How to decrease (set limit on) TDP of Xeon E5-1600/1620

All about them.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
kcg
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:24 am
Location: Czech Republic

How to decrease (set limit on) TDP of Xeon E5-1600/1620

Post by kcg » Fri May 25, 2012 12:57 pm

Hello,
I need to upgrade my aging Q6600 silent workstation and I would probably go for LGA 2011 as there are some boards which are trustful with regarding to ECC RAM usage, i.e. not telling lies about ECC support but correctly signal corrected errors etc. to the OS. I insist on ECC so unfortunately Asus P8B/C is not trusted here well due to its SMBIOS issues: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id= ... -us&page=1 and unfortunately all other LGA-1155 boards I've seen and which offered ECC support probably well had badly located dimms slots (on the top of the board, hence Xeon E3 is out of way).
So, well, LGA 2011, I hope Supermicro X9SRA http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... /X9SRA.cfm will fit into my TNN 500 AF case with just lower dimms populated and probably with some adapter made for CPU heatpipe block screwing to board.
Anyway, the crucial question now is if I'm able to limit 130W TDP of let say E5-1620 to more saner 80-90W for which my case is designed. Supermicro's X9SRA BIOS offer nice options:
Long duration power limit - this is the processor power consumption limit (in
Watts) during a long duration time window.
Long duration maintained - this is the time in milliseconds where the Long Duration
Power Limit is maintained.
4-8
X9SRA Motherboard Series User’s Manual
Short duration power limit - During Turbo Mode, the system may exceed the processor's default power setting and exceed the Short Duration Power limit. By increasing this value, the processor can provide better performance for a short duration.
I don't have board available here, nor processor and it might be quite expensive to buy it just to find out I've been mistaken about it, hence I'm asking here: is there anybody here with experience of capping TDP of Xeon/SB to some lower limit? If so, how was it going? What's were results?

Thanks a lot!
Karel

shaoyu
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2008 12:05 pm
Location: USA

Re: How to decrease (set limit on) TDP of Xeon E5-1600/1620

Post by shaoyu » Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:31 am

E5-2603 and E5-2609 (80W TDP) might be good choice but I am not sure. They are available at Newegg for $200 and $300.
E5-2630L (60W TDP) is a pretty safe bet and I see HP selling it for about $1K.
Also Zalman recently released a bracket ZM-OC2011 which might work with the TNN (although not officially supported so can't be sure).
No idea how well the BIOS tweak would work out if you have to use the higher TDP options.
Let us know how well your project goes :)

kcg
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:24 am
Location: Czech Republic

Re: How to decrease (set limit on) TDP of Xeon E5-1600/1620

Post by kcg » Tue Jun 12, 2012 12:02 pm

ZM-OC2011 is already on my desk. I needed to verify screw meassurements and it looks as it might be used with TNN's screwes. E5-2609 is my second choice. Price is the same like with E5-1620, but what hurts me is its top frequency which is just 2.4 GHz, exactly like I do have now with Q6600. Neither turbo mode! In comparison with this E5-1620 needs to look like speed daemon...
I'm quite sick of Intel not releasing lower TDP E5-16xx CPUs here indeed. Anyway, I'll keep the forum posted about how this resolves at the end. I've built for wife experimental silence computer based on this site recomendation (Antec solo + AMD 45W + Gelid Tranquilo + Scytche silent fan + enermax pro PSU + 2.5" HDD) but although this computer is nicely silent it's still noticeable quite well in night hours especially when I compare it with my TNN-500 workstation so I'm still motivated to give TNN third try...
Thanks!
Karel

Post Reply