I’ve got a NAS built in a Node 304 mini itx case that works great, but uses a ton of power. In Unraid (the OS for my NAS) there is some kind of issue with the Ryzen 3900x processor that I’m running that means I have to disable all sleep states - so it’s always at it’s 100W TDP. Power is super expensive where I live so I’d love to find something more power efficient.
Does it make more sense to buy a more recent(ish) 5th gen ryzen in hopes that the sleep states will work, and thus save money by keeping my existing motherboard?
Or I could go with something a bit more interesting. I’ve seen on Aliexpress motherboards with mobile CPU’s soldered which are very power efficient. For example the N100 has an insane 6W TDP and comes on special boards with lots of sata ports and 2.5G networking (link). The worry with the n100 though is that it only officially supports 16G of ram which might not be enough for zfs.
Any thoughts? Is anyone running a power-efficient build who could throw some advice my way? Thanks!
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It’s certainly odd that your current CPU draws so much power if it isn’t under load. I would try to investigate that further.
That said, zfs ram requirements are related to the total storage. If you don’t have hundreds of terabyte storage, 16GB ram should be sufficient.
Okay that’s good to know. Right now I’m only using ZFS for the ssds so it’s only like 2TBs, but I eventually want the ability to migrate the main array which will be more like 40TB (raw capacity, so some will be used for parity)
