Intel SR2400SYSD2, SR1530AH, and SR1560SF Power Consumption

We have an APC BR1500LCD UPS unit that we leave sitting on our bench.

It has the facility to provide live readouts on its LCD panel of various power and UPS events.

One of them is the amount of watts that a device uses while connected to it.

So, to get an idea of what each unit uses for power we plugged each unit into the BR1500LCD on its own and fired it up.

Here are some of the results:

• Intel SR1560SF 1U with Dual E5440 Quad Core Xeons and 3x 750GB Seagate ES SATA
• Power Up POST: 205 Watts Peak
• SBS Boot: 175 Watts on average
• SBS Online: 145 Watts on average
• SBS at rest: 110 Watts on average
• Intel SR1530AH 1U with Intel Xeon X3230 Quad Core Xeon and 2x 750GB Seagate ES SATA
• Power Up: 175 Watts Peak
• Server 2008 Core Boot: 125 Watts on average
• Server 2008 Core online: 80 Watts on average
• Server off but plugged in: 8 Watts
• Intel SR2400SYSD2 2U with dual Intel Xeon 3.0GHz HT and 6x 500GB Seagate ES
• Power Up: 525 Watts Peak
• POST Initialization phase: 235 Watts on Average
• Windows Server 2003 scroll Portion of OS startup: 250 Watts on average
• Windows Server 2003 network and computer startup portion: 205 Watts on average
• SBS at work: 225 Watts on average
• SBS at rest: 205 Watts on average
• Server off but plugged in: 30 Watts

It looks as though the newer technology really shows its efficiency when running full tilt or at a relative idle as can be seen by the above numbers.

Obviously the 2U will consume a bit more power due to the additional hard drives and a more powerful fan setup. However, the older 2U still has a big hit against it in the form of power savings relative to the new 3000 and 5000 series Xeon setups.

In a high density data centre situation, that 50 watts at idle on the newer technologies spread across hundreds if not thousands of servers means a huge savings in power consumption for the server systems themselves as well as the power required to cool the centre.

The neat thing is, there are even better power efficiency enhancements coming down the pipe in future versions of Intel CPUs, the server boards they plug into, and the plug in peripherals. All of this translates into a bit of relief for those data centres already pushed to the limits on their floor space per compute capability, power consumption, and cooling capacity.

For us, it means we have seen a significant drop in our power bill with every NetBurst Xeon server we have replaced with a Core Xeon technologies based server.

That practical experience for us translates into a good selling point for the newer technologies with our clients. A server that saves them money even when they are not in the office is a good thing!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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