System:

Ryzen Pro 5750G, Asrock B550 Pro4, ECC RAM, 1 unassigned SSD

I installed 7.1.4 awhile ago and I've been doing trial and error testing to dial in the right settings for the lowest idle power use. I have things down to 15-16 watts from the wall on my power meter.

I read the changelogs for the 7.2.x updates and saw the support for other file systems so I updated to 7.2.4 and my idle power crept up to 16-17 watts. I realize that's not much but having idle power increase by 7% from a minor update isn't ideal.

I downgraded to 7.1.4 and idle power went back down by a watt. I upgraded to 7.2.0 instead of 7.2.4 and idle power went back up again. I've since downgraded back to 7.1.4 for now.

I've seen the other reports of people seeing increased idle power use with the 7.2.x updates but they were all making jumps from 6.x.x versions and they all had plenty of containers and plugins running. I have nothing running on mine. The only thing I've installed is powertop with auto-tune. Everything else is the stock image.

Does anyone have ideas as to the source of the extra power usage? Driver changes perhaps?

Could be related to the newer amd-psate driver, which is supposedly better, but it's been known to use more power with some board/CPU combos.

First check which one the server is using, and if it's the new one, you can try the old one by disabling it in sysslinux.cfg, then reboot

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver

I had a look at that and amd-pstate-epp is the driver being used for both 7.1.4 and 7.2.x. Disabling it in 7.2.x and dropping back to the legacy acpi-cpufreq driver didn't appear to change anything.

Is there an easy way to get a list of what services might be running or maybe a way to log what's eating resources?

Right, both 7.1 and 7.2 are based on the same kernel, there shouldn't be any big power differences in usage, 7.0 is the one that was likely still using the old driver.

I suspect more of an app/plugin issue, have you downgraded to 7.1 to confirm it's really still using less power?

Yes I've been switching between 7.1.4 and 7.2.3 for a few hours at a time and monitoring via my smart meter. I went ahead and removed the SSD and the delta remains. I'm running completely stock with no apps or plugins, no drives installed. Powertop is the only package I've installed. CPU set to powersave.

On 7.1.4 the energy usage chart is completely flat at 0.016kWh but bumps up to 0.017kWh when running on 7.2.3. I get that it only shows an average and it's only a watt but I'd like to claw it back if possible.

Is there an Unraid equivalent to systemctl like in Debian to see what's running?

Not that I know of, and if it's just a watt, it may just be some kernel/driver change.

On 1/7/2026 at 2:47 AM, JorgeB said:

Not that I know of, and if it's just a watt, it may just be some kernel/driver change.

Thanks. I've given up on chasing this for now as I've decided to just get on with installation. In the process I've discovered a different idle power issue with the hardware unrelated to this.

Edited January 11Jan 11 by MichaelJordan