[Kaufberatung] Supermicro low power build

[impovich]

Hello, dear community!

I'm seeking advice for my current or upcoming NAS build, given the soaring electricity prices in Europe. I've listed my current setup and potential changes below:

Current Build:

• Chassis: 846BE1C-R1K23B
• MOBO: X12SPL-F
• CPU: Xeon Silver 4310
• RAM: 16x4
• LSI 9300-8i
• PNY Quadro T400
• HDD: 2 x MIRROR 3.64 TiB
• HDD: 1x2TB
• SSD: 1 x MIRROR 223.57 GiB

The current system consumes approximately 145W from the wall

Considering Changes:

• X12SDV-4C-SP6F or
• X12STH-F with E-2314 or
• X13SAZ-F with i5-13500

Question: Will either of these proposed changes help lower power consumption? Which motherboard would you choose from the list and why?

Danke schön

 

[Rarity]

A few important questions at first :

1) What are your exact needs by specification book (Pflichtenheft) ?
2) What are your possabilities and limits (financial ond otherwise) ?
3) Would perhaps a small photovoltaic balcony power plant (400-800 watt) be an option for you ? (an approx. €500+ investment in non-PC hardware that would lower your electricity bill for the next 15-20 years.)

 

[impovich]

A few important questions at first :

1) What are your exact needs by specification book (Pflichtenheft) ?
2) What are your possabilities and limits (financial ond otherwise) ?
3) Would perhaps a small photovoltaic balcony power plant (400-800 watt) be an option for you ? (an approx. €500+ investment in non-PC hardware that would lower your electricity bill for the next 15-20 years.)

1. This is a simple Truenas Scale. The main usage is for Plex and file storage.
2. An interesting question; I suppose there are almost no limits.
3. I already have photovoltaic panels generating 5KW/h.

I'm quite an enthusiast and learn from my own (sometimes silly) mistakes. However, since the server game can be quite expensive, I just want to double-check my considerations with other people. This forum looks like the best place on earth to do this

 

[Rarity]

I am a TrueNAS user, but not a Plex-user.
My TrueNAS box uses around 130W idle, going down to ~105W when idling for >10-15 minutes, and up to 210W under load (Xeon E1245 with 10x 18TB HDD raidz2 plus 1 HDD, 1x 10GBit SFP+)

My thought would be the "X13SAZ-F with i5-13500", because it's a newer CPU generation and its iGPU might just be good enough for your Plex-workload and therefore perhaps eliminate the need for the T400 gfx-card (30W ?), plus the 2x 2.5GBase-T is decent for a simple NAS.
Any chances for reducing your numbers of low capacity HDDs /mirrors ? E.g. 1x ssd boot drive (OS), 2 HDD (higher capacity) as main storage (raid1), 1x transfer HDD .... that would eliminate the need for the HBA (approx. 8W).
(my personal favorite would be 1x sata-ssd (e.g. 256 GB bootdrive) because it needs less power then NVMe and TrueNAS doesn't write that much, HBA LSI 9500-8i, 2x U.3 mixed use SSD-drives (raid1) as main storage ... but that setup would not save any power ... just be an enthusiastic approach to speedy, I/O rich, file server )

(deleted: RAM .... not worth the work ... trying to save power elsewhere, like power management leads to much better savings)

 

[impovich]

Thank you for your reply; you made a good point regarding the iGPU, which I hadn't thought about. I guess I need to rebuild the system completely. For example:

CHASSIS: 825TQC-600LPB
MB: X13SAZ-F
CPU: i5-13500
RAM: 2x32GB

Migrate 2 x MIRROR 3.64 TiB (4 disks in 2 vdevs) and 1x2TB to a new mirror using 2x WD80EFZZ.
1 x MIRROR 223.57 GiB will remain as it is.

This will allow me to get rid of the HBA, T400, and 3 HDDs.

The nice thing is that I can approach these changes iteratively and observe the difference:

1. Reduce the number of disks.
2. Upgrade the motherboard and CPU
3. ...