Hi everyone,
for 20 years now i run servers in my own home to host my stuff. Because i am living in europe with quite high price tags for electricity i am always searching for ways to make my servers more power efficient.
But finding a power efficient ATX PSU with performes well in ranges around 20-25W, where my server idles most of the time, is quite challenging.
Dont get me wrong, the Server has an very efficient PSU, a Super-Flower SF450P14XE Golden Green Pro but thats now 14 years old (but serves me well). I bought it for 55€ back in the days.
Over the years i tried various budget insider tips regarding efficent PSU’s (for example the Cooler Master MWE400) which all were also good but not better than the 14 year old Super Flower, which i think is kind of sad.
Just yesterday i tried a 160W PicoPSU combined with a 150W DELL DA-1 powerbrick (which should also be quite efficient), but it was the same. My Server used 1-3W more than with the Super-Flower.
Long story short: are there any efficient PSU out there that you can recommend for loads around 20-25W, that dont have a price tag like a kidney on the blackmarket?
I also have seen people trying to mod old Dell Server PSU with are 750W with platinum rating an are cheap on ebay, but thats another story.
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I have an older (2017) Dell SFF OptiPlex 7050 that idles about 12w, with 3 drives (each 1 TB, spinning disk).
It peaks about 80w when I’m doing conversions, but I can keep that down by limiting cpu usage for handbrake (it doesn’t convert faster above 4 cores anyway, just uses more power).
I was surprised by the low idle power, I would’ve been happy with upwards of 40w since my previous machine idled at 100w.
So I think very low idle is possible, I’m just not sure why this box idles so low.
do you have a ballpark figure of potential savings in $/€ per annum? and for what hardware? I remember calculating something similar and I don’t think I broke $20 in total, so promptly forgot about it.
1W of 24/7 saved power equals approx. 2.5€. I dont have my PV System in my calculations, but it really does not matter that much. Fact is that i will need a new PSU. Maybe in 3 months or in 3 years, and for that is search for one which is highly efficient and on a budget. I know that it makes no sense buying a 100€ Platinum PSU to save 2€ per year.
You can look into this database: PSU Low Idle Efficiency Database by Wolfgang’s Channel / Google Docs
Thanks for the hint, already knew that list. I bought the MWE 400 following that list, which is also not as efficient as the Super-Flower.
I wonder if you’d get better mileage out of a high efficiency 12v brick, and a 5v and 3.3v DC-DC converter? Without changing your hardware out for a NUC or Raspberry Pi, I’m not sure if you can really go lower power. Maybe install a solar panel on your balcony for free electricity lol
Four Solarpanels are already in place to reduce our overall power consumption. Changing the hardware would also mean less computing power. I also use the server to recode stuff to x265.
Nevertheless, i just bought a used LC-Power LC6460GP4 for 16€ (plus shipping). 460W, 80+ Gold Rating. I think i will give that a try, maybe it is at least as efficient as the SuperFlower so i have a good replacement plus it is semi modular.
I had an embedded Celeron server, passively cooled with 1 hard drive and 2 SSD which used to idle in the range you mentioned, measured at the outlet… It had a random PSU that came with the mini case it was in.
Realistically, how low do you aim to go? Disks for example add a lot of wattage.Disks add wattage when running, but when idle use very little power, less than SSD.
Suprisingly hard drives often use less power than SSD because they can spin down, and because they use less power during writes than SSD.
I wouldn’t know, my drives are in RAIDZ and I’m always seeding Linux ISOs, so they never spin down.
I dont have a specific goal how low i want to come. My Server is an i3-10100 with five HDD an one NVMe. I know that the 20-25W on idle (with disks spun down) are good. But i have also read that there are people which manage to run similiar setups at 15W using really pricey platinum PSU’s. But i am really surprised that i didnt find any PSU which is more efficient than my 14 year old and dont cost a whole lot of money. Nevertheless the PSU is 14 years old so it would be nice to have a goold replacement at hand, in case it dies.
I don’t think a Platinum vs a Gold ATX rated PSU is going to make such a drastic difference on such low wattages, unless they’re made for low workloads. Efficiency is highest around half of the rated maximum load.
So something like a PicoPSU is likely more efficient, and if electricity is very expensive you could even make a return on that investment in 5-10years maybe…I wouldn’t worry too much about a 5-10W difference (unless the pc will be off-grid), at the same time a quality PSU will produce less heat and be more silent, will have a fanless mode built in, those are bigger advantages to me.
Like i said, tried the PicoPSU just yesterday with a rumored fairly efficient powerbrick an the PC needed 1-3W more than with the Superflower.
Keep using the Superflower my friend, and keep the Pico + Dell transformer as backup if the first fails. Maybe in a year or two you’ll find a great deal on a mobo+cpu combo that’s way more efficient and powerful anyway so all investments made now for a few watts will seem moot by then. Just my 2c.
Btw I also have an old Superflower but only 350W, and I recently got a used (barely) Seasonic Focus 550W in case I needed more wattage again (for multiple HDDs spinning up at boot or in case I bought a GPU again), also gold-rated. I was looking to get a Titanium or Platinum one but the price difference was still quite unjustifiable for my use case (idle server/NAS).
Another thing, I never bothered testing with a wattmeter (except the one on the UPS display) because I read that they’re a lot less accurate at the low wattages that we are discussing. Also the UPS alone causes some losses as well.
