Energy efficient server

digtechis · Post by **digtechis** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:43 am

Hi,

Iâ€™m looking for advice. I want to build a energy efficient server. What do you think about the two specs below:

AMD SEMPRON LE-1250 AM2 45W BOX
Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2, AMD 690V+SB600, Socket-AM2
TwinMOS DDR2 PC6400 2048MB Dual Pack KIT w/two matched DDR2 PC6400 1024MB CL5

Or an Intel D201GLY2 with only 1gig ram.

AMD config gives: More ram, faster cpu, gbit ethernet ...

The cost for the two setups does not differ very much in Sweden so that is not an issue. Does the AMD config consume almost the same amount of energy as the Intel config? Or is better to choose another motherboard/cpu.

scdr · Post by **scdr** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:33 am

Hard to answer unless one knows what the server will be doing.

How much of the time will it be on but idle?
e.g. home server for files/media, PVR
Want low idle power, and/or improve efficiency by
using wake on LAN, timed turn on, or using X-10 controller,
so it is off most of the time when not in use.

Will it be doing compute intensive jobs? How much?
(e.g. if running folding@home, or some other distributed computing project, then efficiency at high CPU load is important.
Or compressing video - want efficient higher performance CPU to get the job done promptly so can turn it off again.)
[e.g. Core2Duo or Quad; Core2Duo Mac Mini at less than 40w Folding]

Will it be churning out database queries or serving lots of web pages
(I/O intensive, with some compute intensive).

digtechis · Post by **digtechis** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:38 pm

It will probably idle a lot..
It will be used for a home server files/backup/media/PVR/downloads/maybe firewall-router in the future if I go with linux...

low idle power, and/or improve efficiency by
using wake on LAN, timed turn on

- Yes that would be great. It is not necessary to have it active 24/7. Timed turn on working in windows?

So no compute intensive jobs at the moment..

Steve Teixera · Post by **Steve Teixera** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 1:15 pm

digtechis wrote:Hi,
AMD SEMPRON LE-1250 AM2 45W BOX

take a look what you can do with a Sempron and a picopsu.
http://www.silenthardware.de/forum/inde ... opic=23348
16w idle 32w load

now you need to find a way to compare it to the D201GLY2 spcr review

cash · Post by **cash** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:36 pm

Are you planning on running Linux or Windows? I'd recommend nVidia, both for efficiency and better use under Linux.

Though I haven't tried the 690V, I just compared the following two Gigabyte boards for a Linux file server I am building:

GA-MA69GM-S2H (AMD 690G)
GA-M68SM-S2 (nVidia 7025)

The rest of my system is:

AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 45W
2GB RAM (Kingston Hyper 2 x 1GB)
Seagate 7200.10 SATA 320 GB HD (3.5")
ThermalRight Ultra 90 Rev A
120mm Nexus fan
Two 92mm Nexus fans (one for HD, one for CPU)
Corsair 450VX PSU
Antec Solo case

I have 3 additional and identical HDs to the Seagate above to add for SAMBA storage in the case but they are not powered yet.

I measured power draw using a Kill-A-Watt at the wall, using Ubuntu Gutsy. Here are IDLE power draws:

AMD, vesa driver - 50W
AMD, fglrx binary driver - 47W
nVidia, vesa driver - 44W (vesa half broken)
nVidia, latest binary (via Envy installer) - 44W

I am sure I could get a lower power draw if I used a PicoPSU but I don't think that could handle powering my four Seagate HDs, but that is speculation. I'd love to hear otherwise.

The vesa driver on the nVidia 7025 chip is somewhat broken. Most of the usual resolutions did not work and there were other corruption problems. The binary nVidia is great though and has better VGA output than AMD. AMD had a wavy appearance on vertical lines. It wasn't horrible but bad enough and I did read other posts on the web about it.

The big thing though is I wasn't able to get S3 suspend working reliably EXCEPT with the nVidia board and using the binary driver. I installed the binary driver via Envy and I had to disable hibernate via gnome-conf and that's it. The only caveat is that sometimes the machine wakes up from suspend directly to the desktop instead of a login prompt, which I can live with. The machine draws 6W during sleep.

The AMD board measured 3W during sleep but would crash, reboot, not wake up, not sleep half the time. That's not to say it can't work but I couldn't get it to, whereas it was much simpler under nVidia.

I still need to test resuming the machine from sleep using a wakeup on lan packet.

Also, frank2003 here did some testing of boards and found the 690G Gigabyte board to have 8-16W higher idle power draw than other 690G boards. I believe most people go with the Biostar 690G which is supposedly very efficient, but I recommend the nVidia boards.

scdr · Post by **scdr** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:23 am

digtechis wrote:
low idle power, and/or improve efficiency by
using wake on LAN, timed turn on

- Yes that would be great. It is not necessary to have it active 24/7. Timed turn on working in windows?

Many ATX boards have a timer that will turn them on from soft off state at a date/time. I haven't experimented with the tools to let you turn a machine on at a time, but since the mechanism is there, there should be a way to access it from software.
Of course every PVR program should have this ability (don't know if any of them do).

Here is a brief list of what tools I have found so far.
(Disclaimer - I haven't tested any of them.)
From Car PC Hacks (by Damien Stolarz, O'Reilly pub.)

Linux tools:
NVRAM wakeup
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nvram-wakeup
(Includes link to an article (in German) about techniques for waking a pc on a timer, and how most of them aren't very well standardized, or don't work as well as they should.)

Wakeup Clock
http://www.malloc.de/tools/wakeup_clock.html
(Quick skim of the source looks like it would be fairly easy to convert to another software platform (assuming you have mechanism to get by the OS protections and write to the BIOS data).)

Windows Tools:
PowrClick
http://genntt.webs.com.ua/

A few other tools that might do this sort of thing, found by searching softpedia.

Auto Power-on Shut-down
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/window ... 6103.shtml
(Documentation says will power on from Hibernate, but not from soft off.)

Shut Down Expert
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Lau ... pert.shtml

Ez Off
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/S ... -Off.shtml

Or one could use some brute force and either:

use an electronic or mechanical timer (e.g. a lamp timer).
Or
use X-10 appliance module and programmable x-10 controller.
(More expensive, more flexible - computer could tell the controller when to wake it.
But a bit of overkill for the application - like using a cannon to kill a flea
(An appliance module uses 0.4w, and a controller something around 1 watt.)
Both of these require a computer that will turn on when power applied.

While I am collecting links - here are a couple more

To turn computer off (local or remote)

PowerOff
http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html
(Windows, freeware. I have used some. Seems pretty good.)

Wake on LAN:
Tools for using WOL, including tools that will send WOL packets from
the internet to LAN.
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/200 ... n-and-wan/

digtechis · Post by **digtechis** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:42 am

Thanks for your replies! The power consumption of that sempron seems very nice. However it is more computing power in the x2 so itâ€™s a bit tricky making a good choice.

floffe · Post by **floffe** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:26 pm

The uses you listed above will place have any significant demands on computing power anyway, so I'd probably go with the sempron if it was me.

cash · Post by **cash** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:01 am

FYI, I have not been able to successfully use WOL under Linux with my nVidia board. It appears to be a problem with the Realtek 8211 driver or some configuration issue. I'm using Ubuntu Gutsy. This could be fixed by using a better supported NIC as many people do have this working.

Also, I have had suspend not wake up a couple times properly, i.e. the video card did not put signal out to the monitor on resume, requiring me to do a hard reboot.

Given these two problems, I am about to just give up on suspend and keep my machine on 24x7. I think an Intel board with all Intel chipsets, NIC, and video would have better support under Linux but I don't know personally and I think that route is significantly more expensive.

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:22 pm

digtechis wrote:Hi,

Iâ€™m looking for advice. I want to build a energy efficient server. What do you think about the two specs below:

AMD SEMPRON LE-1250 AM2 45W BOX
Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2, AMD 690V+SB600, Socket-AM2
TwinMOS DDR2 PC6400 2048MB Dual Pack KIT w/two matched DDR2 PC6400 1024MB CL5

Or an Intel D201GLY2 with only 1gig ram.

AMD config gives: More ram, faster cpu, gbit ethernet ...

The cost for the two setups does not differ very much in Sweden so that is not an issue. Does the AMD config consume almost the same amount of energy as the Intel config? Or is better to choose another motherboard/cpu.

I'm using the D201GLY2 for Windows Home Server right now. From what I understand, you can run this board with 2048MB of RAM (haven't tried it yet because I don't have extra 2GB PC5300 DIMMS just laying about) but there may be issues during install. I like the D201GLY2 a lot, I just wish I had some slightly larger drives so I could limit myself to the two SATA ports and the PATA port (and therefore free up the PCI slot for GigE). Alternately you could go with something like a i945GTm-VHL and a Celeron M or T2300 - this would put out slightly more power than the D201GLY2 but would have GigE, more expansion slots and run a processor with 18W lower TDP - the down side is that it would be more expensive (the boards are about $130, the CPU can be found used for around $40) than the D201GLY2.

-D

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:02 pm

If you're going with the sempron, i would suggest waiting till march for the 780G chipset. It is more energy efficient.

scdr · Post by **scdr** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:02 am

cash wrote:FYI, I have not been able to successfully use WOL under Linux with my nVidia board. It appears to be a problem with the Realtek 8211 driver or some configuration issue. I'm using Ubuntu Gutsy. This could be fixed by using a better supported NIC as many people do have this working.

Also, I have had suspend not wake up a couple times properly, i.e. the video card did not put signal out to the monitor on resume, requiring me to do a hard reboot.

Given these two problems, I am about to just give up on suspend and keep my machine on 24x7. I think an Intel board with all Intel chipsets, NIC, and video would have better support under Linux but I don't know personally and I think that route is significantly more expensive.

Have you considered using soft-off, rather than suspend?
Takes longer to start, of course, but might have fewer problems with drivers/etc. Also wouldn't matter what operating system you were using.

cash · Post by **cash** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 10:55 am

Have you considered using soft-off, rather than suspend?
Takes longer to start, of course, but might have fewer problems with drivers/etc. Also wouldn't matter what operating system you were using.

I can't get WOL on to work in soft-off either. I'm only running Linux and I believe it changes the configuration of the NIC so it doesn't respond to WOL packets, even once turned off. I'm not too worried about it now. I can wait a bit and hopefully things will improve driver-wise.

scdr · Post by **scdr** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 10:17 am

I'm only running Linux and I believe it changes the configuration of the NIC so it doesn't respond to WOL packets, even once turned off. I'm not too worried about it now.

Weird. If you turn WOL back on in the BIOS, does Linux turn it off again?

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:20 am

Just an out of topic question but does anyone know if there is such a thing as wake on lan with firewire? I'm thinking of making a server with an old board that doesn't have gigabit ethernet.

scdr · Post by **scdr** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:03 pm

Just an out of topic question but does anyone know if there is such a thing as wake on lan with firewire? I'm thinking of making a server with an old board that doesn't have gigabit ethernet.

I sort of doubt it - but check the documentation on your 'board.

Of course you could use 2 connections - a LAN cable just to turn on/wake up,
then firewire network for the heavy traffic. (e.g. script it to send a WOL packet to wake up the server before you mount the drive.)

cash · Post by **cash** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 7:02 pm

scdr wrote:
I'm only running Linux and I believe it changes the configuration of the NIC so it doesn't respond to WOL packets, even once turned off. I'm not too worried about it now.
Weird. If you turn WOL back on in the BIOS, does Linux turn it off again?

No, the wake-on feature in ethtool is disabled upon resume (not from WOL but from mouse click, etc). I.e. sudo ethtool eth0 prints out status for eth0 and the WOL gets disabled between suspending and resuming.

I've tested Win XP and WOL works perfectly for suspend/resume but I still can't get it to work with Ubuntu Gutsy. Then again, I haven't really tried since last posting here.

In neither can I get WOL to boot the machine from soft-off which may be something I missed in the BIOS config but I don't think so since I looked twice.

peterdk · Post by **peterdk** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:21 am

I am building a server too, and am wondering, why don't you people go for a Intel E4400 ? According to the specs it has a 8W idle usage.

Especially since someone here recommends a Txxx processor, which is lots of money, while the E4400 is around 60 Euro here.

Could somebody enlighten me why to go for a AMD ?

cash · Post by **cash** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:47 am

peterdk wrote:I am building a server too, and am wondering, why don't you people go for a Intel E4400 ? According to the specs it has a 8W idle usage.

Especially since someone here recommends a Txxx processor, which is lots of money, while the E4400 is around 60 Euro here.

Could somebody enlighten me why to go for a AMD ?

1) Most importantly, it's cheaper. An Intel E4400 is $129 US whereas the AMD BE-2400 is $99.

2) My other hardware makes more of a difference. The biggest efficiency change I could make is with the PSU. I'm at 44W from the wall; the vast majority of people here with lower numbers are using PicoPSUs instead of regular PSUs like mine. But, a) that again would have been more costly for me and b) running four Seagate 7200.10 HDs off of a Pico probably isn't possible. The second biggest change I could make is get bigger more efficient HDs but that is super costly, my drives work great and I already own them. When I run out of space and large hard drives are much cheaper, I'll replace my four 320GB drives with two 1GB (at least) HDs and then also switch to a PicoPSU.

3) Diminishing returns. Again once you get to <50W power draw at idle, your total electricity cost isn't that big. Spending more money on more efficient hardware doesn't necessarily cost less once you factor in electricity too. For me, worse case, 24x7, 365 days a year use at 40W draws costs $66. That's the upper bound per year. Right now, I leave my server machine off a lot anyway. There's just not that much savings here.

4) More data. There's more info here at SPCR (forums and reviews) on AMD systems' power draws from the wall. Returning gear is expensive with return shipping costs and 15% restocking fees.

5) I was planning to have my machine sleep when not in use, ergo idle power use isn't a big factor. Unfortunately for me, I can't get sleep/resume to work reliably in Linux yet; hopefully another distro or new version will fix that sometime down the road. If I was building an always on server, I'd use a Celeron 420 (also has 8W idle) or possibly an E1200. I'd also consider a Pentium E2xxx series since they are fairly inexpensive too.

6) Virtualization support in AMD chips. Virtualization is only supported in the E6xxx and E8xxx Intel chips. This is actually something I use. Admittedly, the AMD chip is slower than the E4400 so it may wash out in the end.

So point is, there's a lot of reasons to go with AMD. It isn't always a simple decision and I spent a lot time deciding between Intel and AMD. For me, the biggest reason to go Intel is to get an Intel chipset board with the hopes that it is better supported in Linux. But Intel chipset boards carry yet another price premium and I didn't have a good indication that such a machine would indeed have solid sleep/resume support.

doom5 · Post by **doom5** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:36 pm

This worked for me:

1. setup the ethernet card to wake on magic packets (bonus - make this happen every boot), (also when I used umbg, my machine would sleep and then wake up instantly, so you might want to think about what you set):
sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g
2. fix acpi not to unload the driver for e1000 (and messing up your hard WOL work) by adding e1000 to MODULES_WHITELIST in /etc/default/acpi-support
3. Set the machine to not (?) hard power off on hibernate by changing HIBERNATE_MODE=platform in /etc/default/acpi-support

Replace E1000 with whatever your ethernet driver is and eth0 with whatever the title of your network interface is.

peterdk · Post by **peterdk** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:53 pm

@cash: Thanks for the extensive reply! It is enlightening.

Here in the Netherlands, the price for the AMD BE-2400 and the E4400 are the same (within a margin of 5 Euro), so the price thing is not a factor.

Since performance is better on a E4400 I would go for that one because I also use my server for CPU intensive tasks sometimes.

However, I decided to wait for the new Intel Diamondville processors with a TDP of 8W for a dualcore one. Those will be out in the summer of 2008. If the performance of those is interesting enough, I will get me one of these. It is worthy to note that these processors will also have virtualization support.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:11 pm

It will be interesting to see how the diamondville dual core at 8W will compare to isaiah. I don't know the isaiah lineup yet but if they are the same TDP as their C7, the fanless cpu would be 7W. It's gonna be single core out of order against dual core in order.

Also, i have a question not directly related but didn't want to start my own thread. It might have been asked before, but does motherboard form factor affect power consumption? Mini-itx sure is sexy, and factually i've seen it consume very few, but is there a correlation between the size of the motherboard and the power consumption? Does the need to support more ports require more power or if i take off all components an atx board would just consume the same (perhaps even less since the mini-itx board has plenty of integrated stuff). ÂµATX is the cheapest, and somewhat in between the sexyness of mini-ITX and the flexibility of ATX. The thing is, my mini-itx 1GHz via c3 idles at 20w (and i know it doesn't change multiplies, unfortunatly) with 1 stick of ram, on hard drive and one optical drive, while as my ÂµATX athlon x2 3800+ idling at 1GHz, 2 sticks of ram, two hdd, one optical drive, and a hd2400 idles at like ~60W. Would the extra hdd, stick of ram, idling video card and extra processor core be making the 40W difference?

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:12 pm

Spare Tire wrote:does motherboard form factor affect power consumption? Mini-itx sure is sexy, and factually i've seen it consume very few, but is there a correlation between the size of the motherboard and the power consumption? Does the need to support more ports require more power

Interesting question. Look at laptops based on Pentium M vs MoDT implementations. The laptops are idling at ~ 12W (with screen off) while the MoDT are at ~ 25W (using PicoPSU). Is this relatively huge difference due to just the fewer ports on the laptop boards or does the very layout of the boards play a part? I've never heard any good explanation here. One wonders why the few companies that have made MoDT solutions (AOpen) couldn't just make a ÂµATX that had exactly the same components as a laptop board. Meanwhile, the Intel D201GLY2 has very few ports, yet power consumption is unimpressive. Perhaps, layout does have a significant part to play.

Palindroman · Post by **Palindroman** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:41 pm

peterdk wrote:I am building a server too, and am wondering, why don't you people go for a Intel E4400 ? According to the specs it has a 8W idle usage.

Especially since someone here recommends a Txxx processor, which is lots of money, while the E4400 is around 60 Euro here.

Could somebody enlighten me why to go for a AMD ?

If you do it right you can build an AMD server that consumes 20W less at idle than an Intel E4400 system, even with a BE-2350. I don't know what the difference would be under load, Intel seems to be more efficient there.

So it depends on how hard your server will have to work, but if it's idling for more than 50% of the time, you can save at least 20 euros per year (in the Netherlands). That's 100 euros after a lifespan of 5 years.

Count out your profit, as we say in Dutch.

Palindroman · Post by **Palindroman** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:47 pm

cash wrote:Are you planning on running Linux or Windows? I'd recommend nVidia, both for efficiency and better use under Linux.

Though I haven't tried the 690V, I just compared the following two Gigabyte boards for a Linux file server I am building:

GA-MA69GM-S2H (AMD 690G)
GA-M68SM-S2 (nVidia 7025)

I second that:

cash · Post by **cash** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:36 pm

peterdk wrote:However, I decided to wait for the new Intel Diamondville processors with a TDP of 8W for a dualcore one. Those will be out in the summer of 2008. If the performance of those is interesting enough, I will get me one of these. It is worthy to note that these processors will also have virtualization support.

Yes, I think these will be very interesting chips but I know nothing about them feature or performance-wise save the low wattage factor. VT support is news to me. The most important things will be price and motherboard availability/options; anyone have details on this?

I am planning on building a second system this year to replace my old desktop which idles at over 100W and isn't even dual-core. Perhaps my server hardware will become my desktop upgrade if Diamondville turns out to be great.

Hifriday · Post by **Hifriday** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 11:15 am

How about a gigabit NAS? Certainly not much fun to put together, but still probably has the best energy efficiency and they are coming out with more and more functions (Bit torrent DL, MySQL, webpage hosting, itunes server, etc). My Synology NAS with a 250GB Samsung idles at 18W, when the drive is spun down 12W, and under full access 23W.

Energy efficient server

Energy efficient server

Re: Energy efficient server

Re: Energy efficient server