Power hungry home server

[Therkelsen]

Hey guys

 

I recently repurposed some old parts into a home server, from which I plan to host Jellyfin and probably Nextcloud or Owncloud.

 

Specs:

• PSU: Be Quiet 500W 80+ Bronze
• Mobo: ASUS z-97 p
• CPU: Intel i5-4690
• RAM: Kingston 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• GPU: Asus GeForce RTX 2070 Dual
• OS: Ubuntu Server 22.04.3 LTS
• Boot drive: Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB 2.5” SSD

 

At first, I had the latest desktop version of Ubuntu, and in the first three days of having it running, I noticed roughly a 4 kWh/day increase in power usage.

I have the numbers from my power supplier, taking the average from the 1st to the 8th of December and comparing that to the 9th to the 13th (yesterday):

1-8: (7,89+7,03+8,77+6,83+6,29+7,49+6,76+5,09)/8 ≈ 7 kWh

9-13: (14,04+10,46+9,44+9,82+11,65)/5 ≈ 11 kWh

 

Things I've already done:

• Installed a server image instead of a desktop image, since I only used the terminal anyway.
• Ran: $ sudo powertop --auto-tune
• Installed and enabled tlp
• Limited my CPU clock to 80% of max by running: $ sudo cpufreq-set -u 2.8Ghz

When I get my HDD installed, I'm planning to set the spin-down timeout to 20 minutes or so with: $ sudo hdparm -S 240 /dev/sdX

I have the GPU installed to transcode things for Jellyfin.

 

What are some other things I could do to reduce the power draw of the server, both when in use and especially when idling? Any tips are welcome!

 

I've attached screenshots from the “Overview” and “Tunables” tabs of powertop.

 

-- UPDATE -- I pulled the GPU which helped tons, but the CPU doesn't so quick sync so that kind of ruins the purpose. Now I'll try using a NUC I found in my old electronics. Thank you for the inputs

Edited December 15, 2023 by Therkelsen

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you have a wall power meter, those are great at helping here. 4kwh is useless without a time period.

 

Are you using that 2070? Id take it out and use the iGPU should save you a good amount of power.

 

 

[Therkelsen]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a wall power meter, those are great at helping here. 4kwh is useless without a time period.

 

Are you using that 2070? Id take it out and use the iGPU should save you a good amount of power.

 

 

Oh, my bad! I meant to say a 4 kWh increase per day. 

 

I was planning to use the GPU for transcoding for the Jellyfin service.

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, Therkelsen said:

Oh, my bad! I meant to say a 4 kWh increase per day. 

 

I was planning to use the GPU for transcoding for the Jellyfin service.

You can use the iGPU for transcoding, and it should have similar transcoding abilities at much less power draw.

 

4kwh per day is about 160w on average, seems a bit high for this system. A wall power meter is likely gonna be much better at giving accuracy here.

 

Does this system have drives? Which ones?

 

[Therkelsen]

34 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can use the iGPU for transcoding, and it should have similar transcoding abilities at much less power draw.

 

4kwh per day is about 160w on average, seems a bit high for this system. A wall power meter is likely gonna be much better at giving accuracy here.

 

Does this system have drives? Which ones?

 

I'll give the iGPU a try then. I assume that there is one in the CPU I'm using, since you're mentioning it?

 

I don't have one, sadly. I have the numbers from my power supplier, taking the average from the 1st to the 8th of December and comparing that to the 9th to the 13th (yesterday):

1-8: (7,89+7,03+8,77+6,83+6,29+7,49+6,76+5,09)/8 ≈ 7 kWh

9-13: (14,04+10,46+9,44+9,82+11,65)/5 ≈ 11 kWh

That's why I said 4 kWh  

 

Also, nah, not yet; it just has the boot SSD for now. But it will have an 8 TB HDD soon.

[unijab]

You could save some energy on getting a gold rated ( or better ) PSU

 

Would cost more upfront but would eventually pay for itself.

 

 

[m9x3mos]

I would also check to ensure c states are enabled and working. If they are you should see the clock speed dip when not in use. While the system is idle or shouldn't draw that much power.

[Sjaakie]

This is still without HDD's? Look very high indeed. Update bios, turn off all unneeded features like HD audio, usb-ports, unused sata ports etc. Maybe apply a power limit for the cpu directly in bios.

 

Do you really need transcoding? Ditch the gpu if possible. If you're only streaming locally I'd just use filetypes that your clients can play directly.

 

My ancient xeon server runs at 50 watts / 1.2 kw per day average with 3 HDD's constantly spinning.

 

Are you sure you can attribute the 4kw to the server?

[Needfuldoer]

First, get a wall power meter like a Kill-a-Watt. That will tell you exactly how much power it's drawing.

 

That 2070 is the low hanging fruit. Remove it and use the integrated Quick Sync Video transcoding built into your CPU. 

 

Is there anything that's constantly hitting the CPU? I'd expect less power draw than that for a relatively simple computer...

[Therkelsen]

12 hours ago, unijab said:

You could save some energy on getting a gold rated ( or better ) PSU

 

Would cost more upfront but would eventually pay for itself.

 

 

This was a consideration as well for me, something like a 500W seasonic gold or platinum rated PSU. Thanks.

[Therkelsen]

10 hours ago, m9x3mos said:

I would also check to ensure c states are enabled and working. If they are you should see the clock speed dip when not in use. While the system is idle or shouldn't draw that much power.

3 hours ago, Sjaakie said:

This is still without HDD's? Look very high indeed. Update bios, turn off all unneeded features like HD audio, usb-ports, unused sata ports etc. Maybe apply a power limit for the cpu directly in bios.

 

Do you really need transcoding? Ditch the gpu if possible. If you're only streaming locally I'd just use filetypes that your clients can play directly.

 

My ancient xeon server runs at 50 watts / 1.2 kw per day average with 3 HDD's constantly spinning.

 

Are you sure you can attribute the 4kw to the server?

41 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

First, get a wall power meter like a Kill-a-Watt. That will tell you exactly how much power it's drawing.

 

That 2070 is the low hanging fruit. Remove it and use the integrated Quick Sync Video transcoding built into your CPU. 

 

Is there anything that's constantly hitting the CPU? I'd expect less power draw than that for a relatively simple computer...

Last night, I enabled more aggressive C states in the BIOS and sacked both the GPU and the Wi-Fi card that I wasn't using anyway.

 

And yeah, other people have recommended that I get a watt meter as well, so I can get a valid data source. Thanks

[10leej]

So the easiest solution here is to ditch the nvidia gpu and just make use the quicksync encoder on  the i5 cpu.

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/80810/intel-core-i54690-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-90-ghz/specifications.html

 

The on die media accelerator on the intel cpu is pretty robust and honestly for 1080p it's more than enough, the only time youll really need the nvidia GPU isd when your trying to transcode down multiple 4k video files for the on the fly transcoding.

 

But really if you want to save on the power afterwards, get on a more modern CPU platform. The Haswell era cpu is powerful for home server use still yes, but it's 22nm architecture and 84watt TDP means it's just less efficient.

And upgrading to at least a 10th gen CPU will get you more power savings than even a HDD to SSD swap can depending on how much you push the CPU load over time.