scenario where I´d stress all of those at once.
One way or another I´d still have lots of slots for future expansion of things I dont need right now.
I dont know, maybe a Cap Card, an extra USB Card, a second GPU in the second slot for a different VM or for Docker stuff like Plex maybe?

Link to comment
31 minutes ago, derWinky said:

I already have a 5m active USB 3.0 Cable

I read in the past something about missing downward compatibility of active cables. This means it could only support USB 3 and not 1 or 2. But I'm not sure about that.

 

 

33 minutes ago, derWinky said:

why does it not support GVT-g

Ask Intel:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000058558/graphics.html

 

35 minutes ago, derWinky said:

Did Intel replace it with something else

No

 

36 minutes ago, derWinky said:

What are the things I might need GVT-g for? 

...

And what do I need Plex Tone Mapping for?

8th, 9th or 10th CPU.

 

38 minutes ago, derWinky said:

are there many known issues when using UEFI for boot

Some solve their hardware passthrough only in Legacy. Not sure why. Maybe to old cards which don't support UEFI?!

 

39 minutes ago, derWinky said:

Maybe that´s why its working fine without any extra device?

Yes. You are not using Hardware acceleration, which works, but it causes heavy CPU load.

 

So you could go with 11th, but maybe you could not benefit from the iGPU in Plex and you are not able to create small VMs with hardware acceleration through GVT-g. Everything would run through your usual CPU cores.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Also I was thinking about using an extra SSD for quicker access to stuff like games or VMs. Something like a 4TB Samsung 870 EVO.
What would be the best was to implement that SSD into the system?
I already have a Corsair Mp510 as my cache SSD and I thought about getting an extra SATA SSD to have faster storage for VMs, run steam games and stuff like that over the network instead of installing every Game on each system seperatly.
I´ve read that SSDs in the main Array are experimental and not recommended so should I just make an extra pool with only the SSD in it?
That would make it faster since it doesnt have to write to parity but also unprotected.
Would it make sense to get that extra SSD for VMs games etc that benefit from faster access, put it in its own pool and then create a cronjob or whatever that copys the data of the ssd to a folder in the main array once a day or every few days? That would give me fast acces to my stuff and it would be protected against an SSD failure.
Not really sure if that makes sense or if there´s a better solution, just something that came to mind yesterday night. 

Link to comment

Also in the Intel Page you linked they say that the GVT-g feature only exists from 6th to 9th Gen, so according to that page at least even a Core i 10XXX CPU doesn´t have that feature.

They also say "The 11th Generation of Intel® Core Processors works with SR-IOV (Single Root IO Virtualization), that is a new virtualization feature supported in hardware starting from Intel® Iris® Xe and in some of our discrete cards." So apparently they did replace GVT-g with SR-IOV as far as I understand, but since it says Iris XE I´d think this is not a feature of cpus like the 10700 and only stuff like tiger lakes 1165G7 have that feature?

GVTg.PNG

Edited by derWinky
Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/20/2021 at 9:23 AM, mgutt said:

11th Gen means no GVT-g, no Legacy Mode, no Plex Tone Mapping and high power consumption. But of course "high" depends on your definition of the word as it adds "only" 12W in idle compared to the 9th Gen:

Hi, at the moment I am thinking about buying a Z590 Aorus Master for the new server because Its price is at a all time low with 260€ atm instead of 350.
You said that gvt-g, legacy boot and plex tone mapping wont work with 11th gen. But would those features work with a 10th Gen CPU like a 10700k on a Z590 Board?
I´d really like to use that board because it´s by far the cheapest 10Gb NIC Board for LGA1200 but I´m worried some of those things will not work on that board with 10th Gen because it was made with 11th gen in mind.

 

I´d really like to use that board because it is by far the cheapest 10Gb Board I can get right now, only a x470 asrock board comes kinda close.

I hope you can help me out here. If that all works I´ll buy that board now and get everything else later.

Edited by derWinky
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.