Undervolt an old CPU (i7 980X) for a NAS build

[macromaster]

Hello!

 

I need a new NAS and cannot afford to buy a new Synology one.

 

I was planning to repurpose my 10+ years old PC for that end. It's a core i7 980X with 12gb of ram.

 

Everything seemed to be going according to plan except when I compared the power consumption of my old PC with my current Synology NAS. I'm going from 10W with the Synology one to 90W with my old PC.

This ain't something I can afford on my electricity bill.

 

Do you think it should be possible to undervolt my CPU in order to reach, let's say, 10 to 30W of power consumption?

Would it harm the CPU or completely compromise it in this scenario?

NAS is used as a Plex server and data storage overall. 1 to 2 users access.

Thank you for your input on the subject.

 

[Zando_]

It might be. Since you have the hardware it's likely worth trying at least, I've never tried with my X58 gear so I don't know how much further you can drop voltage and how power draw scales with that. I'd assume it won't get much lower than the normal idle voltage, so there won't be much power savings at idle/low load, which is where a NAS CPU will be most of the time.

[Electronics Wizardy]

If you got the hardware, why not try it. Also try lowering the max clock speed of the chip.

 

But in a nas the cpu is normally idle, and turned off, so the cores are using very little power. Much of the power is used by other things like drives, ram, nics, chipsets, and more.

[Zando_]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

But in a nas the cpu is normally idle, and turned off, so the cores are using very little power.

Compared to load, yeah. But this is HEDT, which draws a lot of power even when idle, and old HEDT which is even more power hungry at idle.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Zando_ said:

Compared to load, yeah. But this is HEDT, which draws a lot of power even when idle, and old HEDT which is even more power hungry at idle.

The system is more powerhungry at idels, but the cpu cores are pulling very little of that power. Since undervolting only lowers power of the cpu core, there isn't much power usage in the cpu to reduce.

[freeagent]

You will never get X58 to be kind to the polar bears.

[macromaster]

Alright.

I guess I’ll try it out and see what kind of results I can achieve.

Any benchmark to launch to test out the stability of the system? Windows 8 is still installed so I can try out a thing or two