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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
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    959

    * How many watts do you use for your server?

    Well, to operate a server..you must have a power supply. Having it failure is easy, your server probably need more power than it could provide...so could anybody let me know...how many WATTS does your power supply can provide *not the maximum output*

    Dual Opteron 242
    4x 512MB ECC+REG Ram
    2x SATA 7200rpm harddisk
    Tyan Motherboard
    2x PCI slots used
    5x external fans

    *No CD-ROM, No Floppy, No AGP

    What you expect this would need? 450W or more?

    Cheers~

  2. #2
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    I think 200 W shd be ok for such a config

  3. #3
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    Originally posted by boonchuan
    I think 200 W shd be ok for such a config
    Based on what exactly?
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  4. #4
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    are you insane, boonchuan??

  5. #5
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    I'd never put a 200w in a server. Put at least two 300s in there for the above confi. That way one can support the whole thing.

  6. #6
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    Originally posted by cjhhiv
    I'd never put a 200w in a server. Put at least two 300s in there for the above confi. That way one can support the whole thing.
    How are you going to put 2 x 300w power supplies in a single server?

    Problem with asking questions on WHT is you rarely get an educated opinion nowdays. 200W is plenty for *many* servers, just not this configuration. Single P4's running 1-2 drives and no accessories do fine on a 200-250W power supply.

    WCHost, check amd.com and other resources for power specs for your chips, assume you never want to run over 70% load on the average PSU, and find some basic specs on drives, mobo, fans, etc. and you can calculate very scientifically, and accurately what you'll need.

    I usually do 420-480W power supplies on our dual opterons, without any issues, I'm not positive, but I believe the Opteron cores used somewhere between 85 and 110W of power, but double check that.
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  7. #7
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    How are you going to put 2 x 300w power supplies in a single server?

    With a redundant PSU?

    But anyway -- we use 300W PSUs for our single P4 servers and 500W PSUs for our Xeon servers. These seem to work pretty well and can handle a pretty hefty configuration (e.g. P4 3GHz Prescott, 2GB RAM, 3ware SATA RAID card and 4x SATA HDDs).

    As Myles says above, a lot of people do seem to overestimate their power requirements -- remember in a server you don't have the demanding graphics cards and so on that you'll find in a desktop.
    Robin Balen
    Gyron Internet Ltd - http://gyron.net/
    UK colocation, managed hosting and connectivity services with 100% uptime SLAs

  8. #8
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    Not a direct answer to the question, but I recently purchased a meter to measure how much my desktop pc uses. It's an Athlon XP 2600 with 2 hard drives and runs at around 160W when doing everything-intensive stuff. That may help as a gauge.

  9. #9
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    Oct 2004
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    I've used 250 watters before and burnt many out. It usually takes 1-2 years, but it happens. Definitely speaking from experience here. Of course, a boat load of servers too. It doesn't happen to all :-)

    Chuck

  10. #10
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    You'd have to be an absolute moron to put a redundant 2x300W PSU in a server that requires > 300W of power (unless it was a 3x300W PSU that stacked the inputs to generate 900W peak, 600W with one disabled, 300W with two disabled).

    We have a customer who runs ~3 dozen p4-2.4ghz - p4-3.06ghz servers in 1u chassis with 1-2 drives, and 200W power supplies (supermicro 512LB chassis).
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  11. #11
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    Huh? If the server uses 300w it is moronic to put two 300watters in there? If one fails, the other couldn't carry it.

    But wakkow is correct. Most boxes only use half the PSU installed.

  12. #12
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    For a similar config to what you are using, we use a very high quality 350 Watt Power Supply as a minimum. Each of those opteron chips burns off about 90+ watts I believe, so you are eating 180w in CPU alone. Factor in for your drives, motherboard, and other devices, and you are probably pushing 280-300w total. A high quality 350w PSU should handle that with ease and give you some breating room to handle spikes in power draw.

    FYI for most of our single cpu servers, we have very good results with 200w PSU's. Single Xeon, Single Opteron, and some higher-end P4's like the 3.2 prescotts we use 300w units in. Duals get 350w+ depending on how many other devices are in the server.

    I've used units made by Enhance and by Istar and liked both. I was less impressed with the SPI Sparkle Power units due to their higher amperage draw - they aren't as efficient. That usually only matters if you are in a datacenter environment where power usage is restricted, but that is the case for most of us here, which is why i mentioned it. Your dual opteron board will probably need an EPS power supply, which I doubt you will find in power ratings much under 300w anyway. Find a PSU with active PFC if you can as well, they put out much cleaner power and are generally more efficient.
    Rob Tyree
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  13. #13
    200W, 300W... these are all the maximum ratings on power supplies and do not really indicate actual power consumption/capacity.

    I run a number of dual Opteron servers in 1U -- dual 244's, 4GB RAM, and a 4-drive SCSI RAID. Those have a 400W power supply (again, maximum). It comes standard with the Chenbro RM117 case.

    Actual power consumption I measured is 1.8 amps at idle at 120 volts, 0.9 amps (obviously) at 240 volts.

  14. #14
    Join Date
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    Originally posted by naidd
    200W, 300W... these are all the maximum ratings on power supplies and do not really indicate actual power consumption/capacity.

    I run a number of dual Opteron servers in 1U -- dual 244's, 4GB RAM, and a 4-drive SCSI RAID. Those have a 400W power supply (again, maximum). It comes standard with the Chenbro RM117 case.

    Actual power consumption I measured is 1.8 amps at idle at 120 volts, 0.9 amps (obviously) at 240 volts.
    I haven't done any individual measurements, what do you get at a reasonable load thats fairly close to peak (say 10.0 load average), with a good amount of drive activity?
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  15. #15
    It depends a lot on the type of server... and I mean a lot.
    (let's see if I remember some approximate numbers)

    - Dual Opteron fluctuates 20% between idle and full load (1.8 - 2 amps)
    - Dual P3 fluctuates around 20% (1.4 - 1.6 amps).
    - Dual Xeon fluctuates around 60% (yes, no mistake). This baby goes up to 2.7 amps at 120 volts.

  16. #16
    Another thing, your load average doesn't necessarily translate into high power consumption. Your load average may be high because of slow I/O, and your CPUs may be relatively idle at the same time (therefore not consuming that much).

  17. #17
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    I have had servers running 150W and 200W , I dun see a problem with that. Some of the servers are running for 4 years.

    Originally posted by 2uantuM
    are you insane, boonchuan??

  18. #18
    This is quite possible, if the 4 year old servers are running a single slower CPU and a single drive.

    An single Opteron 244 chip (1.8 GHz) is rated at around 82 watts by itself. Two of those, together with a couple of hard drives, will not run on anything lower than a good 300W power supply.

    Btw, they now have the low-power versions -- 55W and 30W, which are still ridiculously expensive.

  19. #19
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    Originally posted by boonchuan
    I have had servers running 150W and 200W , I dun see a problem with that. Some of the servers are running for 4 years.
    Sure, 200W for a 4-year old server. CPUs use a lot more power nowadays, and even if such a server will run on a 200W PS, the power output will be unstable, and you'll be likely to burn out the PS fairly quickly.
    Scott Burns, President
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  20. #20
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    Originally posted by bqinternet
    Sure, 200W for a 4-year old server. CPUs use a lot more power nowadays, and even if such a server will run on a 200W PS, the power output will be unstable, and you'll be likely to burn out the PS fairly quickly.
    Thats not necessarilly at all true. Many things have become signifigantly more efficient in the past 4 years. There are plenty of servers that will run just fine on 200W power supplies, they're not going to be the dual cpu type, or even the bleeding edge speed ones, but average P4 systems will often do just fine with a single drive, < 3.0ghz chip, and onboard video/lan ,with a 200W PSU.
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  21. #21
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    Apr 2003
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    Well, I did some estimation before asking this question...but you might be interested what I got.... 450W with 30% extra already~

    Well, for safety, I probably get a 500W so extra fans in the case will have enough power!



    Thanks!

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
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    452
    You could prolly get away with a 300-350 power supply.
    But the real point here is why would you be cheap on something that important. Get a big power supply and forget about it. The extra cash is well worth the good nights sleep.

    A few things to remember..........

    The power "rating" (how many watts) has little to do with how much power it actually uses. So..... server "A" uses 200 watts of power to run. It still uses 200 watts if its connected to a 300W PS or a 550W PS. It will not cost you more money per month to run the bigger PS, the bigger PS just has the ablity to run more stuff if needed.

    All power supplys are NOT created equal. A cheap PS is exactly that.
    I have a very well built (and old PS) that is 250W, it was running a Dual AMD setup for a long time. I decided to upgrade to a cheap 400ish PS and it lasted a week. Game over, burnt toast.

    The power supply wattage rating DO NOT tell the real story and really are not good for much of anything when you are dealing with dual CPU motherboards. PS wattage ratings are figured out using the total output of all voltages on the PS. Normally this is fine. However it could become an issue if your CPU/mobo combo draws heavy on the +5V rail and the PS unit is light on the +5 rail and heavy on the +12V rail.

    If you just read this and have no idea what Im talking about, you should call or visit the website and get what they recommend for your application.

    $75 dollars now and a few hours research will pay for itself in the end.

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
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    one more thing

    Don't know if this has been brought up, but every power supply has a peak operating effciency that is reached at a certain percent of its load.

    This is not only important 'cause it can lower your costs across tens of servers, but the power supply will last longer if it is operating at its peak efficiency the whole time. That's where it WANTS to be.

    Usually PS manufacturers will list efficiency @ a certain load. That's obviously the best efficiency (why would they choose to list a lower number?), so that load listed should match the load your server's going to be putting on it regularly.
    -- My software isn't buggy; it develops random features --

  24. #24
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    I think theres a lot of things left out here.

    Notably someone mentioned that the higher wattage PSU's dont consume more power. While logically I agree with that, realistically (from experience) I beg to differ.
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
    http://www.prioritycolo.com

  25. #25
    as far as how long will it last, it's not power quality that typically kills your power supply. It's heat. Most co-lo's filter their power either by using power conditioning + UPS's or at least one of those. A power supply fan usually gets killed to dust buildup, or poor quality fans, which of course leads to heat buildup and eventually p/s failure. Any power supply with less than 2 fans should never be used. Not that I'm saying power quality doesn't lead to failure, it does. Internally, cheaper power supplies can fluctuate and cause spikes delivered to your components when your machine is fluctuating it's usage. That typically kills your mobo before the power supply will die, however.

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