Power consumption of E5v2 FreeNAS system vs E-2100

[Weapon]

I have an older Xeon E5-1620 and X9SRM as my FreeNAS platform. I haven't done any testing to isolate exactly how much power just the MB/CPU is using but I noticed the system as a whole is idling at almost 300 watts.

This is in a Supermicro SC846 with 920W platinum PSU and 24x WD 8TB Red/White drives.

Does anyone else have a similar setup and if so how much power is it using? I'm thinking of moving to a Xeon E-2100 setup but it will be a very high upfront cost primarily due to the high price of DDR4 memory.

Any other input or advice would be appreciated.

 

[T_Minus]

Depends how much your system idles... with 24x 8TB RED that's most of your power

Now going from E5 v1 to E3 v3 you save 50-60w at idle... not much when you're using over 200w from hard drives but a good amount depending on power.

I wouldn't pay for E-2100 and DDR4, I would go E3 V3 with DDR3 RAM still way more than RDIMM, but not nearly as much up front cost.

I went from E5 V3 to E3 V3 for my home all in one\storage.

For my faster 'work' storage I'm testing E5-1650 V3, I expect it to idle 50w higher if not 60-70w higher, but the increased RAM capacity is worth it for running some other VMs at the same time, my home stuff is mostly idle\not in use so it was just literally wasting power and creating heat.

I'd say it really depends on how you use it

 

[marcoi]

I run FreeNas as a VM on a dell r720 system. Actually run 2 FreeNas VMs, each with their own sas3 raid card (one internal for sas3 ssd vm pool with 8 drives and one for external to SM 16bay sas3 3.5hdd 3u jbod unit. The dell running with 256GB Ram, dual e5-2680v2 cpus, intel optane 900 aic and various other cards,ssd drives etc and it averages between 180-200 watts, and the SM jbod with about 10 drives (8x8TB) runs about 125Watts. I dont know what the SM jbod runs without drives. but my system way more then yours and im around 300 watts. I also have 8 home prod VMs running on that server.

I agree with @T_Minus suggestion, go with a e5-2600 v2-v3 system. I am actually waiting for a used dell r730xd with dual e5-2680v3 and 256GB ram to show up so i can move another v2 system to my for sale thread. If your still looking in a week or two for a solution ill try to post some numbers of that system idling without any add-ons so you have a comparison.

 

[Weapon]

First, small correction. My current CPU is a E5-1620v2.

From the WD spec sheet I calculated about 127 watts for 24x 8TB drives. I believe the system was idling around 280 watts so that would put the platform itself around 150 watts which is fairly inline with the few comparisons I found online. I also have a X540-T2 NIC, IBM M1015, 2x S3500 SSDs, and 3x Noctua 3,000 RPM fans in the system.

I don’t want to go to an E3v3 platform because they only support up to 32GB of RAM. And with 192TB of storage I’d be concerned with performance impact.

Another option is to repurpose my main workstation board that is getting upgraded. It is a X10SRA and E5-1650v4 which I would downgrade to a 1620v4.

I would like to do some testing myself this weekend and get some real numbers on the power usage of each platform without any drives attached.

On a side note, I’m seeing DDR4 ECC UDIMM 16GB modules around $100, does that sound about right? Not nearly as many cheap server pulls like the RDIMMs.

 

[gregsachs]

FWIW, my 2x e5-2650v2 intel s2600gz box hovers around 160w according to ipmi. It has 4x ssd and 2x 2.5" sata drives, plus a 2.5" 10k sas drive and a lsi 9286cv-8e board.

 

[marcoi]

Im not sure the costs of ddr4 16GB ram, but i was able to source a used dell r730xd 24x 2.5 bay with 16x16GB DDR4-2133 memory and dual e5-2680v3 cpu for 2230 shipped. Thats 256GB Ram with room to expand by another 8 slots of memory. I dont know how much memory you want/need or what your budget is. but figured i share.

 

[Weapon]

Update: I fired up the E5-1620v2 without any drives, backplane, controller cards, etc. Just a few low speed fans. Idle power draw was only 90 watts. So based on that, it's not cost effective to spend $500 on a X11SCL-F, i3-9100, and 64GB DDR4.

55 watt difference, 24 hours a day, at $0.12/kWh = $58/year

I did take the opportunity to update my BIOS, disable hyperthreading and enable any power saving features that weren't already on.