Supermicro complete system power usage evaluation

power usage graph

System
Startup
Idle
openssl
badblocks
openssl+bb
L5410 / WD Green / 4x4G
2.98A
1.96A
2.65A
2.58A
2.94A
L5410 / Samsung / 4x4G
3.13A
2.29A
2.80A
2.76A
3.07A
L5410 / Samsung / 8x2G
3.42A
2.58A
3.09A
3.05A
3.37A
E5310 / Samsung / 4x2G
3.44A
2.62A
3.13A
3.17A
3.47A
Values listed are RMS AC amps at 118VAC; all measurements taken with the same power supply unit and the same
set of 12 disks (except the run using WD "Green" drives)

All tests made using a SuperMicro X7DBN motherboard, 12 drive SATA backplane, and a single 120VAC power supply unit. Each (redundant) power supply unit costs a baseline of approximately 0.25A, even when shut down.

Startup:        peak current draw during disk spinup
Idle:               linux booted, system idle
Openssl:        all cores running "openssl speed"  - CPU intensive load
Badblocks:    all disks running "badblocks" - disk intensive load with reads + seeks
openssl+bb:  both of the above workloads running at once


The system with WD "Green" drives and the L5410 CPUs never breaks 3 amps. This would allow 8 nodes per 30A, 120V circuit, or 16 per rack with only two circuits.  The configuration with 1.6GHz CPUs and Samsung 1Tb drives  safely allows only 6 machines per 30A circuit. Note that this is still not the worst configuration, since the Samsung drives use 30% less power at idle than the Hitachi 1Tb drives, which have the highest power consumption tested so far.

For a 1000 node cluster, very roughly speaking, the lowest power configuration here (L5410 / WD Green / 4x4G) represents a savings of about $22,000 per month in power over the highest power configuration at Layer 42 / 3080 Raymond pricing. (according to a quote Joerg collected)

-epv 9/10/2008