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Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 4:42 am
by mkygod
I built a fairly beefy system for NAS/mediaserving purposes. It has a Core i5-4590S with 8gb of ram and 6 mechanical hard drives in a Fractal Node 304 case.

My uses include Plex, Madsonic (music streaming), several newsgroup clients, and basic file sharing.

With a single drive, i was able to get 30 watts idle from this system which I was pretty happy with. But with 6 drives, im getting 60 watts. I want to try to get it lower. The things I am asking myself are:

1) Should I allow some of my drives to sleep? Many of my drives seldomly get accessed. I read that letting your hdd sleep and power on regularly can shorten it's lifespan. I only plan on letting my drives sleep/power on about once or twice a week. Is this fine?
2) should I enable EPU feature on my Asus motherboard? Also, are there any other power saving modes or settings I could set in the BIOS to reduce power usage aside from underclocking/undervolting?
3) any recommended "Power options" for windows? I'm using Windows 8.1.
4) any other tips?

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:11 am
by quest_for_silence
Which drives are your ones?

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 8:46 am
by Lucky Luciano
Xbitlabs made an article a while ago which also touched on the EPU feature.

One HDD consumes about 4-5 watts so there's 20-25 watts that you won't reduce unless you use power management.

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 8:57 am
by mkygod
quest_for_silence wrote:Which drives are your ones?
My drives are as follows

4TB HGST 7200rpm (main)
3TB Seagate ~5400rpm
2TB WD Green
2TB WD Green
3TB WD Red NAS
3TB HGST 5400rpm

I find that after leaving the computer on IDLE for awhile, the wattage drops down from 60 watts to 36 watts. I'm sure it has something to do with some of my drives going to sleep. Is there an easy way to tell which of my drives have gone to sleep? and without waking them up again?

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 9:31 am
by quest_for_silence
mkygod wrote:Is there an easy way to tell which of my drives have gone to sleep? and without waking them up again?

I'm not sure to have understood what you're looking for, however, IIRC under Windows you could run CrystalDiskInfo: under the Function tab choose the Advanced options, then AAM/APM, and where the AAM appeared to be 80h, the drive should be sleepy. That should apply to WD drives, but I don't know if it's the same for the Hitachi or Seagate ones.

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:28 pm
by CA_Steve
In Windows 7, there is:
Control Panel/Power Options/edit plan settings/change advanced power settings/Hard Disk/Turn off hard disk after... and click the setting. If a disk is idle after x minutes, Windows will spin it down.

I'm sure Win8 has something similar. I just have backup data on my HDD, so I set mine for 2 minutes.

Re: Need help optimizing my NAS/Mediaserver PC for low power

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:14 pm
by andresavage
Thanks man! This is very helpful for me.