Samsung PM961 Polaris 256GB M.2-2880 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe Solid State Drive
6x500GB SSD
5xSeagate IronWolf 10 TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD
Network - Marvell AQtion 10Gbit Network Adapter
Cooling - 120mm AIO
Noctua NF-P14s REDUX 1200RPM 140mm Quiet Case Fan x4 running at 5 V
Power supply - Corsair TX950 82%
Total idle power 93W from wall so 76.26W system power
Previous config was the same as above but, with eight 16GB sticks of RAM, total Idle power was 98W from wall, 81.34W system power.
Prior to that the config was all the above but, with 9 Seagate IronWolf 10 TB, Total idle power 103W from wall, 85.49W system power.
Is 93W regarded as normal in most TrueNAS systems? Does anyone have a recommendation to reduce the power consumption further? It seems to me that the idle power consumption is much higher than dedicated NAS systems.
You can try disable some core, but i don’t think you will gain much.
Your hw Is IMHO what worst you could have choice for build a Nas (from consumer’s parts i mean)
I agree with you about the poor choice of components. It was my old main system several years ago minus the GFX’s, HDD’s, and HBA. Looks like there is no silver bullet to shave off another 20W. Thanks for your response.
A higher-efficiency PSU would help a bit; 82% isn’t very good these days. Removing the video card would save a few watts, unless your system won’t boot without it. Moving to fewer and larger HDDs (and SSDs) would help, and possibly reduce the number of devices to the point where you don’t need the HBA any more.
Haswell-e is energy hungry, Is not bad at all because despite other consumer platform provide ECC support with a small cost (but Is not your case, the i7 for sure can’t support It).
As suggested you can try to upgrade the PSU (but this need to buy another one) or try of system can boot without VGA.
You have a lot of disks too… Having try It i don’t reccomend at all, but there Is the option ti spin down rust disk too with a community provide script
I am not looking to spend any money on such an old system, as I have my eye on a Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen3 (AS6804T). I have however found an old EVGA 750GQ 80 Plus Gold in my cupboard going unused, so I am going to swap out the power supply as the Corsair TX950 is 15 years old :s so it needs replacing in any case.
Do your calcs on your specific energy costs, power consumption and run time. You will find the cost is not that high and most upgrades will take a long time to pay back. You’re probably better off putting money into other energy efficiency options in your house that will actually reduce your payback period.
Swapping out the power supply did the trick, I am now pulling just 83.7W from the wall saving 10p per day or £36.50 a year based on my original NAS configuration. Efficiency of over 90% if my calculation for the Corsair TX950 was correct at 82%.
I expect the Asustor would run at 40-50W at a cost of 26p per day. My reconfigured NAS costs 44p per day so I would save £65.70 per year, so it would take 12+ years to pay for itself in savings.
Is there anything to be said about wanting to use less power despite the cost or ROI?
Do note that peak efficiency of a switch mode power supply is at about 80% load. Running a 950W PSU at 10% or less load is incredibly inefficient. Sounds like you’ve worked it all out though.
I do hear the HDD’s spin down after 5 min, and it takes 10-15 seconds to spin all the drives backup when I access the HDD pool. The HDD pool doesn’t get used except for when running a replication task from the SSD pool and for long term file storage. I intend to use PLEX in the future with the media on the HDD pool and will increase the timer to 30-60 minutes so not as to wear out the drives.
