Question Low wattage CPUS

[glencore]

Hello,

Does anyone have any suggestions on very low wattage CPUs for a home server running TrueNAS and a few VMs and containers?

I'm looking at current and older hardware, desktop and server.

Edit: When I say very low wattage - I really mean very low wattage in low usage states. I really want the server to run 24/7 but it will be low usage most of that time.

 

[DrMrLordX]

How low is low? Could you give us a power limit?

 

[Bouowmx]

Sounds memory heavy and light compute. In any case, any modern processor would do as they will automatically idle at a few watts (not including rest of platform).

 

[glencore]

@DrMrLordX

I'd like the system to be, say 20-30 watts at idle/very low usage. That would cost me about £3.50 per month to run.

I currently have a dell r410 1u rack which seems to draw quite a lot of power even when idle and costs me £15-20 per month to run.

@Bouowmx

Do you have any suggestions on the rest of the platform? If it could run DDR3 ECC RAM that'd be a bonus as I'd not need to buy new, but not essential.

 

[TheELF]

@DrMrLordX

I'd like the system to be, say 20-30 watts at idle/very low usage. That would cost me about £3.50 per month to run.

About 40 is the lowest you can hope for, including the whole system.
You could undervolt to decrease that further and make profiles for any software that do need more juice to run.

Intel Core i3-10100 Review

Intel's Core i3-10100 is the most affordable Comet Lake "Core" processor. Unlike its predecessor, it finally has HyperThreading, which brings the core configuration to 4c/8t. Our Core i3-10100 review takes a close look at how Intel's new budget offering performs against AMD Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[glencore]

About 40 is the lowest you can hope for, including the whole system.
You could undervolt to decrease that further and make profiles for any software that do need more juice to run.

Intel Core i3-10100 Review

Intel's Core i3-10100 is the most affordable Comet Lake "Core" processor. Unlike its predecessor, it finally has HyperThreading, which brings the core configuration to 4c/8t. Our Core i3-10100 review takes a close look at how Intel's new budget offering performs against AMD Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X.

www.techpowerup.com

That's a really good link, thanks! I'm looking at the test setup and it includes a high-end GPU, which I'm googling uses ~17W at idle so I could minus that from these results?

 

[DrMrLordX]

@glencore

20-30W for the entire system? Some laptops and tablets can operate in that space. If you're looking for any serious I/O for your TrueNAS, though, you should expect to burn more power. The more attached devices you have, the more power you will burn. Have you specced out your storage yet? What are your expectations for capacity and performance?

 

[glencore]

@glencore

20-30W for the entire system? Some laptops and tablets can operate in that space. If you're looking for any serious I/O for your TrueNAS, though, you should expect to burn more power. The more attached devices you have, the more power you will burn. Have you specced out your storage yet? What are your expectations for capacity and performance?

Sorry, I should say that that wattage goal was excluding the spinning storage, and also at idle.

My storage will be 4x 4tb SAS drives (WD4001FYYG), because, well I have those already. They idle at 11 watts each which is high but they will be spun down most of the time.

 

[Asterox]

@DrMrLordX

I'd like the system to be, say 20-30 watts at idle/very low usage. That would cost me about £3.50 per month to run.

I currently have a dell r410 1u rack which seems to draw quite a lot of power even when idle and costs me £15-20 per month to run.

@Bouowmx

Do you have any suggestions on the rest of the platform? If it could run DDR3 ECC RAM that'd be a bonus as I'd not need to buy new, but not essential.

You should look what offers Desktop Renoir APU."I now that Renoir APU availability(OEM only CPU) is not very good", but power consumption=performanse is very good or excellent if you are going on a 35WTDP route.

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If you disable Core Performance Boost(Bios default is Auto or On), it will be same as 35W cTDP setings.This setings or cTDP/Bios option my motherboard does not have.Multi core or Multithreding performanse(3.7ghz all Core turbo), it will be lower by 10-15% with CPU voltage up to 1.200V.I have R5 Pro 4650G, and with CPB disabled(just for testing) when CPU is 100% loaded it heats up very little and it is very easy to cool.As you can see(Asrock DeskMini A300),with cTDP option 35W R5 Pro 4650G=Cinebench R20 Multicore test all system eats only 55W.

AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G (Renoir) mit 65, 45 und 35 Watt cTDP getestet

Neben den normalen AMD Renoir Desktop-Prozessoren wie z.B. dem AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G bietet AMD mit den GE-Varianten auch Renoir CPUs an, die auf eine Leistu..

www.elefacts.de

 

[DrMrLordX]

Sorry, I should say that that wattage goal was excluding the spinning storage, and also at idle.

My storage will be 4x 4tb SAS drives (WD4001FYYG), because, well I have those already. They idle at 11 watts each which is high but they will be spun down most of the time.

Hmm okay. Are you using a separate controller card for those? I haven't much experience with SAS drives, but I'm pretty sure you can't just hook those up to any old SATA port (though you can connect SATA to SAS).

with cTDP option 35W R5 Pro 4650G=Cinebench R20 Multicore test all system eats only 55W.

I'll grant you that he probably won't be running 3D rendering software 24/7, but 55W does exceed his total system requirements. Not counting the storage.

 

[Bouowmx]

Do you have any suggestions on the rest of the platform? If it could run DDR3 ECC RAM that'd be a bonus as I'd not need to buy new, but not essential.

There's a market in China (Aliexpress) for combo of Intel X99/C612 motherboard and Xeon E5-2678 v3 (12 cores, 2.5/3.3 GHz) supporting DDR3 ECC
No integrated GPU, so that's a penalty to idle power.

 

[Jimzz]

A 3000G and a B450 board would be cheap and low power. They overclock well but also undervolt as well which woudl work for you. Built in GPU is also low power and works well for everything but gaming.

Looks like there is a good size batch coming back soon...

https://www.shopblt.com/item/amd-athlon-3000g-desktop-cpu-processor/amd_yd3000c6fhbox~b6yz294.html

 

[aigomorla]

Does anyone have any suggestions on very low wattage CPUs for a home server running TrueNAS and a few VMs and containers?

This is what you want:

Intel Atom® Processor C2758 (4M Cache, 2.40 GHz) Product Specifications

Intel Atom® Processor C2758 (4M Cache, 2.40 GHz) quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

They come from supermicro like this:

Supermicro A1SRM-2758F Motherboard mATX Intel Atom C2758 SoC FULL WARRANTY | eBay

EServer Pro is located in the Silicon Valley of California, USA. Form Factor. 2x Fast UART 16550 Serial Port (1 rear, 1 via header). Serial Port. 1x VGA Port. 1x RJ45 Dedicated IPMI LAN port. Total of 3x 4-pin fan headers.

www.ebay.com

It even has a SATADOM connector... the yellow SATA plug.
Its basically FreeNAS / TrueNAS ready out of the box, no finding drivers, nothing.

Pair it with ECC Unregistered ram. Remember try to max out the ram config as much as possible.
It should serve TrueNAS very well, as its enterprise class intel parts where FreeBSD was practically written for.

If you want something with a bit more power, then you want a Xeon D-1541. Something like this:

Supermicro X10SDV-F Motherboard Mini-ITX Xeon D-1541 8 core, 64GB SATA BOOT DRIV | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Supermicro X10SDV-F Motherboard Mini-ITX Xeon D-1541 8 core, 64GB SATA BOOT DRIV at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

My advice is to keep with enterprise class Intel parts for TrueNAS, and again max out as much ram as possible, as freebsd loves ram.
The ryzens are faster yes, but freenas cpu speed is almost moot, its mostly how much ram you have, and how many 8xpci-e slots you got for addon HBA cards, also TrueNAS payside uses all intel parts, so i would keep true to intel on this until they start rolling out Ryzens.

Although you may want to even consider spending a tad bit more and getting a TrueNAS Mini-XL.

https://www.amazon.com/iXsystems-TrueNAS-Mini-XL-Diskless/dp/B08FCVFXLC/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=truenas&qid=1613963411&sr=8-2

It even has the case, hotswap bays, 10GBe and psu.
In short i did the math and its not a bad deal for the parts you get plus the support and warranty, especially if you do not have the HBA card.

Also are you going to run the VMs inside TrueNAS or are you going to run TrueNAS inside the VM?
TrueNAS 12.0 has the ability to run VMs and Jails in its own environment.

 

[DrMrLordX]

A 3000G and a B450 board would be cheap and low power.

Would that even support SAS drives out-of-the-box? I'm inclined to agree with @aigomorla 's recommendations.

 

[Jimzz]

Would that even support SAS drives out-of-the-box? I'm inclined to agree with @aigomorla 's recommendations.

Opps I missed that.

Native built-in SAS is going to be harder to find, esp with low power in mind.

 

[glencore]

Thanks very much for the advice all!

 

[unclewebb]

Intel's power hungry 10850K can be a low power CPU if you know how to setup Windows and if you enable the low power C states. Use O&O ShutUp10 to turn off some of the Windows 10 bloatware. The C0% number in ThrottleStop can be extremely low when the bloatware is disabled.

I prefer a fast CPU but you can shave a couple of more watts off that total if you slow the CPU down when it is lightly loaded. You can use ThrottleStop to run an Intel CPU at any speed you like. You can change the turbo power limits and convert a 125W CPU into a 35W CPU or whatever you like. No need to buy a special T series CPU. Here is how to build your own 35W 10850K.



Intel never talks about this capability because they would prefer you paid extra money for a T series. The K series can run at high MHz with less voltage. When held to a low speed, they often times have similar or lower power consumption compared to some of Intel's low power CPUs.