Thought/ Build Experiment - What is the lowest power draw Plex capable NAS?

[GhostRoadieBL]

So I had this thought the other day while tinkering with my TrueNAS server, how low power draw could someone make a NAS? can it be built to be portable enough to travel so I can local stream media and back-up photos on holidays?

 

To start this thought experiment we'll need some parameters:

- Must have redundant storage in a practical capacity (10TB+ seems like a good amount)

- Minimum capable to perform 4k to 1080p encoding (no point being limited to full quality streams)

- Extra points for portability (seems useful to carry around a WAN file server)

These parameters resulted in quite a few more questions,

What is the lowest power draw storage?
HDD - Ironwolf Pro's run 6-7.9W per drive - Min 2 drives for 10TB

Sata SSD - 4-9W per drive - Min 4 drives at 4TB per drive to hit 12TB redundant Raid-Z1
NVME - 3-10W per drive - same as Sata but limits the processors and size of the NAS to desktop hardware

 

The NVME port on most laptops does serve a dual purpose with options for drive interfaces being limited. https://www.amazon.ca/Adapter-Expansion-Function-Computers-Accessories/dp/B09NSQLMGK style M.2 to 5x Sata adapters would run 4x Sata SSDs with a hot spare should a drive fail somewhere you can't get a replacement.

 

How much processor power makes sense?

obviously Plex takes some extra power for multi-stream encoding but single streams/original quality run on a potato, problem with potatoes is they are inefficient compared to modern gen cores,

so far I have come up with Framework Mainboard i5-1340P at 28-64Watts 4+8 cores (plenty of power for encoding a ton of streams even when underclocking the hell out of it)
https://frame.work/ca/en/products/mainboard-13th-gen-intel-core

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232126/intel-core-i51340p

- there currently aren't many cases of undervolting 13th gen laptop CPUs but there was a user who undervolted the 13600k taking the power consumption from 180W to 145W. That's a 20% drop in power consumption (which is completely unrealistic for a laptop CPU but shows 13th gen cores CAN be undervolted)

- and the OS may be able to run off an expansion port on the laptop (Yay for swap-able expansion!!)

 

By my math I'm estimating max power draw to be around;

12-40 Watts for HDD or SSDs **I know drives rarely run at max power, this is the worst case estimate**

28-60 Watts for CPU **I know TDP and power consumed are very different, however, for estimating the power draw at max it is near enough**

0.x-5 Watts for RAM

so overall somewhere between 40-105 Watts on the high side not sure how low a single core's power draw would be, no one seems to test single core power draw, only max all core and idle all core.

 

so my build would be:

i5-1340P Mainboard - Framework since it has the expansion and printable case to modify for SSD and Battery attachment

250GB Expansion card for the OS

4x 4TB Crucial MX500 - it wouldn't be cheap but not as delicate as HDDs
add the 61Wh battery for the mainboard to make it portable and one of the pocket routers which run on USB-C can be powered straight from the mainboard
https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/ run Plex on the local network so you don't need to authenticate over the internet for phones/tablets/laptops.
 

 

I know there are some hacky ways to run Plex server on Android which opens up everything from Raspberry Pis and very low power devices but the only reliable way I can find to do this would be the Nvidia Shield which is limited to USB and a single Sata port (also the problem with running an Android based NAS, no PCIe for HBAs or additional drives)

What would you build? have you found any super low power NAS builds more portable than this?

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

What is the lowest power draw storage?
HDD - Ironwolf Pro's run 6-7.9W per drive - Min 2 drives for 10TB

Sata SSD - 4-9W per drive - Min 4 drives at 4TB per drive to hit 12TB redundant Raid-Z1
NVME - 3-10W per drive - same as Sata but limits the processors and size of the NAS to desktop hardware

 

The SSDs idle at much lower power, and will turn back on very quickly. HDDs spindown is needed for very low power idle and the wake up time is pretty long, and normally with a pretty long delay. The SSDs will be much better with power usage.

 

Id get a intel nuc or simmilar. Then you have desktop hardware. Id probably just get a itx board here. Then you get the sata ports on board and its easy to get a case with 4 drive bays. And it will idle at like 20 w or less with like a i3.

 

If you want lowest possible power, Id be tempted to go m1 mac mini or mba. Super low power, much better than 13th gen when under medium/heavy load.

[svmlegacy]

I measured my TrueNAS setup with a Ryzen 5 5600G and 4x HDD's at around 15 - 20 W at the wall, idle power. No idea how it would handle Plex, but certainly I'd think it'd do fine.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Why intel though? Isnt amd better at efficiency? Obviously theyre x cpus are stupid but the non x cpus seem to be very efficient

 

There doesnt seem to be any mention of a gpu but id reckon an rx 6400 would problably be enough, just undervolt the crap out of it. Or wait for the 7000G cpus which will problably take forever to come out =|

[GhostRoadieBL]

38 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id be tempted to go m1 mac mini or mba

the question is how do you get storage attached? would you be finding a USB raid array? M1 and MBA are low power but not redundant or 10TBs.
 

26 minutes ago, svmlegacy said:

Ryzen 5 5600G and 4x HDD's at around 15 - 20 W at the wall, idle power.

I have an 2600X in mine but around 20drives so it's in the 100ish W idle at the wall, with Plex running a stream it's only hitting the system for <40W more than idle on a 12 drive Z2 array.
 

 

28 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Why intel though? Isnt amd better at efficiency? Obviously theyre x cpus are stupid but the non x cpus seem to be very efficient

that's what I was thinking too but I haven't been able to find anything on Ryzen mobile (since the desktop CPUs are 35W min and the majority of 5000G variants are OEM only skus I'd be stuck with 5600G (7600G likely to follow the same core count) so 6 power hungry cores vs intel's 4+8 design should draw less power with half as many "performance" cores and being mobile with more aggressive power targets (less cooling, lower power delivery spec etc)

I wasn't thinking about GPU since even the weakest GPU would likely double the power draw and only really get me more simultaneous streams which the CPU can handle transcoding a 4k to 1080 stream without any issues.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, GhostRoadieBL said:

the question is how do you get storage attached? would you be finding a USB raid array? M1 and MBA are low power but not redundant or 10TBs.

usb or thunderbolt. 

 

Isn't this the same issue with the framework board?

[GhostRoadieBL]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

usb or thunderbolt. 

 

Isn't this the same issue with the framework board?

that's what the M.2 to sata HBA was going to solve, since it can be used as an x4 pcie device, it opens up the storage options to sata SSDs. This would be possible with some of the ITX boards but I can't think of a clean way to use thunderbolt in Raid-Z1 or how to get 10TB of SSD storage. I have seen some thunderbolt M.2 docks with 2 ports but nothing with 4 so I expect you'd have to daisy chain the enclosures or run them on multiple ports which seems unreliable to me if the drives would need to be in an array.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

that's what the M.2 to sata HBA was going to solve, since it can be used as an x4 pcie device, it opens up the storage options to sata SSDs. This would be possible with some of the ITX boards but I can't think of a clean way to use thunderbolt in Raid-Z1 or how to get 10TB of SSD storage. I have seen some thunderbolt M.2 docks with 2 ports but nothing with 4 so I expect you'd have to daisy chain the enclosures or run them on multiple ports which seems unreliable to me if the drives would need to be in an array.

You can get a thunderbolt or usb multi drive array and run all those drives in raidz. They show up to the os as separate drives, so zfs will work fine on them.

 

 

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Why intel though? Isnt amd better at efficiency?

Not for transcoding since intel iGPUs can transcode in hardware with barely any CPU load and low power consumption while AMD's ones aren't supported by Plex and other similar software. For 10TB of redundant storage you can go with 3x 2.5" 5TB Seagates in RAIDz1 if you want HDDs. About 3W each.