I’ve got a NAS built in a Node 304 mini itx case that works great, but uses a ton of power. In Unraid (the OS for my NAS) there is some kind of issue with the Ryzen 3900x processor that I’m running that means I have to disable all sleep states - so it’s always at it’s 100W TDP. Power is super expensive where I live so I’d love to find something more power efficient.
Does it make more sense to buy a more recent(ish) 5th gen ryzen in hopes that the sleep states will work, and thus save money by keeping my existing motherboard?
Or I could go with something a bit more interesting. I’ve seen on Aliexpress motherboards with mobile CPU’s soldered which are very power efficient. For example the N100 has an insane 6W TDP and comes on special boards with lots of sata ports and 2.5G networking (link). The worry with the n100 though is that it only officially supports 16G of ram which might not be enough for zfs.
Any thoughts? Is anyone running a power-efficient build who could throw some advice my way? Thanks!
How many HDD are you running? Set to spin down or no? Those spinning all the time add up quickly.
Sleep state and power States are different things… I’ve never heard of power profiles causing issues. I’d try keeping sleep disabled in BIOS and then look into what you need to change to allow the processor to idle/downclock. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work I’m aware of.
Okay maybe I can mess with that. I think when I initially was having problems I just nuked everything I could related to power states just to get things working again. Maybe I can try turning some stuff back on.
I’m only running 3hdds at the moment, and they’re setup to spin down automatically which does save some power for sure.
Renoir and Cezanne PRO Apus can idle under 15W. I’ve built my NAS inside a Node 304 as well and use a Gigabyte A520I with a 5650G and ECC RAM because ZFS. Asus b550i works as well. As long as you activate both power savers in bios (cec/aspm/erp) your system will idle under 15W excluding other stuff. I’ve not seen under 20W with asrock boards.
With a asm1166 m.2 adapter you get enough sata for the drive caddies which leaves you with 4 sata on the mainboard for cache ssds that you can mount between the caddies.
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How many HDD are you running? Set to spin down or no? Those spinning all the time add up quickly.
Sleep state and power States are different things… I’ve never heard of power profiles causing issues. I’d try keeping sleep disabled in BIOS and then look into what you need to change to allow the processor to idle/downclock. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work I’m aware of.
Could try undervolting as well.
Okay maybe I can mess with that. I think when I initially was having problems I just nuked everything I could related to power states just to get things working again. Maybe I can try turning some stuff back on.
I’m only running 3hdds at the moment, and they’re setup to spin down automatically which does save some power for sure.
If you’re really worried about power use, you could switch to an itx motherboard with an soc laptop chip in it.
Oh yeah these are super cool. Seems like they’ve gotten pretty expensive lately though, I can’t seem to find a good deal on Aliexpress
Renoir and Cezanne PRO Apus can idle under 15W. I’ve built my NAS inside a Node 304 as well and use a Gigabyte A520I with a 5650G and ECC RAM because ZFS. Asus b550i works as well. As long as you activate both power savers in bios (cec/aspm/erp) your system will idle under 15W excluding other stuff. I’ve not seen under 20W with asrock boards. With a asm1166 m.2 adapter you get enough sata for the drive caddies which leaves you with 4 sata on the mainboard for cache ssds that you can mount between the caddies.