Headlines are supposed to be dramatic and only half-truth, right 
After some talk on other threads about power-consumption, AMD, Intel and servers, I thought I'll get some real power numbers on the on-prem servers I usually setup at my customers.
Some questioned the power numbers I've been claiming on those threads, so I got a new power-meter to double check, and then I also did a quick benchmark up against a midsize AWS VM.
Who cares about low-power-consumption if the system don't have power to do any work!?
Server-configuration:
Mobo: SM X11SSM-F with IPMI enabled
CPU: Intel i3-7100 (idle)
RAM: 2 x ECC modules
Fans: 1 x CPU(1000rpm), 1x80mm fan (1000rpm)
Storage: 1 x NVMe HDD
PSU: SM PWS-203-1H, 200W

Power-meter reading, whole system:
Volt: 235,2, Current: 0,09, Power-factor:0,47 = 9,95 watt
With additional 4 x Seagate Barracude Pro 1TB 2.5", spinning, not sleeping = 14,18 watt

(My 2nd and old meter shows the same, I double checked V and A with my Fluke, tested power-factor on non-SMPS equipment etc., I believe the numbers)
And so what, i3 can only be used to run a clock-radio?
Benchmark:
A quick and dirty VM benchmark, Win Srv 2016, using WinSat tool:
VM 1: My above humble server, KVM VM with 2 CPU assigned
VM 2: AWS, t2.medium, Xeon CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40Ghhz, 2xCPU
CPU LZW compression:
VM1: 319,78 MB/s
VM2: 232,00 MB/s
CPU AES256 Encryption:
VM1: 1.604,07 MB/s
VM2: 607,83 MB/s
Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption:
VM1: 801,37 MB/s
VM2: 358.09 MB/s
Memory performance:
VM 1: 29.168 MB/s
VM 2: 24.921 MB/s
I was only running default out-of-the-box KVM/QEMU CPU/memory settings, so there should be some room for improvement. You can bet that AWS's hypervisors are top-optimized.
On the other hand I admit I didn't manually apply any Intel CPU vulnerability mitigation (host running Debian 10, I don't know if some/all are enabled by default).
Conclusion:
I can only repeat myself from other threads: If your server-use-case is a std. business server (KVM host, Win AD, storage, web, mail, SQL, etc, even with multiple Win10 VMs for RDP MS-Office sessions), don't ditch "small" CPUs just because. This CPU has never come short in any of my installations.
What I see out there is many people buying overkill CPU's for their servers, and it's a shame. It hurt the power-bill and the climate environment for no reasons. Of course it depends of use-case!
But how many servers in the world are using overkill CPU's wasting tremendous amount of power? One can only guess, but it think it's a BIG problem that should be addressed.
Not to mention those power-hungry SAS controllers. They use almost same power in idle than my whole server (mobo, chipset, PSU). That's insane! Again, it all depend of use-case, but don't use it just because. MDadm RAID will do the job fine in many cases, and in some even better.
Intel CPU vulnerabilities (spectra, meltdown etc). is another story. But the newer i3 (8100,8300,9100,9100F) are without Hyperthread, that should help some I guess.
After some talk on other threads about power-consumption, AMD, Intel and servers, I thought I'll get some real power numbers on the on-prem servers I usually setup at my customers.
Some questioned the power numbers I've been claiming on those threads, so I got a new power-meter to double check, and then I also did a quick benchmark up against a midsize AWS VM.
Who cares about low-power-consumption if the system don't have power to do any work!?
Server-configuration:
Mobo: SM X11SSM-F with IPMI enabled
CPU: Intel i3-7100 (idle)
RAM: 2 x ECC modules
Fans: 1 x CPU(1000rpm), 1x80mm fan (1000rpm)
Storage: 1 x NVMe HDD
PSU: SM PWS-203-1H, 200W

Power-meter reading, whole system:
Volt: 235,2, Current: 0,09, Power-factor:0,47 = 9,95 watt
With additional 4 x Seagate Barracude Pro 1TB 2.5", spinning, not sleeping = 14,18 watt



(My 2nd and old meter shows the same, I double checked V and A with my Fluke, tested power-factor on non-SMPS equipment etc., I believe the numbers)
And so what, i3 can only be used to run a clock-radio?
Benchmark:
A quick and dirty VM benchmark, Win Srv 2016, using WinSat tool:
VM 1: My above humble server, KVM VM with 2 CPU assigned
VM 2: AWS, t2.medium, Xeon CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40Ghhz, 2xCPU
CPU LZW compression:
VM1: 319,78 MB/s
VM2: 232,00 MB/s
CPU AES256 Encryption:
VM1: 1.604,07 MB/s
VM2: 607,83 MB/s
Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption:
VM1: 801,37 MB/s
VM2: 358.09 MB/s
Memory performance:
VM 1: 29.168 MB/s
VM 2: 24.921 MB/s
I was only running default out-of-the-box KVM/QEMU CPU/memory settings, so there should be some room for improvement. You can bet that AWS's hypervisors are top-optimized.
On the other hand I admit I didn't manually apply any Intel CPU vulnerability mitigation (host running Debian 10, I don't know if some/all are enabled by default).
Conclusion:
I can only repeat myself from other threads: If your server-use-case is a std. business server (KVM host, Win AD, storage, web, mail, SQL, etc, even with multiple Win10 VMs for RDP MS-Office sessions), don't ditch "small" CPUs just because. This CPU has never come short in any of my installations.
What I see out there is many people buying overkill CPU's for their servers, and it's a shame. It hurt the power-bill and the climate environment for no reasons. Of course it depends of use-case!
But how many servers in the world are using overkill CPU's wasting tremendous amount of power? One can only guess, but it think it's a BIG problem that should be addressed.
Not to mention those power-hungry SAS controllers. They use almost same power in idle than my whole server (mobo, chipset, PSU). That's insane! Again, it all depend of use-case, but don't use it just because. MDadm RAID will do the job fine in many cases, and in some even better.
Intel CPU vulnerabilities (spectra, meltdown etc). is another story. But the newer i3 (8100,8300,9100,9100F) are without Hyperthread, that should help some I guess.
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