Hello, I am currently using Unraid with a Ryzen 5 5500GT and Asrock B550M Pro4 combo, along with three 18TB HDDs. When idle, my system consumes 20W of power. I think this is already quite low, but I still want to upgrade for two reasons: I need 10Gbps networking, and I need ECC RAM (because I’m using ZFS).

When I tested an X540-T2 NIC, the system’s power consumption increased to 28-29W, so I’m looking for a better combination.

From my research, compared to AMD systems, Intel have significantly better idle power consumption (around 5W-7W). However, to support ECC RAM, I would need to buy a Xeon chip and a server motherboard, which are quite expensive. Even used boards start at around $300, so I’m leaning toward sticking with AMD. If possible, I’d like to switch to an Intel system for QuickSync, but with my limited budget, ECC is more important, and I don’t watch movies too often.

Below is my research. If anyone has suggestions for hardware (a low-idle 10Gbps NIC, an affordable Xeon combo, or an AMD CPU + motherboard with low idle power), please let me know.

I found some online posts where people have built fairly power-efficient AMD systems.

Post 1: This person’s system has two 10Gbps NICs and only consumes 22W when idle, which is quite good. However, they don’t use HDDs, so I think this is expected. (I believe an Intel system without HDDs could idle even lower.) I checked the NIC they used, but there isn’t much information about it, so I’m not sure how the Marvell AQC113 chip compares to the X710. I’m curious about how much their system idles at without the NICs and adapter cards—if it’s 10W, that would be really impressive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1l2mkqb/budget_10gbe_6bay_nvme_nas_with_ecc_memory/?chainedPosts=t3_18lyk9e

Specs:

• CPU: Ryzen Pro 5750G (PRO is required for ECC memory on G processors) - $180

• Motherboard (2x NVMe): Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 - $100

• Memory ECC: 32GB Timetec Hynix IC DDR4 PC4-21300 2666MHz - $75

• 2x FENVI 10Gbps PCIe Marvell AQC113 - $100 ($50 each)

• 4 Port M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe X16 Adapter Card 4x32Gbps PCIe Split/PCIe RAID - $15 (Important: use slots 2-4 when using a G processor; slot 1 isn’t recognized)

• 1x Single M.2 NVMe X4 Adapter Card - $10

Post 2: In the comments, someone mentioned they successfully built an AMD system with a 9W idle power consumption, but they didn’t specify the configuration. Another person shared their setup, which idles at 44W with eight WD 16TB HDDs. They mentioned that the Ryzen 7 PRO 5750GE chip is excellent for low-idle systems because it’s a laptop chip and doesn’t consume much power.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38823514

Specs:

• AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5750GE

• 128GB ECC DDR4-3200

• Intel XL710-QDA2 (using QSFP+ to a quad-SFP+ passive DAC breakout)

• LSI 9500-16i

• Eight WD 16TB HDDs (shucked)

• Two 2TB SK Hynix P41 Platinum M.2 NVMe SSD

• Two Samsung 3.84TB PM9A3 U.2 NVMe SSD

• Two Samsung 960GB PM893 SATA SSD

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Let me know if you need further assistance or suggestions based on this information!

I idle with a mean 41W. X570d4u includes IPMI which adds some, as does an external USB monitoring my home power meter. 32gb ecc, 5600x, x710-da2 (DAC to switch, Ethernet is more power hungry), 5hdd, 3ssd, 1 m.2 (Samsung 980 pro at the moment) with dockers (home assistant, influxdb and a bunch more always running). When I needed an ASM1166 for more drives idle was up 2-4W. There are 11 fans and it ran 1w+ lower end of the winter when an SSD failed and I dropped to the 8 I have now.

You don't need Xeon for ECC. I'm considering a reluctant switch to Intel for llm on the igpu. Power consumption would take decades to pay for itself, if it's even lower.