Low watt processor with decent performance?

tangoseal

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Hello folks. I rarely ever delve into the world of low and ultra low power desktop processors.

I am wanting to replace my old Xeon E5-1620v1 with something more modern and significantly lower in power consumption. My nas runs 24-7 an only powers streaming to maybe one or two people at time using Plex.

I was looking for a desktop class processor that is very low in wattage that can fit on a standard mITX board of choice.

I am aware of ATOM processors but didn't Intel discontinue th line? I use FreeNAS and have 32 GB of DDR3-1333 ECC ram on hand so a slightly older chip that supports ecc and ddr3 is ok. If I have to go the ddr4 route I will but given I have 32gb of perfectly healthy ecc I would prefer to maintain it's use for quite some time.

Any one know a lot about options? I know Intel has been very good about low power use chips with suprising performance given the wattage.

Thanks .
 
Xeon D or maybe the new silver line. Not sure about desktop processors. But both of those fit the bill. Atom was also recently updated. Check out servethehome.com.

I have a Xeon D 1541 running 24/7.
 
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Xeon D or maybe the new silver line. Not sure about desktop processors. But both of those fit the bill. Atom was also recently updated. Check out servethehome.com.

I have a Xeon D 1541 running 24/7.

Thank you I will. I have found that all of the latest high core atoms. I.e. the 16 core atom is very expensive. Im going to check out your recommendations.
 
Is your processor really drawing that much power? With 1 or 2 users it may be operating close to idle. Do you have power readings or load percentages that show its using so much power its worth replacing?
 
Is your processor really drawing that much power? With 1 or 2 users it may be operating close to idle. Do you have power readings or load percentages that show its using so much power its worth replacing?

Yes I have a Killa Watt meter hooked up for over a week and its idle is at 200 watts. That includes my processor board and 8 hard drives spinning 24/7. It does add up to around $20/month just to run this damn thing. I live in a higher dollar per KW region.

Plus my server is over 6 years old. I would think it is time to refresh the tech a little bit more.

Also with a little more research the embedded atom platforms are not that expensive if you ge tthem without 10gb ethernet ports.
 
If you really want to save power, reduce the HD count significantly as well and think on the PSU efficiency at the drawn power.

I’d agree with this. Yes, you could save some on power upgrading the CPU, it I don’t think it will be drastic.

Your cranking about 100W alone across 8 HDDs - that’s the major power draw right there if you don’t have them going to idle spin down.
 
how much electricity does a person save from say a 90W CPU down to a 35W CPU per month?
 
I’d agree with this. Yes, you could save some on power upgrading the CPU, it I don’t think it will be drastic.

Your cranking about 100W alone across 8 HDDs - that’s the major power draw right there if you don’t have them going to idle spin down.

Yeah I just told freenas to fully spin down after 1 hour
But doesnt start stop iver and over wear on the motor?
 
Yeah I just told freenas to fully spin down after 1 hour
But doesnt start stop iver and over wear on the motor?

If you are going that dozens of times a day yes. A few times a day - odds are something else is going to wear out before the motor does.
 
Are you doing direct play with plex or transcoding? If you're transcoding or thinking about transcoding then I don't think you should skimp on the CPU. My wife uses our plex server while at work and transcoding 4k videos to something that will play on her phone takes some good cpu power.
 
http://www.electricity-usage.com/El...=cpu&Watts=65&CostPerKWH=0.040&HoursPerDay=11

If you use a low power CPU, say 35W, you use approx. $5.62 per year of electricity

If you use a 65W power CPU, you use approx. $10.41 per year of electricity

this is based on 11 hr. use at $0.04 per KW hr.

I'm an environmentalist too, but that amt. of savings in energy is useless.

Did you read his post? He says it runs 24/7 and that he's in a higher KW/hr place. 4 cents?!?! who the hell pays that? I'm in WI and pay 13.8 cents, I'll assume he lives in a even higher state and just say 15 cents a kw/h. A few posts down he says its idle'ing at 200 watts, thats $20.16 at 15 cents kw/h a month to run it. Which lines up with his about $20 a month comment that he made, which sparked this post.

If he could cut that in half, saving $120 a year for the same thing wouldn't be too bad and could come out ahead after a year or 2 as long as he upgrades/consolidates his setup for the right price.
 
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you pay that much per KW hr?

Yeah that is the summer rate in north ga. Its high.

I wonder if any onw knows what kind of idle one could expect on a core I3 Coffee Lake? I thought about using it as a gaming / server for my home. I couldnt imagine idle more than 10w or so being that its a 14nm process.
 
I personally use an i3 4130t (socket 1150) which, for me, has been perfect. I too upgraded to lower overall power consumption, I came from an i7 980x and this i3 has been great for what I do. I, like the op, only ever have one or two streams in Plex going at a time so I didn't need a 4c/8t CPU to handle that. Check out any i3 series CPU with a t after it's name for the low power models. I would recommend more horsepower if you're ever going to start doing a lot of transcoding but seeing as how on my end nothing is transcoded on a regular basis, the i3 has been a great fit.
 
I would recommend a asrock rack C2750d4i motherboard. I have used this and I has all the features you want in a nas or file server and with 10 sata ports and 8 cores in itx form it’s awesome. I have tested watts at the wall and with a 8x Nvidia 720gt and ssd it was 45w no matter what I did. I hooked up 6 velociraptors and it was under 100w consistently. There isn’t much difference from the avoton and the Xeon-d but price.
 
Unless you do some heavy transcoding on the CPU, a Pentium is more than sufficient for a NAS. Has ECC support too. AsRock makes some very well-featured mITX boards, but I've had some problems with their software.

Or just get an embedded board like suggested in the above post (can be a bit more expensive, though).
 
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Edit: Looks like kaby has ecc, maybe I'm thinking of it being disabled on kaby pentiums...

Pentiums generally have ECC support, and that seems to be case for the Kaby Lake G4600 at least. ECC support on the i3s is more patchy, at least the locked i3 7100 has it according to ark.intel.com. Even the unlocked i3-7350K lists ECC support. I guess Intel didn't want to enable ECC on the quad-core Coffee Lake i3s, as they'd be competing with the lower end Xeons.
 
I guess Intel didn't want to enable ECC on the quad-core Coffee Lake i3s, as they'd be competing with the lower end Xeons.

That is probably the reason. Although for me if Ryzen did not have the linux compile / broken SMP flaw that may require a RMA to get a fully working / stable CPU I would not even consider these..

I have not seen reports of TR having this bug however the higher idle power on X399 is a little bit of a stumbling block.
 
Pentiums generally have ECC support, and that seems to be case for the Kaby Lake G4600 at least. ECC support on the i3s is more patchy, at least the locked i3 7100 has it according to ark.intel.com. Even the unlocked i3-7350K lists ECC support. I guess Intel didn't want to enable ECC on the quad-core Coffee Lake i3s, as they'd be competing with the lower end Xeons.

Yeah I'm thinking the same. Would probably overlap with the E3-12xx v7...
 
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