Hi folks,
I currently have a HP ML10v2 with Xeon E3-1265L v3 in it (4c/8t) and 16GB DDR3 ECC. At work, we disposed of (and I now have in my wardrobe) a dual socket Xeon E5-2680 v4 (14c/28t each) and 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM.
Now this is obviously a massive jump in horsepower, and I very much doubt that I have any use case for a total of 28c/56t, so I was considering removing one of the Xeons and keeping it spare. I currently use a 1050TI for transcodes and that will be moved across.
It’s all built on a ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard, so I’m just looking for anyone else using similar gear, and any tips you might have to reduce power consumption. I haven’t yet gone diving through the BIOS to see what options are there, but I’m hedging between trying to screw down the power consumption, and just seeing if I can sell off the bigger machine and get a more modern Core i5 or similar…
As is, on the HP I’m running Unraid with a dozen docker containers, and that’s about it. I would like to start playing with Ansible, so the bigger system would be good in that regard, but I’m not 100% sure if I want to keep this machine or not.
For reference, my power costs are AUD $0.8087/day supply charge, and AUD $0.2299/kwh. I’m renting so have no options for solar etc.
Thanks!
Okay so currently my closest matching server would be my R730XD which is running dual E5-2650v4’s which should have a similar power profile(the only diffrence with the 2680 is the number of cores however this shouldn’t make much of a diffrence for low use workloads).
So currently with 2x SSD’s, 2x2650v4’s, 128GB RAM, 6x18TB HDD drives, 3x16TB HDD drives my power consumption sits around the 225-250W which over a month for me costs me about 50-75 euros a month in power(welcome to dutch power pricing…). However alot of this consumption comes from the drives, because before I put the HDD’s in and just had the SSD’s, the RAM and the CPU’s it had an idle of around 80-100W. But this is in an enterprise server with some chonky drives so I assume those account for 5-15W as they have a base speed.
Generally I would say unless you specifically need functions that the board provides(alot of PCIE lanes for example) just get a consumer CPU and you’ll be much better off as it will have better efficiency, performance and you’ll be on a modern platform. And if you go for AM4 it will be really cheap cuz of the introduction of AM5.
my setup is R730, with 2x E5-2697A v4, 16x 16GB ram, 8x WD 0F38459 , 2x Intel P4800X, 2x WD Red SA500, PERC H730P, Nvidia A5000, Dell R887V … i think that most of the parts that add to consumption. Usage it is typically around 250-300W
Im planning to add 10x M.2 drives also, so this will probably add to the consumption also
You currently have both machines right? But a kill a watt and tinker with it for a bit.
The newer generations get more and more power efficient so there is a good chance you’ll save money. Definitely will want to pull a proc though. You can also buy lower power CPUs on eBay for super cheap too. Then if you ever need the horsepower you can throw one of those back in. And the second one if you need it too.
I have 2x 2658v4 in my Dell R730. Idle with no spinning rust, an old Quadro, and a couple NICs is ~120w.
I have a very similar setup, runs from 650w 80+ platinum power supply, usually uses 300w under heavy CPU load and 500w with a half decent graphics card installed. Idles at about 110w , so not that great
I have two 2680v4 with 160GB of RAM, 1 SSD, and 12 HDDs (4 SAS, 8 SATA), and a Quaddro P5000. Average consumption over the last week is 220W (about 25 docker containers that run plex-related stuff 24/7, and a handful of self hosted things). Min consumption (roughly idle, I assume) is 164W. Power is cheap where I live, <12¢ per kWh.
You could cut power consumption down by removing a CPU or consolidating your storage to fewer drives (or going with SSDs if thats in the budget).
I have that exact same proc in one of my nodes:
dell r630 2x E5-2680v4 128gb ram 8x spinning SAS drives 1x quadro K1200 dual SFP+ nic with SFP+ modules
power consumption: 168w was 108-124w before the K1200 gpu.
I’m going to hopefully pull those 8 disks and swap in 4x SAS SSD’s this weekend, hopefully get my power consumption back closer to 100w. Then I’m going to throw in one or two T1000 8GB GPUS so I’ll probably be back up to to 175-200w but thats damn impressive for the compute capacity of that box.