So I have finally built my NAS. I used an N100 CPU because I saw it has low power consumption.

Right now I have 2 NVMe SSDs and 2 HDDs. I have installed proxmox on the 2 SSDs as RAID1. I have not partitioned the HDDs yet, they are just plugged in and powered on.

Just booting into proxmox, without any VMs or containers running, I am pulling 45W from the wall. This looks super high to me, and I’m afraid that starting to use the HDDs and running some VMs may double this…

I don’t have much references, but I have an Odroid with an external self-powered HDD, it is using 5W. I have a raspberry pi 4 with an external HDD, the raspberry is pulling 3W and the HDD 3W.

With these data, I was thinking I wouldn’t go over 20W. 45W is enormous and not something I can run 24/7, kind of a fail for a NAS…

Have I done something wrong or is it just how much it’s supposed to pull?

Edit: I have come across powertop. Using the auto tune, I was able to drop to 33-35W. I have unplugged the HDDs and dropped to 22W. I guess I cannot go lower, this may be because of the PSU or the 2 NVMe

  • @KwaOPEnglish
    2•4 months ago

    Thanks. So If I take 5W a disk, I may have 20W just from the disks.

    There are still 25W remaining. For a low power CPU that looks like a lot 😕

    • poVoqEnglish
      3•4 months ago

      I never really tested it with 3.5" HDDs, but a google search makes it sound like they might be closer to 10W each.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•4 months ago

      My guess would be 25W from disks, 10W from CPU+RAM+MBO and 10W waste from PSU. Just a guess as I said