Just posting here for others who might be interested in getting the same hardware. Couldn't find much info so here it goes.
Purpose: all-in-one home server with virtualization and relatively fault-tolerant file storage.
My requirements are: low price, 4 cores (speed not that important), ECC, >4 SATA drive capacity, low power draw (Germany is now >0.40ct/KWh!), not noisy
Found the Fujitsu Primergy TX1330 M1 with 32 GB ECC and a 4c 8t E3-1231 v3, DS2607 SAS controller (LSI SAS2008 based) and 2x450w PSU for €125 delivered.
Idle power draw is a major concern as every 10 watts costs over 35 euros per year- making new, more efficient hardware pay off quickly.
The power adventure
Initial impressions were not that good- the IRMC (on-board remote management) cannot be turned off (i found no way?) and pulls about 5 watts.
Once turned on and idling, the machine without disks consumes 30-40 watts.
Pulling the SAS controller immediately reduced power consumption by 10 watts. Surprising how much power these things suck just idling. Very wasteful silicon design.
The motherboard also has 1 mini-sas port which supplies 4 SATA ports, and there are two normal SATA plugs on the mainboard as well.
I pulled the hungry SAS controller, connected one half of the 8 port backplane (which has 2 minisas connectors) to the motherboard minisas.
After connecting my 4 2.5" 7200 1TB Hitachi laptop drives to the backplane, and adding 2 SSDs internally, power draw is at about 29-32 watts idle with disks spinning.
After running powertop --auto-tune i could reduce this further down to 25-23 - which is satisfactory for me.
Pulling the fans
The server by itself is not too noisy at all. But why not make it better
. The below is not recommended for any serious operation ;-)
Interestingly the IRMC has a setting to limit the power draw- this seems to throttle the CPU to keep system draw below specified levels. (Power consumption--> Consumption options--> Power Limit).
With the lowest limit (27w) I pulled off the entire system fan and let the box run for a day. On that setting the CPU temp never jumped above 41c (full load!) passively cooled. However- performance is miserable on that setting.
Instead i ended up limiting power to 60 watt- and screwed on a large, old CPU fan to the cooler, and connected it to the 5V rail for a low spin. This makes almost zero noise and the CPU stays below 47c on full load.
You CANNOT pull the fan if you want to use the SAS controller- as it needs to get rid of 10 watts it will cook without airflow!
As the entire machine draw is now limited to ~50 watt (60 watt IRMC == 50 watt wall) I decided to play around with one of the PSU fan. I pulled the FAN. If the PSU has to provide 50 watt peaks and is mostly below 30 watts- and assuming 80% efficiency it only has to dissipate around 6 watts of heat; this should be fine passively I -expect-.
Running a stress test at continuous 50 watt i could not get the PSU internal temperature above 72c- this should still be within normal tolerance. I would not try this with continuous > 30 watt operation.
I did some calculations- and for normal use lowering the power limit will not get you much better efficiency- processes will take longer and the CPU ends up spending more time on higher power levels instead of shorter bursts- whilst giving you a bad experience. Also, idle power draw is not better when setting a power limit.
Somewhat limiting it is interesting only for the thermal considerations- especially in the case you have a runaway process or long running job that takes the machine to 100% - you can get away with less cooling if you can control the maximum draw.
Again: Running components passively cooled is not a good idea for long term operation. something will give...
Summary
A lot of fun if you can have this thing for small money. especially considering the 32 gigs of ECC mem. Pull the SAS card to save some power.
The CPU is an older generation but idle draw is still acceptable.
The IRMC is actually pretty cool- even without a license it lets me get into remote console and do power control, BIOS config and OS setup remotely. For the proper KVM console a license is required.
Purpose: all-in-one home server with virtualization and relatively fault-tolerant file storage.
My requirements are: low price, 4 cores (speed not that important), ECC, >4 SATA drive capacity, low power draw (Germany is now >0.40ct/KWh!), not noisy
Found the Fujitsu Primergy TX1330 M1 with 32 GB ECC and a 4c 8t E3-1231 v3, DS2607 SAS controller (LSI SAS2008 based) and 2x450w PSU for €125 delivered.
Idle power draw is a major concern as every 10 watts costs over 35 euros per year- making new, more efficient hardware pay off quickly.
The power adventure
Initial impressions were not that good- the IRMC (on-board remote management) cannot be turned off (i found no way?) and pulls about 5 watts.
Once turned on and idling, the machine without disks consumes 30-40 watts.
Pulling the SAS controller immediately reduced power consumption by 10 watts. Surprising how much power these things suck just idling. Very wasteful silicon design.
The motherboard also has 1 mini-sas port which supplies 4 SATA ports, and there are two normal SATA plugs on the mainboard as well.
I pulled the hungry SAS controller, connected one half of the 8 port backplane (which has 2 minisas connectors) to the motherboard minisas.
After connecting my 4 2.5" 7200 1TB Hitachi laptop drives to the backplane, and adding 2 SSDs internally, power draw is at about 29-32 watts idle with disks spinning.
After running powertop --auto-tune i could reduce this further down to 25-23 - which is satisfactory for me.
Pulling the fans
The server by itself is not too noisy at all. But why not make it better
. The below is not recommended for any serious operation ;-)Interestingly the IRMC has a setting to limit the power draw- this seems to throttle the CPU to keep system draw below specified levels. (Power consumption--> Consumption options--> Power Limit).
With the lowest limit (27w) I pulled off the entire system fan and let the box run for a day. On that setting the CPU temp never jumped above 41c (full load!) passively cooled. However- performance is miserable on that setting.
Instead i ended up limiting power to 60 watt- and screwed on a large, old CPU fan to the cooler, and connected it to the 5V rail for a low spin. This makes almost zero noise and the CPU stays below 47c on full load.
You CANNOT pull the fan if you want to use the SAS controller- as it needs to get rid of 10 watts it will cook without airflow!
As the entire machine draw is now limited to ~50 watt (60 watt IRMC == 50 watt wall) I decided to play around with one of the PSU fan. I pulled the FAN. If the PSU has to provide 50 watt peaks and is mostly below 30 watts- and assuming 80% efficiency it only has to dissipate around 6 watts of heat; this should be fine passively I -expect-.
Running a stress test at continuous 50 watt i could not get the PSU internal temperature above 72c- this should still be within normal tolerance. I would not try this with continuous > 30 watt operation.
I did some calculations- and for normal use lowering the power limit will not get you much better efficiency- processes will take longer and the CPU ends up spending more time on higher power levels instead of shorter bursts- whilst giving you a bad experience. Also, idle power draw is not better when setting a power limit.
Somewhat limiting it is interesting only for the thermal considerations- especially in the case you have a runaway process or long running job that takes the machine to 100% - you can get away with less cooling if you can control the maximum draw.
Again: Running components passively cooled is not a good idea for long term operation. something will give...
Summary
A lot of fun if you can have this thing for small money. especially considering the 32 gigs of ECC mem. Pull the SAS card to save some power.
The CPU is an older generation but idle draw is still acceptable.
The IRMC is actually pretty cool- even without a license it lets me get into remote console and do power control, BIOS config and OS setup remotely. For the proper KVM console a license is required.
