Reduce power consumption of Gigabyte Sniper 5 Intel Z87 / i7 4770K

[Jinu]

Hi Folks

I am using my old motherboard/CPU for running a local NAS. However its power consumption at the wall socket under idle conditions is about 150W. I brought this down to 127W by switching off Audio and the Killer ethernet controller. But i want to bring it down further. 

I was never keen on overclocking so dont understand the intricacies or combinations involved in that. I have heard that undervolting and marginally reducing CPU clock can lead to significant savings in Power and Thermals.

 

Any ideas or suggestions on what all parameters i can adjust to reduce the power consumption. The aims is to get it below 100W

[FakeFBI]

10 minutes ago, Jinu said:

Hi Folks

I am using my old motherboard/CPU for running a local NAS. However its power consumption at the wall socket under idle conditions is about 150W. I brought this down to 127W by switching off Audio and the Killer ethernet controller. But i want to bring it down further. 

I was never keen on overclocking so dont understand the intricacies or combinations involved in that. I have heard that undervolting and marginally reducing CPU clock can lead to significant savings in Power and Thermals.

 

Any ideas or suggestions on what all parameters i can adjust to reduce the power consumption. The aims is to get it below 100W

just underclock it, its not hard, set oc multiplier down, and then the voltage, if crashes up it or down the voltage, boom thats how to get 100w

[AdvocateOfNyx]

6 minutes ago, ComputerBuilder said:

just underclock it, its not hard, set oc multiplier down, and then the voltage, if crashes up it or down the voltage, boom thats how to get 100w

It is relatively easy, but if you've never overclocked before it can be a nightmare.  I had a ton of trouble my first time around (which was very recently) and accidentally ran my CPU at extremely high voltage for no reason whatsoever.  I'd definitely suggest looking up a guide on how to undervolt for your specific architecture/motherboard BIOS.  If that doesn't exist, you could always look up one for overclocking and turn down the numbers that they turn up.  One other thing I'd 100% do is go to the hardware monitor in your bios and take a picture/screenshot of the default voltages on your CPU.  You can do the same (or just remember) the default clocks.  That should give you a frame of reference for how much you've changed.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Forcing speedstep to be at 800-1200Mhz Idle?

Both Min and Max % in Power settings to 5%..

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are the full specs?

 

Are c states on? How long is it spending in the off c state?

 

 

HOw much power is the cpu using?

 

2 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Forcing speedstep to be at 800-1200Mhz Idle?

Both Min and Max % in Power settings to 5%..

 

15 minutes ago, ComputerBuilder said:

just underclock it, its not hard, set oc multiplier down, and then the voltage, if crashes up it or down the voltage, boom thats how to get 100w

Underclocking really won't help much here, as the cpu should basically off at idle anyways, so it won't even be running at a clock speed.

[FakeFBI]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are the full specs?

 

Are c states on? How long is it spending in the off c state?

 

 

HOw much power is the cpu using?

 

 

Underclocking really won't help much here, as the cpu should basically off at idle anyways, so it won't even be running at a clock speed.

how else can you put own poer, me dumbass

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, ComputerBuilder said:

how else can you put own poer, me dumbass

using that much power seems like a config issue, that cpu must be under pretty heavy load or there must be a lot of other stuff in the system.

 

How much power is the cpu using?

[FakeFBI]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

using that much power seems like a config issue, that cpu must be under pretty heavy load or there must be a lot of other stuff in the system.

 

How much power is the cpu using?

ye i was thnking same, how in living poop is he hitting 125w for prob soe tiny server

[Fasauceome]

Disable hyperthreading, if you can live without the multi threaded flexing of the CPU.

[i_build_nanosuits]

i remember my 4770K i would run at 4.2ghz on all threads with 1.19v on a Z87-G45 msi gaming board...

a good starting point if you don't need all the performance would be to further lower the clock to say 3.5ghz and test with like 1.1v and test for stability, at this point the CPU should already be pulling much less power than stock settings, heck even my 4.2ghz OC was pulling about the same or less than stock. i believe if i'm not mistaken the default voltage on my cpu core with default settings would be around 1.28v in Hwinfo64..which obviously was way too much.

[Jinu]

Wow so many responses.. but sorry dont understand some of the lingo. Thanks for the guidance. Before i go ahead i will give full config

- Motherboard - Gigabyte Sniper 5 Intel Z87

- CPU - i7 4700K

- RAM - 4 x 8GB 

- HDD - 8 x 6TB Toshiba enterprise drive

- SSD - 2 x 256GB SSD

- 10G network Card (Intel)

- Corsair H100 AIO

- 3 120mm case Fans to cool the Harddisks

- 2 80mm case fans as exhaust (server 4U chasis)

-650W Corsair PSU

- OS - TRUE NAS (FreeBSD based)

 

Ok now what i did is reduce CPU multiplier to 30 from 35. But it does not allow me to change Vcore. It is kept as Auto and the value is shown against it is 0.985V

This allows my power consumption to reach at idle is still about 126W

 

Also please note power consumption i am talking about is the value at the wall socket for the whole PC.

 

[Mick Naughty]

Given the parts used, don’t see it going too low. 
I know my board gives me a lot of options for power saving. Especially in the board software in windows.