Supermicro X9SCM power-usage?

hotzen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 29, 2011
Messages
349
Hello,

does anyone have some figures how much power a server-motherboard like the Supermicro X9SCM uses?
How much does the IPMI take? Is it possible to build a high-efficient server with such a Server-Mainboard, even using IPMI?
I am considering to use an Intel Motherboard without IMPI because they are known for their very good efficiency and in daily use a ssh-connection is totally sufficient...
Any thoughs or recommendations?

Thanks
 
Hello,

does anyone have some figures how much power a server-motherboard like the Supermicro X9SCM uses?
How much does the IPMI take? Is it possible to build a high-efficient server with such a Server-Mainboard, even using IPMI?
I am considering to use an Intel Motherboard without IMPI because they are known for their very good efficiency and in daily use a ssh-connection is totally sufficient...
Any thoughs or recommendations?

Thanks
IPMI has been a very very useful tool, even in a home environment. For enterprise/data center... its a necessity (ok ok, IP KVM, whatever).

Maybe I'm just lazy, but, for example, last week I did my ESXi 5.0 upgrade without having to drag my ass across the house where my server is and sit in some dark, cramped room while I go through the upgrade .... That is just... awesome. I think I streamed Firefly (from Amazon) while I waited for the upgrade to complete :)
 
I have seen graphs of an idle diskless setup with an e3 @ 20 watts in a review.

As for the Intel boards, don't they have vPro? The newest AMT features ip kvm in the OS right? My dq45 with vPro has the KVM till the os boots (esxi) and i never really looked into it any further as it's at home.

-- I'm not really up to date on Intel server boards, not sure if they have the AMT features that you'd find on some of the desktop boards.
 
I cant help you fully into telling you a diskless power, as i never measure it, but atm im idling at 123W wiht 14 hdds in (WHS doesnt spin down the hdds), i did measure with 12 hdds and was around 113W, so assuming an average of 5W per hdd, should drop you to 55W for a one disk setup, i read that sasuc8i had an idle close to 10W, so that should take you down to 35W, take that number with a grain of salt as a lot is assumed, but my guess is between 20 to 35W idle with one disk no cards inside. Turn off, i did measure it, its 5.1W for my setup.
 
I can toss in another data point -
* X9SCL+-F
* e3-1240
* Antec earthwatts 750
* 2 IBM 1068e HBA's (BR10i)
* Norco 4220
* 10 2TB Hitachi 5k3000's
* 2 WD 2.5" 250GB drives
* 2 Crucial 64MB M4 drives (1 L2ARC, 1 ZIL)
* 16GB ECC ram (unbuffered)
* 1 Dell XR997 10GbE ethernet card

During a ZFS scrub of the main pool (2x 5 disk raid-z1's) the kill-a-watt reads from 100-112watts.
 
@hotzen:

Here is some data on my second server:

Server 2 ( 33.08TB):
- WHS 2011 + FlexRAID 2.0
- SuperMicro X9SCM-F
- Intel Xeon E3-1240 3.30GHz
- Kingston 8GB 1333MHZ DDR3 ECC w/ Thermal Sensor
- Norco RPC-4224
- 3 x Arctic Cooling ARCTIC F Pro PWM 120mm
- 2 x Arctic Cooling ARCTIC F Pro PWM 80mm
- Corsair AX750
- 3 x SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
- Intel 320 80GB SSD (OS)
- 12 x WD20EARS
- 9 x WD10EACS

Standby: ~8W
All drives Idle (21 drives): ~65W

I can use IPMI to remotely wake up the server, make changes to or upgrade the BIOS, install the OS, etc. IPMI is definitely worth the extra money especially if you place the server in a location that's not as convenient as say your workstation or laptop :)

@Abula:

You need to make sure the HBA driver is up to date and if it allows spin-down of the hdd, you should be able to configure it through the power options in WHS2011. I switched from an Areca ARC-1680i to the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 and AOC-SAS2LP-MV8s because the Areca cards did not support the OS HDD spin-down option. Once I put the SM HBAs into my servers, the power consumption dropped significantly. When I am streaming a movie from any of my servers, they usually consume around 70W. I just wish that the X9SCM-F would support S3 to further reduce the power consumption during times when I know the server will not be used (during the early hours of the night).
 
Buy this,

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Plug-USA-sty...ltDomain_0&hash=item3a6e3ef925#ht_1771wt_1125

I have 4 of them.

Here is my setup.

Running :

1 asus server xeon quad core & 2 x 500 gig hdds
1 asus intel core 2 duo & 4 x 160 gig hdds
1 Cisco sg-200
1 Cisco 10/100 24 port switch
1 sonicwall tz210
1 15″ dell lcd
1 wd 2tb nas drive
1 wd 1tb usb drive
1 apc 1500 ups
2 poe adapters 1 for voip phone & 1 for WAP
1 shuttle computer indel core2 duo 2.2 2 hard drives inside

P1020084.JPG


Here it is running 321watts because i have a p4 sitting on the side of the rack running..

EDIT changed 2 pics

Rack
P1020085.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice, thank you all very much for those numbers.
And happy new year by the way ;)
 
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