Da ich vorbereite, meinen Server neu zu bauen, wird die aktuelle Konfiguration aufgrund des hohen Stromverbrauchs teuer. Sie verfügt derzeit über 15 Festplatten – 13 mit 3 TB und 2 mit 4 TB – die ich kostenlos von der Arbeit erhalten habe, aber die Stromrechnung ist zu einem großen Problem geworden. Um dies zu beheben, plane ich, meine Speicherlösung auf eine effizientere Konfiguration mit 2x16 TB Laufwerken mit MergerFS und einem 18 TB Laufwerk für Snapraid zu aktualisieren, wobei ich langfristige Einsparungen gegenüber den Anschaffungskosten priorisiere.
Die zentrale Frage ist, ob ich bei meinem aktuellen AMD Ryzen 5 2400G auf einer ASUS B450-Mutterplatte bleiben oder auf einen Intel-CPU aus einer ähnlichen Generation wechseln soll, wie z. B. ein i5 der 6. bis 8. Generation. Obwohl ich normalerweise AMD bevorzuge, bin ich offen für Intel, wenn es in der Verbraucherhardware bessere Energieeffizienz bietet, was helfen könnte, die Stromrechnung zu senken. Der Server beinhaltet außerdem zwei NVMe-Laufwerke für das Betriebssystem und die Sicherung sowie zwei LSI SAS-Karten für die Festplatten. Da es sich um einen reinen NAS-Server handeln wird, der möglicherweise in Zukunft Plex oder Jellyfin laufen wird, möchte ich sicherstellen, dass jede Investition in eine neue Motherboard und CPU durch messbare Energieeinsparungen gerechtfertigt ist.
If you plan to run Plex or Jellyfin and use transcoding, go with Intel for Quick Sync. This will save you the need for a dedicated GPU.
I haven’t needed to use it that way yet, so probably not. I mainly use it for storage. I’ve never had any issues running files on it with my current CPU or integrated graphics, just like on my PC.
Did you check the power draw of the listed CPUs, including max and idle usage? I assume you searched this before posting.
Switching won’t pay for itself, either in the short or long term. If your current performance meets your needs, it’s best to stick with what you have.
The storage upgrade you mentioned will likely have a bigger impact than changing the CPU.
Performance is adequate, but the power savings are significant. If I reduce consumption from 145–150W to around 40–50W, the difference in electricity costs would allow me to buy a new 16 TB drive every six months. While it may not pay for itself immediately, it will over time.
Currently, I keep my system running 24/7, except during longer vacations. With much lower power usage, I might even set it up outdoors and use it while away.
Without knowing your local electricity rates, 150W running continuously isn’t much—only about 108 kWh per month. Even at high rates like those in Denmark, that would only cost around 40-50 euros.
Based on my electricity bills, running the NAS alone costs 500-600 PLN every two months. My total bill is typically 800-900 PLN.
I compared June and July, when the NAS was off while I was away and only my family used non-NAS appliances, to other months with similar non-NAS usage but the NAS running 24/7.
Your electricity bill is a significant expense, so it’s worth addressing if it’s a financial concern. As mentioned, the drives are the main source of power consumption, particularly if you’re using an LSI card.
The most effective upgrade for reducing power usage would be to reduce the number of drives to what your motherboard can support without needing the extra card.
I plan to use two NVMe drives—one for the OS and another for backup, as I’ve done previously—along with three HDDs set up with MergerFS and Snapraid. All drives will be connected directly to the motherboard.
My motherboard supports up to six SATA drives, so if I need to expand storage in the future, I can easily add more drives without requiring an additional card.
There’s almost no difference in power consumption, though Intel uses slightly fewer watts. I chose AMD because it was more affordable and offers 8 threads.
I’ll likely stick with my current setup and just reduce the number of drives. I might also change the case since this Chieftec BA-01B-B-OP is quite large.
Both systems will idle around 20 watts. Intel might use slightly less, perhaps 10 watts, which could save you about $10 per year depending on your electricity rate.
With prices rising—projected to increase by 50% here in January—it’s worth considering.
Regarding the 10W difference, that might matter more in the future. On Windows, I had no issues moving my OS drive from an Intel/Nvidia setup to AMD/AMD, aside from drivers. Would Linux present any problems with this?
The hard drives will be the biggest factor in your power consumption. Switching to Linux won’t help with that. While there are many reasons to switch to Linux, it won’t significantly reduce your power bill if you’re running 15 hard drives.
Consider consolidating your drives into fewer, larger ones. Big drives are expensive, but if your 15 drives are a collection of 1-2TB drives in a JBOD array, replacing them with two mirrored 20TB drives will greatly reduce your power usage.
For reference, about 40% of the power consumption in my homelab comes from the NAS. It only has four hard drives and runs on an ARM processor. Even compared to two Wi-Fi access points, a router, a main switch, multiple Raspberry Pis, a NUC (Intel), and a virtualization host (AMD) with a dedicated GPU for transcoding, the NAS is still the largest power draw.
When I mentioned Windows, I was referring to other PCs and the plan to move. I’m now using OMV and will keep it since it works well for me.
For comparison, I have an Optiplex Micro running Proxmox and a second Celeron build also with Proxmox, used only for UrBackup and Immich. Together with the switch, they use about a quarter of what my NAS currently uses, so I understand your concern.
The reason is that my 15 drives are likely consuming around three-quarters, if not a bit more, of the NAS’s total power. I plan to move to fewer, larger drives. If electricity prices don’t rise, the savings should cover the cost of three new drives in about a year. If prices increase or I can sell some of my current drives, the payback will be even faster.
I don’t use GPUs on my servers, but I don’t see any issues here.
As a side note, replacing hard drives alone would save you significant power—you’d go from over 150W to around 20W. I wouldn’t worry much about the CPU and motherboard.
Yes. Before building this NAS, I didn’t realize 3.5-inch hard drives consumed so much power.
For lower idle power consumption, Intel typically outperformed AMD in those generations. Aim for the newest generation possible—8th gen is better than 6th—though the difference becomes negligible with multiple LSI cards and 15 drives.
If you’re building a data-only NAS, look into drive spindown and sleep settings. I replaced my 24-port LSI card because its drivers prevented spindown. Switching to a 6-port SATA card from AliExpress allowed spindown and sleep to function properly.
With a similar number of drives, my system went from 130W idle to 55W with one disk active for media, and just 3W in sleep mode.
If you only need three disks, select a motherboard with enough SATA ports to avoid LSI cards. Many boards from that era had 6 or 8 ports, which could bring your power usage to around 40–45W with disks spinning, or 30W with them spun down.
That’s my goal as well—to switch from LSI cards to an all-in-one setup, starting with these three drives and possibly adding more much later.
One question: Why use a SATA card instead of the motherboard’s SATA ports? I thought there wouldn’t be an issue if the motherboard fails, as long as the filesystem is software-based, which I plan to do with OMV.
My motherboard is 12th gen, so it only has four SATA ports. Due to the trend of sideways-facing ports, they are unusable in my 24-bay case.
I see. I thought there might be a reason for that, and I should reconsider my connections. On my motherboard, they face up, so it’s not an issue.
If you plan to use Direct Play for your devices without transcoding in Jellyfin or Plex, upgrading your CPU and motherboard offers little benefit. However, if you do need transcoding, switching to Intel is a reasonable choice. Transcoding can easily max out your CPU, and AMD APUs still lack full support for it. Without Intel’s QuickSync, you might need to add a dedicated GPU, which would offset any expected power savings.
I’ll consider it, but I probably won’t need it since I play files directly from regular storage without issues. I don’t feel the need to change anything, so sticking with what the drives cost seems better.
Calculate your electricity costs based on your local rates.
An Intel CPU will save you at most 10 watts. Multiply that by 24 hours, 30 days a month, and your electricity rate.
For comparison, each HDD uses about 6 watts, and LSI cards typically draw between 5 and 20 watts each.
Even with LSIs averaging around 25 watts and HDDs dropping from 90 to about 20, the total would be 95–100 watts. That’s roughly two-thirds of your current usage, which seems like a significant reduction.
Switching CPUs likely isn’t worth it if your main goal is running a data server. Instead, consider consolidating your hard drives. Fifteen drives drawing 10-15W each when active adds up to 150-225W of power consumption alone. By switching to two 16TB drives, you’d only use about 20-30W, which makes a much bigger impact on your electricity usage.