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NAS Power consumption

Mon, 01/04/2010 - 20:49 — nc

An attempt to break down the power consumption of the NAS in order to identify potential optimization areas.
The power is measured through the APCC software. The measurements will be carried out with the Conrad Energy Monitor 3000, once the batteries of this device are replaced.

System state measured Harddisk PSU Mainboard CPU Graphics Fans
    6 x 1.5TB + 1 x 500GB 385W Asus P5Q3 Deluxe E7300 R4350  
TDPs     80% 22W + 5W 65W 25W 4x 0,5W
Idle 70W 25W (6x4W+1W) 15W 12W (9W+3W) 10W 8W 2W
File operations 100W 37W (6x6W+1W) 20W 16W (?) 17W (?) 8W 2W
Max   39W (6x6W+3W) 25W 22W (18W+4W) 30W 20W  

Power On time

To know how relevant the power consumption of the NAS is, the total run time in one year is necessary. The estimation for this NAS is 20h / week ==> 1040h / year. The NAS is planned to be in service for 3 years with this configuration. A total of 3120h x 70W = 220kWh. If the NAS were to run 24/7 the accumulated power on time would be 26300h with an energy consumption of 1840kWh.

Trade

1W delta Energy cost Power consumption Run time Energy consumption Energy price
0,8 Euro 55 Euro 70W 3120h 220kWh 0,25 Euro / 1 kWh
6,6 Euro 460 Euro 70W 26300h 1840kWh 0,25 Euro / 1 kWh

Summary

For this NAS the power consumption is insignificant in comparison to the cost of the hardware. Even if the NAS were to run 24/7 it would be difficult to further reduce the power consumption. One option could be to utilize a low power mainboard that already includes graphics and eliminate the need for the extra graphics card. The Intel G31 chipset has graphics included and a low power consumption. But to my knowledge there is no G31 mainboard available that also features a x4 PCIe expansion slot that is required for the SATA controller.

The use of existing hardware seems to be the most ecological choice for these constraints. This obviously has to be reassessed for other hardware and other power on times.