Need help at lowering power consumption for noobs

Hi everyone.

I recently upgraded my server.

I went with an ultra 225, asrock b860m-x, and 32 ddr5 ram.

I have 5 x 3.5 hdd (one parity) and 1 ssd. The ssd is attached to this extension has the mb has only 4 sata ports. https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DEJn6pL

been watching some tutorials there and then and it says you have to change a few things in bios settings. To be honest, it goes a bit beyond my skills and i'm afraid to break something... (https://forums.unraid.net/topic/98070-reduce-power-consumption-with-powertop/#comment-904898) and some wolfgang and spaceinvaderone videos.

So far, i managed to :

- spin down disks after 15 min unused

- disable hd Audio

- disable RGB LED controller

What i'm probably missing are (from the tuto above):

1. should i disable igpu multi monitor ?

2. enable ASPM (Active-State Power Management) in the PCI settings ?

3. enable all C-States like C7/C9/C10 in the CPU settings ("auto" usually means "disabled", so select "enable")

questions:

1. as i understand i would disable the gpu from the motherboard and only use the cpu gpu ?!? (i am afraid to go into a unrocoverable black screen...)

2. I found severals options under advanced\chipset config: pcie aspm support (disabled, l0s, l1, l0sl1, auto), pch pcie aspm support, pch dmi support, dmi aspm support. there are many options and i have no idea of consequences

3. under advanced/cpu it says cpu state support enable. but then it says c state auto domotion c1, undemotion c1, package demotion enabled, package undemotion enabled. should i disabled those to manually change them ?

4. Should i disable turbo boost under oc tweaker ?

5. what about boot performance mode ? max battery ? max non turbo preference ? it's set to turbo performance by default. Is it drawing more power to boot faster ?

6. can i use powertop ? is there a tutorial ? (i mean i noob friendly for my case because apparently it's harder if you use an nvme to sata card.

PS: currently while browing bios i'm at 52 wats, in unraid after boot and array on at 45w, and around 28w when all disks are spin down (only plex has container).

thanks a lot and take care

Edited November 16, 2025Nov 16 by tomume