Hi Everyone,

i found this threat because i was wodering if my power consumption is "normal" and if i clould decrease it probably with bios or unraid settings.

 

Specs:

i7 8700k on ASROCK Fatality z370 Professional gaming i7 Board

64 GB (4x16) 3200 MHz DDR4

Sapphire 5700 XT

6x 3 TB HDD

1x NVME

2x SATA SSD

5x 120mm fan

Asus 10 GBit Ethernet Card

SATA Extention PCIE Card

USB PCIE Card.

 

It idles (with some dockers running) between 170 and 200 Watts.

10 minutes ago, zw3ist3in said:

It idles (with some dockers running) between 170 and 200 Watts.

Uff.

 

1.) Which power supply are you using?

2.) How do you use the GPU? It's power consumption should be in idle between 8 and 35W, but if it is not used by Unraid or an VM it has a much higher power consumption (as it never reaches the idle state).

3.) Aren't you using a spin down delay for your HDDs?

4.) Why do you have a SATA extension card installed although your MB has 8 SATA ports onboard?

5.) Why do you have an Asus 10G card installed although your MB has 10G onboard?

 

6.) Why do you have an additional USB PCIE Card?

 

Your MB is for sure a bad basis for an efficient server as it has:

- additional SATA controller for Port 7 and 8

- TB

- WiFi

- 10G

- RGB

 

 

A small, but additional impact are high-frequency RAM modules and their amount (2x 32 GB is more efficient than 4x 16 GB)

Thanks alot for the answer @mgutt!

That is alot to think about. The parts (MB, CPU and RAM) just came out of my prevouis desktop rig because i upgraded it.

I thought it was s good upgrade to the server compared to my z270 and i5 6600 before, because of more cores/threads.

 

But after your mentiones, i am not sure if it was the right thing to use it..

To your questions:

• As a PSU i use a bequiet 600W.
• The 10G internal card was not reliable when I used it as Desktop sometimes it just completely dropped connection until reboot (macOS and Windows) so i bought an extra card.
• How do i measure the GPUs power consumption seperately? GPU usecase: I use it to learn and experiment with GPU Passthroug in VMs. No mining or plex encoding so far.
• Good Idea, i just passed the SATA Card to the neu board without looking if there were enough ports, ill correct that.
• HDD Spindown: I never spin down the HDDs so far. Should I? Long ago some datacenter guy told me that these NAS/Server drived dont like often spindowns and that it was better for the lifetime of the drives to keep them spinning. Is this incorrect?

 

What would you recommend, better buying/exchanging my CPU/MB with another board?

The problem is: The CPU is great its allcore 5 GHz stable (which is nonsense for the unraud server I know). But its delidded and due to liquid metal it looks used . so i dont know if i can sell it though. That was the reason why i decided to give it a second life in the server.

 

Sorry if my english is bumpy, im german though.

1 hour ago, zw3ist3in said:

How do i measure the GPUs power consumption seperately? GPU usecase: I use it to learn and experiment with GPU Passthroug in VMs. No mining or plex encoding so far.

You can only measure the difference. Like stopping the docker service totally and starting a VM and wait a little bit until the OS is idling. Now do the same while the VM is stopped. You now have much higher power consumption. Conclusion: Never stop your VM.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, zw3ist3in said:

HDD Spindown: I never spin down the HDDs so far. Should I? Long ago some datacenter guy told me that these NAS/Server drived dont like often spindowns and that it was better for the lifetime of the drives to keep them spinning. Is this incorrect?

90% of the German unRAID users use Spindown delays as we have really high electricity costs and I never heard of one complaining faster dying HDDs. I think this is a prejudice from the past when HDDs had a bad quality. Now HDDs have 50.000 Power Cycles as part of the warranty and what is better for an HDD: power cycle + low temps or 24/7 spinning + high temps? I'm convinced lower temps are better for a long lifetime.

 

1 hour ago, zw3ist3in said:

As a PSU i use a bequiet 600W

Depending on the efficiency it can add alone 10 to 20W in power consumption. But it depends on your electricity costs / budget, if its better to buy a more efficient power supply like a Seasonic Titanium etc

 

1 hour ago, zw3ist3in said:

What would you recommend, better buying/exchanging my CPU/MB with another board?

I prefer the Gigabyte C246M-WU4. Hard to get and not cheap. But it has 2x M.2 (X4) and 8x SATA Onboard. It even supports ECC RAM if you ever switch to a Xeon CPU. But with a 10G card and dGPU all slots would be occupied. Without dGPU and 10G card it's power is under 10W and with I would expect 30W if your VM isn't shutdown.

 

1 hour ago, zw3ist3in said:

im german though.

https://forums.unraid.net/forum/76-german-deutsch/

😉

thanks for that input! That really helps!

First i have to solve a differnt ptoblem: unraid does not power up after reboot.. 😮. But that is a topic for anoither thread possibly. 

Interesting update: I removed the GPU and eventhogh i needed to restore the backup on the Flashdrive to boot, server is up again, without GPU, still get no display output after POST, but it boots.

Now running at 85W. Thats a huge difference.

I Also switched onboard LAN and onboard 10gbit.

 

 

can someone tell my why on my unraid its only using c3 states and not 6,7, 8,9 ,10? i enabled all in the bios. my cpu is 10600T

 

 

50 minutes ago, M2k said:

can someone tell my why on my unraid its only using c3 states and not 6,7, 8,9 ,10? i enabled all in the bios. my cpu is 10600T

 

 

Mine uses C6 states as well. Might be one of your dockets or schedulers that is keeping it from using the C6 state.

also if the array is stopped, c3 is max state

18 hours ago, M2k said:

unraid its only using c3 states

Any extension cards installed? Which board and what did you connect to it?

@mgutt

the mainboard is an Asrock Z490M-ITX/ac. Usb devices are Logitech Unified Reciver for the K400r, Conbee II stick, Kingston 32gb USB with Unraid. Nvidia gtx 1050ti with connected Monitor and dummy plug and Onboard Intel HD630 with connected monitor -> both using the same monitor with a HDMI Switch (powered with usb) Monitor is most times off and not used. 2x Viper VPN100 1TB for the Cache and 3x WDC for the pool.

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 20214 yr by M2k

It's simple: You can't reach a lower state with so much components. The dGPU alone prevents it.

ok thank you.

 

Merry Christmas🌲

On 10/21/2020 at 1:05 PM, mgutt said:

iGPU

Install the iGPU driver plugin through unRAID Apps if your CPU has an iGPU.

 

CPU governor

Use the tips & tweaks Plugin to set the CPU governor to "powersave"

Which plugin do you mean for the iGPU? Should I use this in my go file?

# -------------------------------------------------
# Enable hardware transcoding on intel
# -------------------------------------------------
modprobe i915

 

And is Power Save really the best option? This is the suggestion of the Tips & Tweaks plugin: It is recommended you use the 'Performance' Governor for best performance and power savings

25 minutes ago, JonasH said:

Which plugin do you mean for the iGPU?

It's in the unRAID Apps. No need to edit the Go file.

 

27 minutes ago, JonasH said:

Tips & Tweaks plugin: It is recommended you use the 'Performance' Governor for best performance and power savings

This is wrong. Tested it with several users in the German subforums. 

Hi,

My CPU doesn't want to go under the C3 state.

 

I have an i3-10100 with a MSI MAG B460 TORPEDO motherboard. There are no PCI devices connected and I changed the CPU Governor setting is placed on "Power Save"

I also changed the following in the BIOS:

Is there something I'm missing to get to the lower C-states? I also installed the Intel GPU TOP plugin.

 

Thanks

 

1 hour ago, vincentvriends said:

My CPU doesn't want to go under the C3 state.

Powertop is too old to display correct values for your CPU. 

9 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Powertop is too old to display correct values for your CPU. 

Is there maybe another tool available in the Nerdtools plugin to show the correct values for the newer CPU’s?

11 hours ago, mgutt said:

It's in the unRAID Apps. No need to edit the Go file.

 

I get no output on the monitor with this app. The boot is shown normal, but only a black screen when there should be a login. I tried with Uefi and Legacy. 

 

Before the plugin i was able to boot into gui with legacy. Uefi had the same problem with the blank screen, but it was displaying a blinking cursor. I was able to fix this with modprobe i915. 

With the app there is only a black screen. 

47 minutes ago, JonasH said:

With the app there is only a black screen. 

Support Thread:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/92865-support-ich777-amd-vendor-reset-coraltpu-hpsahba/

On 1/24/2022 at 7:57 PM, vincentvriends said:

Is there maybe another tool available in the Nerdtools plugin to show the correct values for the newer CPU’s?

Post here if you find something, I am also on 10100 and was freaking out that after changing bios settings my output looks like this:

 

Hi,

 

Thanks for this thread. I followed it and managed to get my CPU to start using C2 and C3 states, but I can't get it to go any higher than that. Would you be able to help?

 

Spec:

Intel Pentium G6405

8GB 2666 RAM x 1

2 x 8TB WD Red

1 x SATA SSD

MSI B560-A PRO on latest BIOS

No dGPU

No PCI-e cards

I only have 1 docker container for SABNZBD. No VMs.

 

1 hour ago, Skilid said:

managed to get my CPU to start using C2 and C3 states, but I can't get it to go any higher than that.

Did you set anything in the BIOS and if yes, which options?

 

Do you execute powetop --auto-tune or the commands?

 

We need much more input

23 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Did you set anything in the BIOS and if yes, which options?

 

Do you execute powetop --auto-tune or the commands?

 

We need much more input

I have enabled everything I can see in the BIOS. I have similar options to a post above, and have all the same settings. See image below.

 

Yes, I followed your guide and executed powertop --auto-tune.- I haven't run any other commands.

 

 

See some other screenshots from powertop attached. Please let me know what other info you need

 

Will I see much more of a power saving going higher than C3?

 

Thanks!