this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Efficiency Alternative for Corsair RM550X in Home Server (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by FabsDE@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum
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I aim to build a new homeserver lately.

Upon researching I found the RM550X by Corsair as a power efficient option under low loads.

The sad part is, that its available nowhere.

Does someone know a valid alternative, that does not cost more than the whole build?

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[–] king_weenus@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

for what it's worth I picked up a used HP DL360 gen9 server and it came with dual 80 platinum power supplies, 128gb DDR, and dual Xeon 2680v4 (28c/56t) processors... no HDD but the cost was $150... I actually got the the server with for $100 and I then I got a pair of used processors of ebay for an extra $50...

with a few SAS cables and my 4tb drives from my old server... I migrated everything over to this server running proxmox and I'm hitting 150w average which is less than my previous bare metal devices.

It might not work for everyone, but I'm glad I decided to make the jump to enterprise hardware as I was looking for reliability and reducing my power load overall.

[–] MrB2891@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A pair of 2680v4's certainly didn't decrease your power usage unless you came from Nehalem's.

My 2660v4's in a DL380P G9 idled at 220w. Getting rid of that machine and moving to Alder Lake was the absolute best thing I did for my home server. The new system runs circles around those ancient Xeon's and consumes less than half of the power. I went from averaging 200kwh/mo with the HPE to ~80kwh/mo. $30/mo savings paid for the entire upgrade to a better platform.

[–] king_weenus@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Alder Lake

ok you got me. The 2680s are in the mail still and should be here next week... maybe friday. It currently has dual 2637s but my idle is 90~100w with just proxmox and 5 SSD and 150w running all my services. Once the processors are in we'll see how it does but since the TDP is less per processor I don't anticipate a jump in consumption.

[–] king_weenus@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

today my dual E5-2680v4 processors arrived. I installed them with fresh thermal paste and at boot my system idled at 80w... that was according to iLO and a smart power monitor plug that monitors everything plugged into that outlet.

after 5 minutes of run time with 5 - VMs currently running I'm sitting at 120w as a high and 100w average.

My current setup is a DL360 Gen9 with 128gb DDR4. 2 x E5 - 2680 V4 that just replaced my pair of 2637 v3 I should note I don't have any spinning drives installed, only 5 x 128mb sata SSD. I also have an extra 4 port 1gbs PCI card installed and I added p440ar since my server didn't come with a SAS card only the built in sata controller.

Once my slightly longer SAS cables arrive so I can connect the p440ar I'll eventually be at 8x2.5" SAS, 4xsata SSD, 8x3.5" SAS and 4x2.5" sata.

But here we are today running idle at about 100w in my gen9 with a peak of 120w under load.

[–] MrB2891@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

DL360 ≠ DL380

But you've done a nice job of proving my point. You have a system that you have to hack together your drive storage, since it can't accommodate 3.5" drives. You have have a system that has abysmal single thread performance. You have a system that has overall less compute power than a $240 midrange desktop CPU, yes uses over twice the power. You have a system that has no hardware media encoding.

I'll add, I certainly don't trust ILO to report accurate power draw. Measure from the wall. Each of your CPU's pulls over 120w by themselves alone at 100% utilization. So either your weren't pushing them, or your numbers are off. You should have been pulling 300w at a minimum.

[–] DaGhostDS@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow didn't notice how hard it is to get a platinum 500w power supply in 2023.. The only one being a Seasonic or Silverstone one for over 200$ (CAD).

Maybe these one?

https://www.newegg.ca/evga-supernova-650-p5-220-p5-0650-x1-650w/p/N82E16817438225

(Last I checked EVGA branded PSU are Seasonic, been using those for a decade, no issues.)

https://www.newegg.com/be-quiet-bn650/p/1HU-004H-00054

Also a good brand.

P.S. You never mentioned the cost of your build. 😉

[–] FabsDE@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cost will be at about 400 euros with a Celeron CPU, if the PSU is not 200 Euros alone :D

I aim for maximum efficiency as electricity is pretty expensive in Europe and a replacement for my Zimaboard, which will be used for testing then, because I want to switch from my old Synology to TrueNAS Scale.

The goal is to get an idle power draw of 10-20W (HDDs excluded)

[–] DaGhostDS@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well getting a better rated PSU for a higher price might help in the long run, you will have to do the math although going with the efficiency of Platinum versus Gold its not a lot.

Europe Electricity is still around 43 cent/KWH?

[–] FabsDE@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Its around 30 cent currently cause I have a good contract.

During summer everything is fine cause my photovoltaic system produces almost all of the energy needed.

Have to go more detailed into planning there. Maybe a good Gold+ is the key here.

[–] MrB2891@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I've been using Thermaltake GX2's. They're $50 and still maintain a Gold rating. For the marginal difference on an electric bill going from gold to platinum, it would take me 10 years to make up the difference in cost of the PSU.

[–] Kongoulan@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

What did you go with in the end? I have the same motherboard here and I aim for low load efficient under 10% as well. Sadly I can't get the corsair rm550x either.

The others seem to misunderstand that the ratings for gold all start at 20% load and the energy loss is much worse on lower loads when the system is on idle.