Reducing power/heat rebuild questions

[tknx]

I have a Supermicro 846 with X9DRi-LN4F+ motherboard; 80GB of random RAM; 2x2650v2s, and the same cards as listed below. Want to keep the case but reduce power, complexity, heat. Don't need out-of-band management. Don't need redundant PSUs or the rest. Going Intel for Quicksync.

Build Name	Mnemosyne 2.0
OS	Unraid
CPU	i3-10100 (to replace later with 11th gen i5 for better transcoding)
Motherboard	MSI Z490 Tomahawk
Chassis	Supermicro SC846
Drives	8x 6TB HGST
RAM	TEAMGROUP Vulcan Z DDR4 32GB 3200MHz (PC4 25600) CL16
Add-in cards	* Quadro P2000 * LSI 9207-4i4e * Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S 2-port SFP+ 10GbE
Power Supply	be quiet! BN619 Straight Power 11 750W 80 Plus, Gold
Use case	* Mostly Plex 3-4 streams, 4K/HDR/h265 transcoding * Some low power VMs and dockers

Questions:

1. I think I am short PCI-E lanes - correct?
2. Related to that, will Quicksync get me over the hump and not need the Quadro?
3. Where can I shave budget?
- z490 down to a lower chipset? Reduces available PCIe lanes
- Tomahawk to more budget board? Not opposed to doing this since I am not OC'ing - but I have found that OC boards have really good VRM heat management.
- PSU? This is a top rated consumer PSU per the tier list. I want lots of headroom for drives, etc
- CPU? LGA1200 Celerons usually don't include cooler which closes the gap a bit.

 

[BlueFox]

Not sure why you're looking to replace the power supplies in the Supermicro 846. It's a bit of a headache and an arguably unnecessary expense.

1. With that motherboard, not exactly short on PCIe lanes, but slots since that board doesn't have open-ended ones.
2. Potentially if your GPU needs aren't too high. Can always try it without the GPU and get one later.
3. You can definitely get a cheaper motherboard with a lower end chipset. Even B460 will be sufficient as don't forget that you are still getting 16 lanes from the CPU, so that's 32 total with that chipset.

 

[nasi]

I want lots of headroom for drives, etc

That may will mean your PSU is running on low efficiency. Most modern PSUs have their best efficiency (lowest power draw/heat dissipation) at around 50-70% of their maximum power. See picture here: Wirkungsgrad von Schaltnetzteilen
So you would need to know your power draw of CPU and GPU under your actual workload, add up drives and stuff and then choose something which has not to much headroom (but still is capable of having enough power when maxing out your system for short times).
I also would buy something better than 80+ Gold. But "be quiet!" is a good choice.

For comparison: in my still-not-finished Epyc3521 system I've changed a Cougar A400 (400W ATX PSU 80+ Bronze) with an 12V-only 100W PSU from MeanWell. When the system is under synthetic full load (stress-ng) it draws up to 105W with both PSUs but a little bit less energy (Wh) in a 10min stress test with the MeanWell PSU. And when idling I have 42W against 35W. So I have up to 17% less power draw just by changing PSU against something much smaller which fits my needs better.

 

[tknx]

I can leave one of the Supermicro PSUs in place too I suppose.
I would love to know what psu would be better for the money.

I added up a rough power estimate and came to about 50% of capacity but I do plan on changing out the CPU and it depends on whether to keep the Quadro or not.

 

[BlueFox]

If you want more efficient, you can get some Supermicro PWS-501P-R PSUs. I'd expect your system to use about 200w under load, so 500w is plenty even if you populate all 24 drive bays.