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I have a 4u IBM server for home use and it consumes 480w. It has 4 X Quadcore CPU and 128GB RAM & CD Drive

I want to reduce the power consumption so i want to know that if i remove 2 x Xeon processors and 64GB RAM, CD Drive Drive will i be able to reduce the power consumption. Or any other component?

Server is IBM X3850 M2 server 4x Intel Quad core E7330 2.4ghz 128GB ram, 2x PSU. I am measuring power with power meter like Kill-a-watt

The load is nothing just Esxi server running without any VM. Power never goes below 430. I have another IBM 1u server with 2 Xeons and 64GB RAM and its load is 230W with 10 VMs running

fixer1234
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user1721949
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  • What CPU does it have? (The exact model number would be helpful.) You may be better off tuning its built-in power saving features rather than taking things out. – David Schwartz May 13 '14 at 01:14
  • 480w is almost nothing. It's also not using all of it at once. – Simon Sheehan May 13 '14 at 01:19
  • @DavidSchwartz i have added the details in question – user1721949 May 13 '14 at 01:21
  • @SimonSheehan i want to lower the power around 200w. is it possible – user1721949 May 13 '14 at 01:22
  • More information might be useful, how and where are you calculating power use?(480W PSUs mean UP TO 480w of power draw...) What sort of loads are you throwing at it? (Since you might be able to replace it with a modern system if its lightly loaded). – Journeyman Geek May 13 '14 at 01:22
  • @JourneymanGeek i have added more details to question. As its for home use and i don't want to spend more money. i got it from my ebay – user1721949 May 13 '14 at 01:27
  • I would strongly suggest looking into OS and BIOS power saving options. – David Schwartz May 13 '14 at 01:42
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    @JourneymanGeek It sounds like the OP is using the Kill-a-Watt meter to measure idle power draw. 480W is a lot for a home user for something that sits there idle. – Lawrence May 13 '14 at 01:47

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Sell it and buy one optimized for power (and perhaps noise - they often go together anyway, as a large part of rack servers power use is the cooling fans that sound like tiny jet engines.) Even if all you want to do is pull processors you can probably do better selling it as a machine fully-loaded and buy one the same but half-loaded than by pulling yours - but that won't compete well power-wise with a server designed from the ground up to save power. A nice efficient tower server can be a lot more pleasant to be anywhere near and might save you 350-400 watts, or more when idle, for 3000+ kWh/year (not counting less air conditioning load.)

That alone will pay off a new-to-you server pretty quickly in lower power costs. If you sell this one, it pays off even faster.

Pulling two processors will lower your power use - somewhat. CD probably won't make a difference, if it's idle.

Ecnerwal
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  • Ideally how much power does the new power saving servers consume when idle. aslo can you give me example of that low power server so that i can look at ebay. The new servers are costly so i will see if i can get old one from ebay which consume less power. so from my understanding if the server has to consume less power than its power supply unit should not be more than 500w. Is that right. i assume that normally server consumes almost half of the PS power – user1721949 May 13 '14 at 03:46