MSI 740GM-P25 Athlon X2 250 vs ASRock G43Twins Celeron E3400

[chinna_n]

Hi folks,

I am a long time lurker and occasional poster here, and I need some help from Low power wizards here.

Trying to a build a Nexenta based NAS with ZFS RAID Z2. I need a decent low power CPU with Motherboard with 6 SATA II ports.

As all of us here do, I am trying to keep idle power to minimum, and also keep the max power within the limits, so a small power supply can support it.

I am choosing 6 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI for RAID Z2 setup, and OS will be run from Flash memory.

I liked the MSI 740GM-P25 Athlon X2 250/ or even 240e, but it seems full load power is high with this configuration, where as idle could be potentially less than ASRock G43Twins with Celeron E3400 combination.

The issue with full power is, during boot HDDs suck lot of power, close to 15-20w each, and adding more CPU power during boot would make it necessary to have big power supply. I want to go with either PICO 160W with Dell DA2 power supply or with Dell RM112.

Also, I intend to use De-Dup, and may be compression later. So I need to decent CPU for parity calculation, De-Dup and compression.

I intended to make it always on system, with my HTPCs writing all recording directly on it. So, idle power consumption is important.

Any quick help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

[chinna_n]

Any ideas please!!

[loimlo]

Frankly, I'd use a high efficiency 300~400W PSU rather than Pico-160W regardless of Intel or AMD setup for the peace of mind. After all, I don't want to risk the potential of losing valuable data all together! Enermax Modu82 385W or Seasonic Gold 400W seems to be a better fit under your circumstance.

Btw, I'd purchase better chipsets/motherboards like 785G, H55 for HTPC environment. Just my two cents.

[chinna_n]

Thanks for the reply. Man it was cold no one even threw any ideas.

Pico PSU was to keep the enclosure size to minimum possible along with high-efficiency. But I already ordered Dell RM112 high-efficiency power supply, may be I will use that.

Anyways, I finally got Asrock G43FullHD setup with Celeron 3400. It seems it is a wise choice. Now after some tweaking with standard Antec EA380 power supply, system is idling around 32watts with a DVD drive.

Here is the setup:
MB: Asrock G43FullHD
CPU: Celeron E3400 at 1.0375v
2GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Samsung DVD Writer
Antec EA 380W Power supply.

Idle: 32Watts

With CPU at 0.9v with 1.3Ghz
Idle: 28Watts

Ultimate Boot CD:
Prime 95 with 2 threads: 60Watts
CPU Burn 4 threads running: 58Watts

With default CPU voltage: 1.265v
Prime 95 with 2 threads: 68Watts

Max Power during boot: 47Watts

Adding 5 Samsung 2TB drives
Idle: 59Watts ( Drives spinning)

Maxpower during Boot with 5 x 2TB: 100Watts ( Drives spin-up)

There are few trick upto Asrock Motherboard. There is NB,SB chip set voltage options, Auto, Low, Medium and high. In Low I was able to save about 2 watts.

But, it seems when I undervolt CPU in bios it seems SpeedStep is not working( Still need to validate), but if I do not undervolt, it is consuming 33Watts idling anyways.

I am assuming, I can cut down about 4 - 5 watts from idle power once I swap the power supply, and about 8 watts from Max boot power ( about 90-94Watts during boot).

I am guessing, CPU is hardly taking about 18Watt at full load. Taking the Power efficiency into account (Guessing about 65% at this low load).

It may be taking about 21-22Watts DC during idle, and 39-40watts DC during full load. Including Chipset it is adding 18watts additional at full power.

Anyways, it seems the choice is pretty good one.

[chinna_n]

After several bios changes and Ubuntu configuration changes I am able to hit 24watts idle with USB flash based drive.

Here is new configuration

CPU: Celeron E3400
CPU voltage at 1.056v ( after 28 hours of Prime 95, 1.05 turned out be stable voltage and but want some buffer, so I set it at 1.056. Anyways idle power is same, only full load it is hardly 1watt additional power.
MB: Asrock G43full HD
Memory: 2GB DDR3 ( from original DDR2)
PS: Dell RM112

NB, SB voltage set to Low,
Memory voltage Auto,
Graphics voltage Normal
Onboard HD audio, USB, LAN enabled.
HPET enabled.

In Ubuntu,
Intel HD Audio Power save enabled,
SATA ALPM enabled
Device Power management enable.

Idle at 24 watts AC

Full load adds 18 watts AC load (with RM 112)
so, it at full load it is only 42 watts.

OEM cpu fan runs at lowest possible speed via bios setting ( ~1k), not audible, and CPU at full load for 24+ hours only reach 38C.

Finally reached goal for a system with power consumption under 25 watts without hdds.
With 5 Samsung 2TB drives, it idles about 43 watts while all disks are spinning. I am not spinning down disks at this time, neither I have enabled power save on HDDs.

Contrary to Mike C' testing of Samsung 2TB HD204UI drives, my drives are idling with less power( may be different batch). They are taking about 3.5 watts AC, and DC must be less than 3 watts while idling.

[chinna_n]

Anyways finally got the build phase 1 done. With 6 drives (5 x 2TB drives and one 32GB flash boot drive),

it is idling at 44 watts,

and when data drives spin down, power drops to 28 watts ( still taking about close 1 watt when spin down).

Overall this setup reached my original goals of system under 50 watts while using ( while actually reading, writing to disks, approx 47-49watts) and disks are spun down it is less than 30 watts.

Getting disk spin down with Nexenta (open solaris kernel) has been pain, but finally got it working.

I made a custom case, which did work as expected, but not looking great because of a incorrect stain issue, I will post some photos when I get a chance.

[sanbeiyan]

Thanks for the reply. Man it was cold no one even threw any ideas.

Pico PSU was to keep the enclosure size to minimum possible along with high-efficiency. But I already ordered Dell RM112 high-efficiency power supply, may be I will use that.

Anyways, I finally got Asrock G43FullHD setup with Celeron 3400. It seems it is a wise choice. Now after some tweaking with standard Antec EA380 power supply, system is idling around 32watts with a DVD drive.

Here is the setup:
MB: Asrock G43FullHD
CPU: Celeron E3400 at 1.0375v
2GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800
Samsung DVD Writer
Antec EA 380W Power supply.

Idle: 32Watts

With CPU at 0.9v with 1.3Ghz
Idle: 28Watts

Ultimate Boot CD:
Prime 95 with 2 threads: 60Watts
CPU Burn 4 threads running: 58Watts

With default CPU voltage: 1.265v
Prime 95 with 2 threads: 68Watts

Max Power during boot: 47Watts

Adding 5 Samsung 2TB drives
Idle: 59Watts ( Drives spinning)

Maxpower during Boot with 5 x 2TB: 100Watts ( Drives spin-up)

There are few trick upto Asrock Motherboard. There is NB,SB chip set voltage options, Auto, Low, Medium and high. In Low I was able to save about 2 watts.

But, it seems when I undervolt CPU in bios it seems SpeedStep is not working( Still need to validate), but if I do not undervolt, it is consuming 33Watts idling anyways.

I am assuming, I can cut down about 4 - 5 watts from idle power once I swap the power supply, and about 8 watts from Max boot power ( about 90-94Watts during boot).

I am guessing, CPU is hardly taking about 18Watt at full load. Taking the Power efficiency into account (Guessing about 65% at this low load).

It may be taking about 21-22Watts DC during idle, and 39-40watts DC during full load. Including Chipset it is adding 18watts additional at full power.

Anyways, it seems the choice is pretty good one.

Excuse me, but I'm going to setup a similar machine.

In your setup, the idle was 32Watts, is it running with default Volt and default clock (i.e. 13x200MHz = 2.6GHz) ?
And, you mentioned that the idle turn into 28Watts with 0.9V and 1.3GHz , are run underclock it at 13x100Mhz , undervolt it to
0.9V ?

You further quote that the "Prime95" Watt usage is 60W and 68W, is it @ 1.3GHz (0.9V) and @ 2.6GHz(Default V) ???? Just wonder why the consumption is only "8W" difference at full load for a half reduction in fsb and almost 30% cut in Volt.