1151 board with lowest power consumption |
Post Reply |
Author | |
ThomasB
Newbie Joined: 30 Dec 2015 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 4 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
Posted: 30 Dec 2015 at 7:42pm |
Hello from germany,
i am going to build a 24/7 "home server" with Intels i5-6400T (35W TDP) and a 90W PicoPSU. I will start with 8 or 16GB DDR4 RAM (for running some VMs on it). My goal is an overall power consumption of 20W or lower... So, what is the asrock 1151 board with the lowest power consumption ? It would be great if the board supports M.2 socketed SSDs, but it is no "must-have"- Power consumption is more important because energy prices are high here in germany (All germans are bound by law to pay their contribution for solar and wind energy through energy costs). Edited by ThomasB - 30 Dec 2015 at 8:42pm |
|
wardog
Moderator Group Joined: 15 Jul 2015 Status: Offline Points: 6447 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
Why not a BeeBox or the likes?
You didn't stipulate mATX so I'm assuming more than one or two HDD, which will kill your overall consumption limits. A BeeBox and when needed external drives would certainly reduce overall consumption. Home server"? Care to expound on just what that might entail for your intended purpose? hehe My home server, the one with movie iso's, is a beast of a machine with VM's and two quad port i350's running 24/7 but we here in the US don't subsidize organics as you do there. |
|
parsec
Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
That is a beast of a machine, given your system Sig shows a "4200W Seasonic" PSU. ThomasB, information about the power usage of mother boards is not normally provided by manufactures. Reviews of mother boards may include some power usage tests. The Beebox series of all in one PCs that wardog suggested are based on Intel NUC boards that include a CPU. If you just want a mother board rather than a mini-PC, check this list of the Intel CPU Onboard Series boards from ASRock. These boards will use more power than a Beebox PC, but will use less than a standard board and processor: http://www.asrock.com/mb/index.asp?s=Intel%20CPU |
|
Xaltar
Moderator Group Joined: 16 May 2015 Location: Europe Status: Online Points: 25043 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
If it is power efficiency you are going for then something in the N3150 flavor would be ideal, 4 cores, ultra low power draw and more than enough power for most tasks but it depends largely on what you want to do with the server. I did not test my N3150M with VMs so I can't vouch for their performance in that arena and looking at the spec sheet for the Celeron N3150 it appears it does not support VT-D so that may be a problem for you. It does support VT-x but not being overly familiar with virtual machines I don't know for sure what you will need from the hardware.
For socket 1151 the board with the lowest power overhead would probably be in an ITX flavor, possibly the H110 ITX board but what concerns me here is the fact that it uses DDR3 RAM which draws significantly more power than DDR4. Fitted with DDR3L RAM it may still be viable.
|
|
ThomasB
Newbie Joined: 30 Dec 2015 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 4 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
Hi, i want to run VMware ESXi 6.0 as hypervisor, which need some Core i3 / i5 / i7 CPUs which have special functions like VT-d and so on... I am not going to use proxmox, because i want to gain some deeper experience with the vmware stuff, which i also use at work as an IT technician.- So Beebox-like pcs with the N3xxx cpus are not capable to support the requirements for ESXi or they are far too expensive for the power they serv (bang for the buck), as far as i don't need a "mini" pc, normal size is also OK (or even better). - Also i want the ability to upgrade in the future, and have the possibility to add some HDDs (but this is not planned at the moment) - At the moment e.g. I want to run a VM with my "ubiquiti unifi accesspoint controller" and perhaps "pfsense" or "sophos"-firewall solution. The unifi controller runs currently on an old notebook (prior it ran on an raspberry pi 2, but that was not optimal for performance reasons). This old laptop consumpts 23W only for the unifi thing. So i guess, i can do a bit more with virtualization and the right hardware choose. - The microservers of the "two letter" company are also OK, but not exactly what i want and of course the hardware of the microservers is outdated and expensive when it comes to upgrades.
Today i found an article of a german computer magazine where they have build a 11W pc with a Z170 board with i5-6400 (without the T at the end) and a normal 300W psu, so i see that there is a way if the mainboard is capable to run in maximum energy efficiency. (When i add a PicoPSU and the "6400T" cpu, there should be a way to stay beneath 20W, even with ESXi instead of running Windows. (As i know, windows is better in energy management than esxi hypervisor) - So with this post i tried to reach someone at "asrock"-company, who perhaps can say what is the best 1151 board when it comes to energy consumption. I already run ESXi 6.0 on an old Core i3-4150 machine with 430W thermaltake psu and 8gigs of ram, also a 128GB sandisk SSD for the VMs. - But this machine consumpts 52W for doing absolutely nothing, in the highest power saving setting and all unneeded chips deactivated in bios (soundcard, usb, sata ports, and so on)... In my main rig i have an Asrock Z87E-ITX with i7-4770k, 16GB dominator ram, Bluray drive, GTX980Ti, WD RED 3TB, 256GB SSD, 580W BeQuiet. - It was not designed for power saving operation in common, but that beast machine needs only 42W in idle mode. (With my old GTX780 graphics card the overall power consumption was even lower) I hope you could understand all of my english text, because i am a native german speaking person, which only read a lot of manuals/websites in english language but never has to speak english on a daily basis. :) - If i have written total nonsense in the above english text, please also let me know that, because i am very interested in getting better with the english language. Edited by ThomasB - 31 Dec 2015 at 6:39am |
|
Xaltar
Moderator Group Joined: 16 May 2015 Location: Europe Status: Online Points: 25043 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
You may want to try sending a support request directly to ASRock Tech Support as they may be better able to answer your question.
To my mind there are 2 possible scenarios and I can't tell you which is true without testing both theories myself. 1. A low cost board with a smaller VRM setup may draw less power but this is entirely contingent on the efficiency of the VRM power design. It would be completely pointless if the efficiency is low. 2. A high end board with exceptional VRM power phase design will likely be more efficient and result in lower power usage. In this case however we run into the issue that high end boards are littered with features that will draw additional power that may not all be possible to disable. The only suggestion I can make without being able to test the 2 above scenarios is to split the difference and choose a board with a high end power design but with minimal additional features. Even here though we are operating on a theory not verified facts. I do find your idea intriguing, I have always had a fascination for low power systems so I would love to hear what you find on the subject from ASRock or any other source.
|
|
wardog
Moderator Group Joined: 15 Jul 2015 Status: Offline Points: 6447 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
Power consumption be damned, taking into consideration it running 24/7 I wouldn't cheap out with my selection of motherboard and PSU.
The old adage "You get what you pay for' applies to both board and PSU purchase. |
|
Xaltar
Moderator Group Joined: 16 May 2015 Location: Europe Status: Online Points: 25043 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
|
A Pico PSU is actually pretty solid quality-wise and tend to do well with 24/7 operation but yes I completely agree on not cheaping out, better to get a quality board that uses a little more power than a bargain basement board that will fail in 6 months.
|
|
Post Reply | |
Tweet
|
Forum Jump | Forum Permissions You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum |