Home server power consumption

[Royt34]

Hello there, I am wondering how efficient I can run a server.

Specs:

MSI B550-A PRO

And 5 3600

128gb ram

 

I am wondering what's the lowest Watt consumption I can reach with a system like this. Thanks in advanced!

[emosun]

9 minutes ago, Royt34 said:

Hello there, I am wondering how efficient I can run a server.

Specs:

MSI B550-A PRO

And 5 3600

128gb ram

 

I am wondering what's the lowest Watt consumption I can reach with a system like this. Thanks in advanced!

it would depend entirely on what load is placed on the hardware

the lowest consumption will be when the machine is idle in the bios with no software or drivers of any type being functional. all hardware consumes minimal power when not functional due to well..... not being functional. even when clocked higher , if the hardware has nothing to do then the clock speed isn't much of a factor.

if you want something efficient  , use a raspberry pi or a laptop/tablet

[Royt34]

8 minutes ago, emosun said:

it would depend entirely on what load is placed on the hardware

the lowest consumption will be when the machine is idle in the bios with no software or drivers of any type being functional. all hardware consumes minimal power when not functional due to well..... not being functional. even when clocked higher , if the hardware has nothing to do then the clock speed isn't much of a factor.

if you want something efficient  , use a raspberry pi or a laptop/tablet

I am having a great deal with a server like that and I am thinking about if I could make use of that opportunity. But at the same time I don't want a electric bill killing me

[emosun]

1 minute ago, Royt34 said:

I am having a great deal with a server like that and I am thinking about if I could make use of that opportunity. But at the same time I don't want a electric bill killing me

ok just so you are aware....

there's no reason to buy higher end hardware if you do not want it to do actual work and consume any electricity. It would be the same as buying a race car and pushing it around town because you don't want to use gas. Makes no sense.

what do you need the server to do

[Dedayog]

23 minutes ago, Royt34 said:

I am having a great deal with a server like that and I am thinking about if I could make use of that opportunity. But at the same time I don't want a electric bill killing me

No way we can know.

 

Probably less than your gaming PC, if you have one.  Servers are usually in an idle state, but do run 24/7.  

[johnt]

What do you need 128 GB of memory for and you're worried about power efficiency? Unplug a few ram sticks.

 

For reference, my i5 12400 running four modern, large capacity spinning drives and an NVME OS drive consumes about 45w at idle. I also have five Noctua fans in it (don't judge me).

[Needfuldoer]

It depends on countless factors, like the efficiency of your power supply, how many hard drives you're running, how many of what kind of fans you'll have, how hard the CPU's working...

 

My best guess is that it will average out to 50 watts over the course of the day. Less when it's not doing anything, more when it's transcoding video.

[steamrick]

Based on my own home server, I'm going to guess you'll see 40W of average power.

The idle power draw is highly dependent on the mainboard, which can be kind of hard to guess. Another surprisingly big influence is memory speed - or rather, what voltages the RAM and the memory controller are running.

 

My comparison system:

ASRock Rack X570D4U

Mellanox ConnectX-3
Micron 7400 PRO m.2

4x SATA SSD

4x DDR4-2666 ECC with 96GB total (or rather, DDR4-3200 running at 2666)

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

Seasonic Prime Titanium Fanless 600W

Noctua NH-C14S at low rpm

 

This'll draw near exact 1000Wh in a 24h period, which averages at ~42W running Hyper-V and a couple VMs all of which are mostly idle.

(Yes, I know. If I were to set it up today I'd have probably gone with ESXi. Or Proxmox, now that Veeam supports it. It'd even save a watt or two in idle, probably.)

 

It used to average at 48W with a Seasonic X-660 and Ryzen 5 3600, but my gaming rig got an upgrade, so the home server got an upgrade from the leftovers...

 

The reason I'm guessing 40W:

- on one hand the R5 3600 will idle maybe 2W higher than a 5800X and your PSU is probably less efficient than 80+ Titanium

- on the other hand, you don't have a workstation grade mainboard with an IPMI interface and probably not a 10gbit network card dragging down your efficiency

[BillBill]

3 hours ago, Royt34 said:

Hello there, I am wondering how efficient I can run a server.

Specs:

MSI B550-A PRO

And 5 3600

128gb ram

 

I am wondering what's the lowest Watt consumption I can reach with a system like this. Thanks in advanced!

You could use a power usage meter. 

[Royt34]

12 hours ago, steamrick said:

Based on my own home server, I'm going to guess you'll see 40W of average power.

The idle power draw is highly dependent on the mainboard, which can be kind of hard to guess. Another surprisingly big influence is memory speed - or rather, what voltages the RAM and the memory controller are running.

 

My comparison system:

ASRock Rack X570D4U

Mellanox ConnectX-3
Micron 7400 PRO m.2

4x SATA SSD

4x DDR4-2666 ECC with 96GB total (or rather, DDR4-3200 running at 2666)

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

Seasonic Prime Titanium Fanless 600W

Noctua NH-C14S at low rpm

 

This'll draw near exact 1000Wh in a 24h period, which averages at ~42W running Hyper-V and a couple VMs all of which are mostly idle.

(Yes, I know. If I were to set it up today I'd have probably gone with ESXi. Or Proxmox, now that Veeam supports it. It'd even save a watt or two in idle, probably.)

 

It used to average at 48W with a Seasonic X-660 and Ryzen 5 3600, but my gaming rig got an upgrade, so the home server got an upgrade from the leftovers...

 

The reason I'm guessing 40W:

- on one hand the R5 3600 will idle maybe 2W higher than a 5800X and your PSU is probably less efficient than 80+ Titanium

- on the other hand, you don't have a workstation grade mainboard with an IPMI interface and probably not a 10gbit network card dragging down your efficiency

Thank you a lot. I appreciate your long and detailed answer!