Fujitsu TX1320 M3 - Cheap low power server (barebone)

[joeribl]

Probably not - the difference between gold and higher are miniscule we are talking about 4-6% depending on voltage and usage.

The best is to get a power supply and only use at most 50% thats where all of them are most effective.

Obviously if you have 2K powersupply 5% matters, but in a 250W power supply 5% is well not as much - and price difference between gold and above are big, so you really need to be sure you have the correct size PSU first before you start thinking about Gold vs Plat vs Titanium.

So lets take an example - if you have a 250W power supply and only uses 50w you are at 20% usage. So if you save 5% on 50 wats, its not really a big deal (2.5 w)

But if the pico PSU is 100% effective (which its not, then you would save 10% compared to the Gold normal if we go by 90% efficiency @ 20%), which would be 5W saved - which again is not really a lot.

My point is - efficience matters most if you have either:

1. Many servers
2. BIG PSU's with high load

80 Plus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A PICO DC-DC PSU is usually something like 90-160 Watt, fed by a DC poweradapter, so it is much easier to hit the high efficiency part of the curve. It will probably be around 5W idle, depending a bit on the configuration. Indeed it will be only a 50% reduction from the 10W idle figures reported. But for some people it is sort of a sport to get a low as possible (i assume for dbram aswell)

 

[Bjorn Smith]

A PICO DC-DC PSU is usually something like 90-160 Watt, fed by a DC poweradapter, so it is much easier to hit the high efficiency part of the curve. It will probably be around 5W idle, depending a bit on the configuration. Indeed it will be only a 50% reduction from the 10W idle figures reported.

Unless you are in the US, then you still have the power brick that is AC and that needs to get converted into DC for the Pico PSU And not many powerbricks are very efficient - I doubt any are even gold.

 

[joeribl]

Unless you are in the US, then you still have the power brick that is AC and that needs to get converted into DC for the Pico PSU And not many powerbricks are very efficient - I doubt any are even gold.

Yeah obviously the powerbrick is AC (even here in Europe ). But usually they are quite efficient. But even there you have a difference. There is a different standard for those adapters: Efficiency Standards | CUI Inc. A Efficiency VI should hit 80% around 8W.

 

[Bjorn Smith]

Yeah obviously the powerbrick is AC (even here in Europe ). But usually they are quite efficient. But even there you have a difference. There is a different standard for those adapters: Efficiency Standards | CUI Inc. A Efficiency VI should hit 80% around 8W.

My guess is that at the end of the day you will be hard pressed to see any "real" difference when you are already at the low numbers you are

 

[mmk]

Yeah - that is damn annoying that its so expensive - considering its a cheap server - at least supermicro license is fairly cheap. (27 USD) I think fujitsu wants like 350.

It's not such a giant loss. The irmc v4 is pretty lousy and ancient to begin with. Not as disgustingly bad as the Supermicro hw management of that era but not much better either.

 

[mmk]

Ouch. Still waiting for my bargain bin e3-1220 v5 CPU and memory. Will test this also and report back what happened.

Got my v5 and memory today. Exactly same result as with @Bjorn Smith, system starts but never goes any further than the Fujitsu startup screen. Will grab a cheap local pentium chip and see how that goes.

No irmc credentials here either. Had a look at bruteforcing my way in but the progress is so slow (~50 tries per minute) that it's just not worth it.

My system was purchased from a non-ebay seller but I suspect these all came from the same source/sources. Some hosting providers have been at least using the motherboard found in these...

 

[dbram]

Got myself 2x Fujitsu TX1320 M3 bargains, they look nice. ...

So got around a first test:

• 4W poweroff (iRMC enabled)
• 14W idle
• between 20W and 40W during boot
• 64W using 'stress --cpu 8'

Fujitsu Primergy TX1320 M3
Fujitsu Motherboard D3373-B12
Fujitsu powersupply that came with case and motherboard
64GB 16GB x4 Samsung 16GB PC4-2400T EE DDR4 ECC DIMM 288pin
Intel Xeon E3-1230V6 cpu
320GB sata 2.5" harddrive (something that I had lying around)
Proxmox 7.2-11 Linux 5.15.64-1

probably can go lower idle due to the spinning 2.5" hard drive and some further tuning like powertop

 

[Rand__]

which OS might be relevant

 

[joeribl]

So got around a first test:

• 4W poweroff (iRMC enabled)
• 14W idle
• between 20W and 40W during boot
• 64W using 'stress --cpu 8'

Fujitsu Primergy TX1320 M3
Fujitsu Motherboard D3373-B12
Fujitsu powersupply that came with case and motherboard
64GB 16GB x4 Samsung 16GB PC4-2400T EE DDR4 ECC DIMM 288pin
320GB sata 2.5" harddrive (something that I had lying around)
Proxmox 7.2-11 Linux 5.15.64-1

probably can go lower idle due to the spinning 2.5" hard drive and some further tuning like powertop

Did you run a powertop --auto-tune with Proxmox?

 

[dbram]

Did you run a powertop --auto-tune with Proxmox?

Not yet will do it later to check it out …

 

[Bjorn Smith]

So got around a first test:

• 4W poweroff (iRMC enabled)
• 14W idle
• between 20W and 40W during boot
• 64W using 'stress --cpu 8'

What CPU are you testing with?

 

[Rand__]

What CPU are you testing with?

I got some xeon e3 1230v6 cpu's through another combo offering Asus P10S WS + e3 xeon 1230v6 for 99,- eur from a Dutch seller
motherboard is c236 chipset and mb has 4 pcie slots, 2 NGFF m2 slots
I got some remaining i3-6100 and i3-7100 to use on the asus P10S WS boards.

Those presumably

 

[Bjorn Smith]

Those presumably

That is very low numbers - when mine is idle without 10gbps, with a single SATA SSD - it idles @ 40 watts - so perhaps the v6 CPU's are indeed much more power efficient when idling. (Not that our servers idle all the time, but anyway)

 

[Rand__]

Might also be very dependent on OS, but yes, 14W is way less than mine too

 

[dbram]

Those presumably

Indeed tested with an e3-1230v6

And I must say I’m impressed too by these numbers. Wanted to compare with an i3-6100 and i3-7100. But that’s for another day to try out.

someone mentioned that the psu’s resemble a rather efficient 12v new atx spec. The 16pin psu only provides 12v power rails. Not even a 5v standby but an 11v standby. The 5v/3v and lower conversion seem to be done on the motherboard hence the connector for harddrive power comes from the mb and not from the psu directly. if the conversion is done with decent switching converters than it’s understandable that these Fujitsu boards can be more efficient when idle.

 

[Bjorn Smith]

Caddies are hard to come by cheap - so does anyone know if 3d printing is cheaper?

Fujitsu Primergy Server SSD 2.5" Caddy Tray for most new generation Servers by joey193

Just bought a few Fujitsu Servers, trying to develop a ssd tray for the 2,5" bays since mine somehow did not get shipped with them, and worst i could not find them online to insert any other ssd drive to them. with Version 5 everything fits tight and works like charme. added two ssd drives...

www.thingiverse.com

Should be exactly what we need for these servers

 

[joeribl]

Caddies are hard to come by cheap - so does anyone know if 3d printing is cheaper?

Fujitsu Primergy Server SSD 2.5" Caddy Tray for most new generation Servers by joey193

Just bought a few Fujitsu Servers, trying to develop a ssd tray for the 2,5" bays since mine somehow did not get shipped with them, and worst i could not find them online to insert any other ssd drive to them. with Version 5 everything fits tight and works like charme. added two ssd drives...

www.thingiverse.com

Should be exactly what we need for these servers

If I upload the STL file here (no experience with this site) Request CNC machining quotes | Online Manufacturing - PCBWay
It says 45.50 USD for 10, if I didn't make any mistake.

 

[Rand__]

Picked a local random company, cheapest i got was €8.50/1

 

[Bjorn Smith]

If I upload the STL file here (no experience with this site) Request CNC machining quotes | Online Manufacturing - PCBWay
It says 45.50 USD for 10, if I didn't make any mistake.

yes 45 for 10 is not too shabby - I think I might try to order one somewhere "cheap" - and just see if it works, then if it works its always possible to find the best place and best material and order a bunch.

 

[Bjorn Smith]

https://craftcloud3d.com/ has plenty of options - and my guess is that there are a lot of printers so prices are competitive.