So I have finally built my NAS. I used an N100 CPU because I saw it has low power consumption.

Right now I have 2 NVMe SSDs and 2 HDDs. I have installed proxmox on the 2 SSDs as RAID1. I have not partitioned the HDDs yet, they are just plugged in and powered on.

Just booting into proxmox, without any VMs or containers running, I am pulling 45W from the wall. This looks super high to me, and I’m afraid that starting to use the HDDs and running some VMs may double this…

I don’t have much references, but I have an Odroid with an external self-powered HDD, it is using 5W. I have a raspberry pi 4 with an external HDD, the raspberry is pulling 3W and the HDD 3W.

With these data, I was thinking I wouldn’t go over 20W. 45W is enormous and not something I can run 24/7, kind of a fail for a NAS…

Have I done something wrong or is it just how much it’s supposed to pull?

Edit: I have come across powertop. Using the auto tune, I was able to drop to 33-35W. I have unplugged the HDDs and dropped to 22W. I guess I cannot go lower, this may be because of the PSU or the 2 NVMe

  • JASN_DE@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You’re not going to see similar power levels to those ARM devices. A massive part will be the drives, 3.5" drives take between 6 and 10W per drive while running.

    • Kwa@derpzilla.netOP
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      8 months ago

      I’m going to try to unplug these. But even if I remove 20W from the 2 HDDs, there are still 25W which seem a lot

      • JASN_DE@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You’re building a machine from parts. Different Mainboard, PSU, CPU and drive combinations. No real way for a system manufacturer to optimize for a specific use case and power target.

        The full ATX PSU alone has a widely variable efficiency, and often not down in the low double digit power areas.