Adaptec 72405 24 Port Controller Series 7 Controller - Compatible?


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Khelm => Did you get the 72405 yet?  ... and have you had a chance to measure the detailed power consumption?

I've had the Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard, Memory, and Adaptec 72405 controller for about 3 weeks now.  The sad part is that they've been sitting on the shelf because I haven't had any time at all to play around with them.  I decided tonight to spend a little time on it and see where I could get.

 

I did get the system built, but didn't get far with testing Unraid with it.  I took the motherboard, controllers, and cables out of and old server so that I could use it for this stuff.  Plus I hadn't used version 5 of unraid at all before, so I had to figure a couple of things out with it.

 

I took power consumption data at various levels of the build so that I could see how much each component was using.  I will put all of the results and descriptions at the end of the post.  I am using a Corsair AX850 power supply in this build.  I was using the latest Unraid RC candidate Version 5 RC15a for this testing.  The motherboard used as little at 16.1 watt sitting idle at the unraid console.  In the motherboard bios I tried disabling all of the processor cores except for 1, but that didn't have any affect on the power consumption results, so I left all 4 cores enabled for the rest of the testing.  The Adaptec 72405 controller only used about 15.0 watts of power at idle.

 

I only had time left to do a quick test with Unraid to see if it would recognize the controller.  I set the controller to HBA mode, in its BIOS.  I connected a 2TB Western Digital WE20EADS green drive to it.  Unraid was able to see the drive on the controller.  I was able to copy data off the drive across the network at about 85~90MB/sec.

This is as far as I got tonight.  Obviously, I need to do a lot more test, but at least the controller worked with Unraid and I was able to use a drive connected to it.  Plus the power consumption was low for the controller.  I don’t think there is a better solution right now to get 24 ports for only 15.0 watts of power.

 

Power Consumption using Corsair AX850 Power Supply

 

Watts Used

23.2 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard Only(Default Bios Settings)

          1 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          All 4 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Sitting at Bios Screen

 

Disabling all but 1 processor core had no affect

 

21.9 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard Only

          1 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Sitting at Bios Screen

 

22.4 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard Only

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Sitting at Bios Screen

 

 

16.1 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard Only

          1 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

        *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

        (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

 

16.5 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard Only

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

 

35.5 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405 (No Hard Drives Attached)

          Sitting at Bios Screen

 

31.4 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405 (No Hard Drives Attached)

          (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

 

37.8 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405 (No Hard Drives Attached)

          Supermicro 5 Drive Hot Swap Cage CSE-M35T-1 (Stock fan replace with Noctua NF-B9-1600 FAN)

          Sitting at Bios Screen

 

33.8 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405 (No Hard Drives Attached)

          Supermicro 5 Drive Hot Swap Cage CSE-M35T-1 (Stock fan replace with Noctua NF-B9-1600 FAN)

          (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

 

40.0 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405

          Supermicro 5 Drive Hot Swap Cage CSE-M35T-1 (Stock fan replace with Noctua NF-B9-1600 FAN)

          1 Western Digital 2TB WD20EADS Hard Drive

          Drive Spun Up

          (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

 

35.7 -  Supermicro MBD-X9SPV-M4-3QE-O Motherboard

          2 memory SODIMM (Kingston KVR13LSE9/8)

          All 4 Processor Cores Enabled

          *Only 1 Network Interfaces Enabled

          Adaptec 72405

          Supermicro 5 Drive Hot Swap Cage CSE-M35T-1 (Stock fan replace with Noctua NF-B9-1600 FAN)

          1 Western Digital 2TB WD20EADS Hard Drive

          Drive Spun Down

          (Booted up on Unraid 5 RC15A sitting at console prompt)

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If you want a lower power footprint;

1) use a right sized power supply - ie 400 or 460 fanless,

2) use the version of the motherboard with passive cooling, even i3 or i5 plus IPMI,

3) use a case where the fans are controlled by the PWM headers on the motherboard.

 

 

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Those numbers are VERY encouraging for a system than can handle 24 drives at full bandwidth !!

 

That should mean a fully loaded 24-drive system could draw as little as 50 watts with the drives spun down (possibly even slightly less).

 

I agree, fantastic early results!  Though I humbly disagree that this is a 50 watt idle system.  Add in about 4 watts for fans to cool the server, and about 29 watts for HD's (which in my testing consumed double their rated standby wattage in my build), and you're looking at about a 67 watt server.  That's still a significant 13-15 watt savings over my build (1-2 watts for the MB, and 13W for the controller), which should be in the 80-82W range with a full assortment of drives.

 

If you can get the fans to completely turn off when idle, and if you can somehow get the drives to idle at documented wattage, then yes this would be a 50W server easy.  But look carefully at khelm's numbers, and you see that 1 HD, even in Standby, consumed 1.9W, which is 50% worse than anything I saw.  Extrapolate the numbers, and this becomes a 80W server...

 

Low-power consumption is an elusive siren.

 

Though I excitedly wait for final numbers, and I really hope khelm proves my predictions wrong.

 

By the way, khelm, your wattage ratings look very precise.  May I ask what tool you used to capture the power consumption?

 

-Paul

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You're right Paul ... I was using WD's claimed consumption of 0.6w/drive for 24 drives = 14.4 watts for the drives.    Based on your tests that show roughly double that, you do indeed need to add ~ 15 watts ... so that puts the likelihood of idle power consumption in the 60+ watt range. 

 

You may also have to toss in a few watts for fans, although I would assume Khelm's measurements already included fans, since I assume he didn't disable them for capturing power consumption ... but I could be wrong about that.

 

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          Supermicro 5 Drive Hot Swap Cage CSE-M35T-1 (Stock fan replace with Noctua NF-B9-1600 FAN)

 

Each CSE-M35T comes with a 90mm fan, which khelm has upgraded to a Noctua that is rated at 1W at full speed.  To support 24 drives, I'm expecting he will use 4 more of these cages, so 4 more fans too.  That's 5W max cooling, assuming no other case fans, which is not bad.  Since these are PWM, assuming khelm is able to slow them down, I would expect at least 2W total consumption from 5 fans at the slowest speed.

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Good catch ... so another 3-5 watts for those fans.  Still a very respectable idle consumption.

 

Probably as good as you can get for a 24-drive system short of one that works perfectly in S3  :)

[Often an issue ... especially when there are add-on cards involved.]

 

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