Weird issues with Supermicro X12 motherboard

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c0nnected

New Member
Feb 23, 2024
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Hi,
I recently bought supermicro board X12SDV-8C-SPT8F to act as my opnsense firewall and also as plex server (transcoding wasn't priority).
Since I wanted something with lower power usage after receiving my board I started checking power usage which was quite high 85w in idle in proxmox for entire platform (5x 80mm fans on low rpm, 2 memory sticks and 2 nvme drives, power supply is be quiet! pure power 11 400w 80+ gold) however setting CPU governor in proxmox to power save mode allowed me to drop power usage to ~50w at idle (still quite high but better than it used to be).
Then I turned off entire thing so only IPMI was up and that's probably the biggest surprise as it drew 12.5-13w I thought it's quite high so I decided to update IPMI and bios as well to see if it helps with power usage, but unfortunately it didn't IPMI power usage and entire platform didn't change so I called a day and turned off server (IPMI was up and running).
On the next day I started organizing cables inside chassis and power supply was warm, which was a bit weird since it was off for the last 12h+ then I touched CPU heatsink and it was even warmer than PSU, I checked ASPEED chip on board which is responsible for IPMI and it was cooler than cpu heatsink and PSU (but not completely cold). I don't want to remove CPU heatsink, but I don't think there is anything related to IPMI underneath to make it this warm. I decided to investigate it more as I also have another supermicro motherboard X10DRH-C with ASPEED chip (its a bit older 2400 vs 2600 on the new board) so first I checked if PSU (Corsair 750w) or cpus are warm to touch and they are not, psu, cpu, and other components are cold, only ASPEED chip had similar temperature to the one on the new board, but also the big difference was power usage, for X10 it's only ~3.6w.
Is it normal that IPMI on this new board draw almost 4 times more than IPMI on the older board? Any idea why IPMI makes cpu heatsink warm (some current flowing nearby to the IPMI(?))? Is there any other way to decrease power usage for IPMI and at idle on this new board because I honestly expected lower power usage as I have old PC with intel 6500t and gtx1080 and it uses 45w at idle.
 

RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
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Then I turned off entire thing so only IPMI was up and that's probably the biggest surprise as it drew 12.5-13w I thought it's quite high
BMC(ASPEED) and chipset is drawing power (chipset is in the CPU SoC)
if the PSU has 60% effiziency in the +5VSB rail this value is possible,
 

c0nnected

New Member
Feb 23, 2024
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Did you enable all the low power states in bios?
What exact setting you are talking bout as there are quite a few power states in bios.

BMC(ASPEED) and chipset is drawing power (chipset is in the CPU SoC)
if the PSU has 60% effiziency in the +5VSB rail this value is possible,
And why chipset should be drawing power? Also why it's so different compared to X10 with older ASPEED?
 

rtech

Active Member
Jun 2, 2021
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How old is the power supply?
Some servers have power profiles in BIOS balanced/maxperformance/powersaving
 

c0nnected

New Member
Feb 23, 2024
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chipset polls power button and starts system if you press em. WOL and so on...
Well but thats crazy small amount of power that will never be able to make the heatsink warm

WOL and so on...
Thats interesting point as I guess because of WOL it probably delivers power to all network controllers that I have increasing power usage, will check that tomorrow

How old is the power supply?
Some servers have power profiles in BIOS balanced/maxperformance/powersaving
It's brand new
This one also has power profile however changing that didn't help it was still drawing exactly the same amount of power, only changing CPU governor in proxmox was able to influence power usage, I guess software overwrites what bios do.
 

c0nnected

New Member
Feb 23, 2024
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but the heatsink is warm right ?
any light raying on it ?
nope, not a chance for any sun or things like that warming up heatsink

if you measured 12.5-13w its 10Watts for other parts than BMC.
i think 10 watts can HS make warm.
Ok because I think we didn't understand each other, I meant that power used to probe power buttons is too small to cause heatsink to warm up. The 10w extra that is consumed by something is definitely enough to make heatsink warm since there is 0 airflow when the system is off.

Thats interesting point as I guess because of WOL it probably delivers power to all network controllers that I have increasing power usage, will check that tomorrow
So I disabled WOL on all network interfaces and power usage is the same, any other ideas what can be drawing power?
 

RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
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but its possible your processor don't turn completely of. new board ?
check with other PSU ?