Page 5 of 6
Low-power PC
Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 11:33 am
by Digit
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 11:43 pm
by Digit
A new chapter added to this never ending quest for lower power usage
I built a new Intel i3 based server because some of my hardware is acting a bit strange lately.
The power usage reduction of >50% is getting me into the sub-30W range, but still with lots of processing power.
I think I can lower power usage even more, but I'm waiting for some parts to arrive...
http://blog.hekkers.net/2011/03/16/inte ... below-30w/
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:19 am
by Bastiaan
Robert, nice setup. I am curious how much difference it makes when you pull half of the memory out. I found that memory is effecting usages a lot now other parts are more efficient.
Can you alos make a overview of the total costs?
Bastiaan
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:04 pm
by Alexander
@Robert: Interresting material for you:
http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/60 ... wijs!.html (read other posts)
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:42 pm
by TANE
Nice work Robert.
My next step for a HA servers is make a move to a tablet
like yourtablet 2000 Atom 455, 32GB SSD
This depends on the usage. My hope is that the usage will be dropped below 6 watt
I'm going to use this for
Homeseer
Plugwise
Irtrans
Itunes
HSTouch
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:46 pm
by Digit
@Bastiaan: Total costs incl. PicoPSU is around 950 Euro; 50% of the costs are the 2 SSD's.
@Alexander: Thanks, I read (small parts) of that thread last week, really impressive! For me personally this goes a bit too far; with all this teaking I wouldn't have time for anything else anymore I guess
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:55 pm
by Digit
Enver,
When there's a tablet on which I can run multiple (at least 5) VMs, with 2 NICs, >200GB local storage, I will consider it
We'll explore the possibilities for that again in 3 years or so
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:58 pm
by Alexander
Ah okay... This is something i thought you would love to read or change
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:35 pm
by TANE
no change for vm on a tablet at the moment..maybe in few years..
i3 is the best solution
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:44 am
by RDNZL
This is my new domotiga live/development server, small physical size.
Code: Select all
Intel i3 540 CPU @ 3.06 GHz
ECS H55H-I mITX motherboard
8GB RAM (2 x KVR1066D3N7/4G)
OCZ Vertex2 60GB SSD
PicoPSU 80 Watt
Chieftec BT-02B MiniTower, mITX
Running Ubuntu Maverick 64 Bits.
Power usage is between 25-27 watt, without any bios tweaks or other optimizations, measured with plugwise plug.
I think the ECS board has less power saving features than the MSI's have.
Code: Select all
CPU0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 540 @ 3.07GHz stepping 05
Booting Node 0, Processors #1 #2 #3
Brought up 4 CPUs
Total of 4 processors activated (24469.72 BogoMIPS).
It replaces my Asus eeebox which uses 18-20 watt, but was getting a bit slow with latest Ubuntu Maverick, it also had only 1GB of memory.
The Asus scored around 5500 BogoMIPS total.
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:46 am
by RDNZL
Lol, just read what he did, look at the hardware-mods list on this linked page, I think my soldering skills are above average, but this is insane...
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 1:57 pm
by RDNZL
I love linux..
Code: Select all
PowerTOP 1.13 (C) 2007 - 2010 Intel Corporation
Collecting data for 5 seconds
PowerTOP version 1.13 (C) 2007 Intel Corporation
Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) ( 0.4%) 3.07 Ghz 0.2%
polling 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 2.94 Ghz 0.0%
C1 mwait 0.2ms ( 0.0%) 2.81 Ghz 0.0%
C2 mwait 5.3ms (40.3%) 2.67 Ghz 0.0%
C3 mwait 1.5ms (59.3%) 1200 Mhz 99.8%
Wakeups-from-idle per second : 462.4 interval: 15.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available
Top causes for wakeups:
53.4% (1202.3) USB device 2-1.1 : FT232R USB UART (FTDI)
44.4% (1000.4) [ehci_hcd:usb2] <interrupt>
0.1% ( 2.3)D mysqld
0.7% ( 15.5) [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
0.4% ( 8.1) nxagent
0.3% ( 6.5) gbx2
0.2% ( 3.5) [kernel core] hrtimer_start (tick_sched_timer)
0.1% ( 2.1) [eth0] <interrupt>
0.1% ( 2.0) [kernel core] clocksource_watchdog (clocksource_watchdog)
0.1% ( 1.7) gnome-terminal
0.1% ( 1.2) nxnode
0.1% ( 1.1) [ahci] <interrupt>
0.0% ( 1.0) gvfs-afc-volume
0.0% ( 0.5) nxserver
0.0% ( 0.5) gnome-settings-
0.0% ( 0.4) update-notifier
0.0% ( 0.3) ping
The program 'mysqld' is writing to file 'devices.MYI' on /dev/sda1.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:26 pm
by Digit
With 5 VMs moved to the i3 server it's now consuming 37W. A PicoPSU will arrive some day soon and I still have to disable some things I don't use. Undervolting etc. is not something I want to experiment with on this machine; it's too "important" for that
I think I can reduce it back to around 30W or a bit more.
To be continued...
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:29 am
by Digit
Today I replaced the PSU with the PicoPSU, resulting in a power usage that dropped from 37 to 32W.
My goal when I started this was 30-35W, so I'm satisfied with the result.
If I could only get rid of 1 Windows XP VM which consumes a lot of CPU;
The process which consumes the most CPU time in there is the Plugwise Source...
Could probably save me some more Watts!
Re: Low-power PC
Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:05 am
by yjb
Hi,
Just wondering, what is the base OS that you are running. i.e. are you running a Windows system and on top of that Windows/Linux VM's or a Linux system with Windows/Linux on top of that?
And, of course, why is one option preferred over the other?