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Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

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Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#121

Post by greenicon »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #113
sandos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My desktop PCs have always been idling at more than 50W. Granted, my newest one is from 2011 or so.

I don't think it has improved much. No one has been benchmarking these metrics for desktop PCs for a decade or so, so they have gotten worse, if anything. I have not yet found any LGA 1700 motherboard were the total idle power would be less than 25W, for example. I find that the power supply inefficiency by itself, even on standby , is usually already 2W -- larger than some of the alternatives discussed here. I have…

Yes, this is a shame. Building a low-idle-power system with desktop components is far harder than it seems, unfortunately.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#122

Post by vonseel »

hddherman wrote: post #120
guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I've found that most desktop PC-s have idle power usage around 35-50W. That was the main motivation to look for alternative solutions like ASRock Deskmini, or the Dell/HP/Lenovo TinyMiniMicro form factor machines. Mini PC-s tend to have great idle power usage compared to big towers, which is probably down to the selection of the CPU, components on the motherboard and the power supply which usually has to only output…

Europe energy prices :/ Here in Texas it cost maybe $5/month to run a 45 watt little server (pc)…

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#124

Post by adql »

guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I'd imagine that MEDIA SERVER that also STORES BACKUPS might just have a bunch of 3.5 inch hard drives in it ?

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#125

Post by adql »

xavxav wrote: post #115
pja wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of where getting rid of old kit & replacing it with new more power efficient hardware ends up being the greener option.

not necessarily, depends on the embodied emissions in the replacement gear. It is also surprisingly hard to get any information on those. I tried seeing if there were estimates of the kg co2 in a modern CPU chip but I found nada

> I tried seeing if there were estimates of the kg co2 in a modern CPU chip but I found nada

Because they are in watts, not kg of CO2.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#126

Post by michaelt »

RussianCow wrote: post #94
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power saving is not because of Android it is because of the ARM arch being used under the hood. And ARM servers for power saving purposes are very much a thing already.

> The power saving is not because of Android it is because of the ARM arch being used under the hood. [citation needed] Based on my understanding, the underlying OS has way more to do with power usage than the instruction set, and AFAIK Android has tons of optimizations specifically geared towards reducing battery consumption (and therefore power usage) on mobile devices. With that said, it's true that, in practice,…

It's both, if you want to achieve the goal of operating for multiple days on the battery.

A modern battery powered device will have a 'sleep mode' where the current consumption is measured in microamps; and an operating mode where the current consumption is many times higher. Battery life relies on two things: Firstly, the sleep and operating modes being as efficient as possible (the CPU design) and second of all getting into the sleep mode for as much time as possible (the OS design).

If only one app can be on screen at a time, and the OS is free to stop anything that isn't on screen if it wants to - that gives the OS a lot of power to achieve long periods of sleep.

(It's actually more complicated than that, with multiple sleep levels, high- and low-power CPU cores, and on smartphones there are issues like powering the screen and radios, and things like hardware decoding of video - but for a server, who needs a screen?)

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#127

Post by irusensei »

My full server closet (which is also used to heat my jackets and coats) consumes about 50W of power. The actual two servers being responsible for less than 10 of it. Those are RockPro64 with 2 SATA SSD on each. No fans.

Most of the heat comes from the network stuff, that is the cable modem, UDM router and switch. Replacing the UDM+switch with an 8 port UDM SE might be an interesting idea but I’m not sure since the trashcan UDM also does wireless. Going by the heat the UPC cable modem seems to be responsible for most of the power draw.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#128

Post by Synaesthesia »

leipert wrote: post #92

Does anyone have tips for a Synology NAS to hibernate reliably? My fear of powering the machine on and off completely on intervals, would be damaging the HDDs.

Most PCs have their hard drives spin up and down rather frequently, and yet hard drives are still very reliable.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#129

Post by guilamu »

hddherman wrote: post #120
guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I've found that most desktop PC-s have idle power usage around 35-50W. That was the main motivation to look for alternative solutions like ASRock Deskmini, or the Dell/HP/Lenovo TinyMiniMicro form factor machines. Mini PC-s tend to have great idle power usage compared to big towers, which is probably down to the selection of the CPU, components on the motherboard and the power supply which usually has to only output…

You're right, using a desktop CPU for a mediacenter is not a good idea.

Laptop CPUs are, however, really well optimised for very low consumption when idling and that's what you should be using for a mediacenter.

Also, IMHO, ASRock Deskmini would not be a good idea for a media center since it's using desktop CPUs. The idle power draw will not be as good as mini pc with a laptop CPU.

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