I'm just wondering how much power they would consume. I'm considering building a home server with a 940 Opterons since I want PCI-X slots, and they seem to be one of the cheaper options. I just want to get an idea how much power they would consume so I can decide if they would be worth the extra power just for their PCI-X slots.
Would HE Opterons show noticeable power savings? Typical serverboards by Tyan and Supermicro consume quite a bit of power already, no?
Anyone here run 940 Opteron servers?
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austinbike
- Posts: 192
- Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2007 5:09 pm
I used to have an opteron 185 in a tyan board. With a 500w PS, 2GB of memory and 3 HD's it was pulling ~140w on average in idle.
The HE processor will definitely draw less power.
My Athlon 65w with 2GB of DDR-2 and a notebook HD pulls ~42w at idle. Same power supply and DVD-RW.
So if you do the simple math you see the following:
3 HD's = ~30W (assume the NB HD's ~1w is a rounding error)
DDR memory vs. DDR-2 consumes ~10W more
So, once you pull that 40W out, it's probably a 60w delta between the 110W 185 and the 65w athlon.
Half of that is probably the board and half of that is probably the proc.
If you need a server, I would recommend a Rev F, which will draw much less power (and be more readily available.) Look at the 1000 series, not the Rev E 100 series.
The DDR memory is also more expensive than DDR-2 now. Plus most duals are upgradeable to quad if they are AM2.
My gigabyte athlon board also supports quad core 1000 series. The board doesn't technically support them, but I have dropped them in and they run fine.
The HE processor will definitely draw less power.
My Athlon 65w with 2GB of DDR-2 and a notebook HD pulls ~42w at idle. Same power supply and DVD-RW.
So if you do the simple math you see the following:
3 HD's = ~30W (assume the NB HD's ~1w is a rounding error)
DDR memory vs. DDR-2 consumes ~10W more
So, once you pull that 40W out, it's probably a 60w delta between the 110W 185 and the 65w athlon.
Half of that is probably the board and half of that is probably the proc.
If you need a server, I would recommend a Rev F, which will draw much less power (and be more readily available.) Look at the 1000 series, not the Rev E 100 series.
The DDR memory is also more expensive than DDR-2 now. Plus most duals are upgradeable to quad if they are AM2.
My gigabyte athlon board also supports quad core 1000 series. The board doesn't technically support them, but I have dropped them in and they run fine.