Reduce power consumption with powertop


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6 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Sorry, missed your CPU model. Powertop 2.13 is too old to display correct values. We need 2.14 to get correct C-States for more recent CPUs.

 

This means your CPU already could be on C9, but you can't see it.

 

Ok thanks. Do you know when that will be available?

 

I've done some testing this evening and found my server only pulls 21 watts with both drives spun down and 35 with them both up. That's pretty good. Not sure I'm going to get any better than that...

 

I was tempted to disable the iGPU, but I don't know if I'll be able to save much more. Plus then I wouldn't be able to access the BIOS unless I reset CMOS, which is a massive pain.

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1 hour ago, Skilid said:

That's pretty good.

Not really. I would say under 15W would be good. I think the problem lies here:

- MSI is not really known for power efficient Hardware

- this board is a full ATX Board

- it has 12 PIN CPU power for massive overclocking

- it has an additional USB Controller (GL850G)

 

Which power supply are you using?

 

2 hours ago, Skilid said:

I was tempted to disable the iGPU,

Do the opposite. Install the Intel driver so the iGPU is sent into standby if not in use (which should be visible through powertop = RC6).

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41 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Not really. I would say under 15W would be good. I think the problem lies here:

- MSI is not really known for power efficient Hardware

- this board is a full ATX Board

- it has 12 PIN CPU power for massive overclocking

- it has an additional USB Controller (GL850G)

 

Which power supply are you using?

 

Do the opposite. Install the Intel driver so the iGPU is sent into standby if not in use (which should be visible through powertop = RC6).

Thanks for your help with this, much appreciated.

 

I have a Fractal Design Ion Gold 550W Modular 80+ Gold. It's much more powerful than I wanted, and I know this will cause issues with efficiency, but I wanted to leave some room to grow incase I decide to use VMs in future (with a dGPU for example). Also has lots of sata connectors for future drives.

 

I'm currently only using the USB 2.0 ports on the back on my tower. Is it worth disabling the other USB controller? Is that even possible?

 

I already have the Intel driver, I believe, and can see the iGPU is in RC6 in powertop over 99.5% of the time.

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15 minutes ago, Skilid said:

Fractal Design Ion Gold 550W

The most efficient power supply on power consumptions under 25W is the Corsair RM550x (2021). It is already ATX12VO compatible (which is the reason for the high efficiency on low power consumptions).

 

15 minutes ago, Skilid said:

Is it worth disabling the other USB controller? Is that even possible?

 

If possibe, it's worth a try.

 

15 minutes ago, Skilid said:

RC6 in powertop over 99.5% of the time.

Should be 100% I think. Did you connect a monitor?

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32 minutes ago, mgutt said:

The most efficient power supply on power consumptions under 25W is the Corsair RM550x (2021). It is already ATX12VO compatible (which is the reason for the high efficiency on low power consumptions).

 

If possibe, it's worth a try.

 

Should be 100% I think. Did you connect a monitor?

How much more efficient are we talking? If it's only going to save 2 or 3 watts of power it wouldn't be worth it, especially as the fractal was 40% cheaper.

 

I do have a monitor connected at the moment as I've been fiddling in the BIOS. If I disconnect this I suspect it will go back to 100%.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/21/2020 at 12:05 PM, mgutt said:

Powertop [Support auf Deutsch]

 

# -------------------------------------------------
# disable haveged as we trust /dev/random
# https://forums.unraid.net/topic/79616-haveged-daemon/?tab=comments#comment-903452
# -------------------------------------------------
#/etc/rc.d/rc.haveged stop

# -------------------------------------------------
# Set power-efficient CPU governor
# -------------------------------------------------
/etc/rc.d/rc.cpufreq powersave

# -------------------------------------------------
# Enable power-efficient ethernet
# -------------------------------------------------

# enable IEEE 802.3az (Energy Efficient Ethernet): Could be incompatible to LACP bonds!
for i in /sys/class/net/eth?; do dev=$(basename $i); [[ $(echo $(ethtool --show-eee $dev 2> /dev/null) | grep -c "Supported EEE link modes: 1") -eq 1 ]] && ethtool --set-eee $dev eee on; done

# Disable wake on lan
for i in /sys/class/net/eth?; do ethtool -s  $(basename $i) wol d; done

# -------------------------------------------------
# powertop tweaks
# -------------------------------------------------

# Enable SATA link power management
echo med_power_with_dipm | tee /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy

# Runtime PM for I2C Adapter (i915 gmbus dpb)
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/i2c/devices/i2c-*/device/power/control

# Autosuspend for USB device
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control

# Runtime PM for disk
echo auto | tee /sys/block/sd*/device/power/control

# Runtime PM for PCI devices
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/????:??:??.?/power/control

# Runtime PM for ATA devices
echo auto | tee /sys/bus/pci/devices/????:??:??.?/ata*/power/control

 


 

 

 

This is just brilliant.


Power usage went down by 50% on pretty fresh UNRAID. This is some serious result!!!

 

Currently, only 13W in IDLE (HDD's in standby) used to be 26W, usually closer to 30 as it was fluctuating.

For comparison:

Same PC, Windows 10, only one SSD connected, "power saving mode" and yet was going down to 19W only after a very long while.

 

Full spec:

HPE Proiliant ML10 gen9

Xeon E3-1225v5

4x 8GB DDR4

1x nvme connected to PCIe port

2x 3.5" parity + array

2x 3.5" unassigned

1x 2.5" hdd

 

Right now RAM using more power than CPU :)

 

image.thumb.png.56167b5822ec404482f7dcd5abcd2018.png

image.thumb.png.1888f8f821698abbfd867168bff63c75.png

 

image.png.1a8cc2f3a6cbefc4d0fec1b6dbd3ad7b.png

Edited by BeersTeddy
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/9/2022 at 12:17 AM, mgutt said:

The most efficient power supply on power consumptions under 25W is the Corsair RM550x (2021). It is already ATX12VO compatible (which is the reason for the high efficiency on low power consumptions).

This sounds very interesting. Do you have a source or any more info / comparison on that? f.e. efficiency compared to a picoPSU.

 

Did I invest in the wrong horse with a Prime TX-650 from Seasonic with Titanium Certification? My picoPSU didn't have enough max Power.

Edited by madejackson
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1 hour ago, madejackson said:

Did I invest in the wrong horse with a Prime TX-650 from Seasonic with Titanium Certification?

Seasonic has one power supply with ATX12VO... Need to find the article...

https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/news/hardware/mainboards/56208-netzteile-und-mainboards-atx12vo-koennte-2022-eine-groessere-rolle-spielen.html

 

Quote

So bestätigt Seasonic, dass es bereits ein Focus GX650 mit ATX12VO gibt, welches sich bereits bei Intel zur Zertifizierung befindet

 

Don't know if it was ever released. You should ask Seasonic.

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1 hour ago, mgutt said:

Thank you :) The article is very interesting. Finally someone asking the right questions.

 

In Theory, the Seasonic Prime TX-Line should still be somewhat more efficient. The Titanium-Certification mandates 90% Efficiency at 10% load. The two tested PSU's are at ~88% at 10% load.

 

Nevertheless the efficiency is still quiet impressive at only 50% the cost of the Seasonic.

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3 hours ago, madejackson said:

10% load.

10% is 60W. Which efficient setup consumes so much power? Depending on the installed cards and HDDs, mine consumes 10 to 25W.

 

You need to compare this range and titanium power supplies are really good there, too:

eff230v100.png

 

But the price is even higher of course.

 

I'm waiting for an SFX Platinum power supply with ~400W and ATX12VO support. 🙏

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8 hours ago, mgutt said:

10% is 60W. Which efficient setup consumes so much power? Depending on the installed cards and HDDs, mine consumes 10 to 25W.

 

You need to compare this range and titanium power supplies are really good there, too:

eff230v100.png

 

But the price is even higher of course.

 

I'm waiting for an SFX Platinum power supply with ~400W and ATX12VO support. 🙏

 

Yeah... I can only dream of such low Power usage. In the beginning, my Unraid was idling at about 20W as well (2015). But now, with 13x 2.5" HDD's, 7x SSD's, 4x SATA-Controllers and 40x Dockers for gaming servers, transcoding and keeping track of downloads those days are long gone.

 

atm, I'm sitting at 60W "idle", I'm looking into getting rid of old disks (- 4x HDD's, 5xSSD's) and my SAS3008 which should give me another 10-30W savings.

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4 minutes ago, madejackson said:

atm, I'm sitting at 60W "idle", I'm looking into getting rid of old disks (- 4x HDD's, 5xSSD's) and my SAS3008 which should give me another 10-30W savings.

The most efficient setup is an Intel C234/C246/W480 board with 8 SATA ports and one or two ASM1166 6-Port SATA cards (each 2W). HBA controller allow more Disks, but finally they are extremely inefficient. Even the most recent generation consumes 9W:

 

Maybe the the Orico PM2TS6 (ASM1166 as well) consumes even less because of its small form factor:

https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20220407234029&origin=y&SearchText=PM2TS6+

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for all your help. Especially mgutt.

 

I now did several Improvements to reduce my consumption from ~65W to 33W on "idle". See following graph, last improvments were made on 11:00 (measured from the wall with mystrom-Plug):

Spoiler

unraid_power_usage.thumb.png.238dbd3158ca90cd017c933b322213ea.png

 

Xeon E3-1245v5 with Fujitsu D3417-B1 with 4x8GB ECC RAM (bought 2015)

  • Got rid of my SAS3008 (10W) and small disks. I now have only the Chipset C236 and 1x ASM1166+JMB575 and 1x ASM1062 (2W) (-10-15W)
    • Due to the high power usage, I cannot recomment any SAS HBA card. I'd say for a good build stay on asmedia or JMicron.
  • Disabled "Dynamix Cache Directories" setting "Scan user shares (/mnt/user):" (led to high cpu usage on idle, constantly ~15% load) (-10-15W)
    • Should be disabled by default, seems like I enabled it by accident in the past
  • enabled Powertop improvements as this thread suggests (-1-3W)
    • Important: ASM1166 and ASM1062 do not work with med_power_with_dipm (aka "Good" in following Screenshot) and leads to disks in error state (You are going to have to rebuild parity)
      i used this script to find the correct hosts to leave at default aka "Bad" in Powertop: identify scsi_host / ata devices + Diskspeed App
      Bad_SATA-link-power-mgmt.PNG.e731172788a44cfe4d4988115856bf1c.PNG

Todo:

  • replacing 1x ASM1166+JMB575, 1x ASM1062 --> 2xASM1166. expected savings: 2W (one Chip less: JMB575)
    • The JMB575 is already not in use due to bad performance (ca. 30MB/s with 5x Disks during parity sync = 60% speed loss)
    • Done: Power savings not measurable
  • 2x PC's, 1x Switch, 1x PSU: Running 2x PC's + 1x Switch off of one PSU expected savings: 5W
    • I do have another system running as a 25G-firewall at ~25W idle with i7-6700 and picoPSU. I try to run both systems off of 1x PSU. The Seasonic Prime TX-650 has far enough Power and Outputs for both systems exept the 24Pin. I ordered a 24-Pin Splitter and will try this out. The Switch runs on 12V so no issue there as well.
    • Done: Power Draw reduced (-10-15W) from ~61W (33W+23W+5W) to ~50W for 2x Skylake Systems + 1x 10G-Switch. More Info: see following Graph:
Spoiler

Unbenannt.thumb.PNG.ccef31596857d764e841cee5e8924f98.PNG

 

Edited by madejackson
added Todo-Results
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On 4/8/2022 at 12:30 AM, mgutt said:

10% is 60W. Which efficient setup consumes so much power? Depending on the installed cards and HDDs, mine consumes 10 to 25W.

 

You need to compare this range and titanium power supplies are really good there, too:

 

But the price is even higher of course.

 

I'm waiting for an SFX Platinum power supply with ~400W and ATX12VO support. 🙏

Followup to this, I found the results for the PSU Seasonic Prime TX-650.

 

It is even more efficient than the Corsair RM550x 2021, altough at low load not by very much 0.5-2W:
Seasonic Prime Titanium im Test | TweakPC.de

 

 

Spoiler

 

image.png.967bdae76f8a8857f8d8e36a1c2103ad.png

image.thumb.png.93f3b1fddbee324ab98b0a1adec0d729.png

 

 

Edited by madejackson
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/8/2022 at 9:01 PM, mgutt said:

Sorry, missed your CPU model. Powertop 2.13 is too old to display correct values. We need 2.14 to get correct C-States for more recent CPUs.

 

This means your CPU already could be on C9, but you can't see it.

 

Hi!

 

Where can i Download Version 2.14?

In nerdtools i only see version 2.13 (already installed) and it can't find a newer Version. :(

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/22/2022 at 2:50 PM, RicoWalker said:

Anyone know if we can get powertop 2.14 on unraid yet?

 

ich777 created a new powertop package. Uninstall powertop through NerdPack and execute the following:

 

cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/mgutt/unraid-packages/raw/main/6.10.3/powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz && upgradepkg --install-new powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz

 

If anyone is suffering from server crashes after executing "powertop --auto-tune", then they should read this:

 

  • Thanks 1
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On 6/27/2022 at 11:11 AM, mgutt said:

 

ich777 created a new powertop package. Uninstall powertop through NerdPack and execute the following:

 

cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/mgutt/unraid-packages/raw/main/6.10.3/powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz && upgradepkg --install-new powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz

 

If anyone is suffering from server crashes after executing "powertop --auto-tune", then they should read this:

 

 

Nice Work but i have 3 Questions.

1.

Is this a one time installation or do i need to install powert 2.14 everytime my Unraid Server reboots ?

 

2.

I created a small Script with Auto tune for User Script, is there any error in it ?

#!/bin/bash
# Download latest Powertop
# https://forums.unraid.net/topic/98070-reduce-power-consumption-with-powertop/page/3/
cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/mgutt/unraid-packages/raw/main/6.10.3/powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz && upgradepkg --install-new powertop-2.14-x86_64.txz &
wait
# https://forums.unraid.net/topic/108966-strom-sparen-mit-powertop-stromverbrauch-von-unraid-verbessern/?do=findComment&comment=1095671
# Start the Management Utility
/usr/local/sbin/emhttp &
powertop --auto-tune

 

3.

After running the Script i receive some strange stuff in the Log. the lib64 error is bugging me the most ? Is this normal or can i somehow fix this.

 

powertop: /lib64/libncursesw.so.6: no version information available (required by powertop)
powertop: /lib64/libtinfo.so.6: no version information available (required by powertop)
modprobe cpufreq_stats failedLoaded 0 prior measurements
emhttpd is already started
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL device for cpu 0
Devfreq not enabled
glob returned GLOB_ABORTED
Leaving PowerTOP
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only

 

I would be really happy if someone takes a quick look. Thanks.

Edited by T-Birth
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On 7/2/2022 at 9:24 AM, T-Birth said:

After running the Script i receive some strange stuff in the Log. the lib64 error is bugging me the most ? Is this normal or can i somehow fix this.

I get the same error after running powertop 2.14, besides that it seems to be working.

 

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Wow, I'm surprised how you guys manage to get 20w-30w idle servers.

I'm going to ask about recommendations on my setup in case Im missing something.

 

- 4690K

- Asus ROG Maximus VII Gene Z96

- 4x4GB DDR3
- 8xHHDs
- 1xNVME

- 1xLSI SAS2008

- 1x1060 (idle 7w)

- Corsair RM650x

 

currently 66W at idle. (im running several docker containers but 99% of the time they are not doing nothing). Only 2 disks spinning.

- C states seems to be working fine

- I have already run powertop --auto-tune

 

I can change my 4x4GB to 2x8GB, and I have 3 small disk that can be replace for 1 big hd. Do you think there is something more I can do to lower my power consumption?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Edited by Yeyo53
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