Reduce the amount of power used by the CPU.
Reduce the amount of power used by the CPU.
He is seeking a new NAS for his home due to frequent crashes of his current WD drive. He’s considering a Synology-Nas mainly for its energy efficiency. There seems to be no way to limit the power draw of a desktop PC to just 7 watts when idle, as underclocking isn’t possible without sacrificing performance and the BIOS doesn’t support lower power caps. No settings appear to reduce overall consumption in his current setup.
You're looking to replace specialized Synology hardware with a desktop in low power mode as a NAS. That’s a solid idea. Please clarify your current setup and goals. Reducing a typical desktop to just a few watts isn’t very efficient, especially since x86/64 isn’t the best for low power use and desktop PSUs aren’t very efficient at low loads. A low-power ARM-based Synology would be more effective. A Raspberry Pi could also work well as a DIY NAS, offering lower upfront costs. In my view, you should prioritize software over hardware—Synology is user-friendly but powerful, while a Raspberry Pi lets you customize and save money if you put in the effort. I personally prefer a low-end Synology because it’s reliable and runs efficiently at under 5W per bay.
You could build two different setups using the budget you'd spend on a Synology. No matter how low you lower the CPU speed, you'd stay above 20-30 watts. A mid-range Ryzen 4 or 6 core chip might drop to around 5 watts, while the B550 chipset uses just 3-5 watts. Each RAM stick draws 2-3 watts, the CPU cooler adds 1-2 watts, and the built-in audio can be turned off if needed. You could opt for a budget Ryzen 2200GE or similar, pair it with a basic B450 chipset board (to keep ECC support), add two standard 2400-2666 MHz RAM modules with ECC, and boot from a compact 64-128 GB SSD. Installing Unraid or TrueNAS would complete the setup, giving you roughly 15-20 watts during operation. Another choice is the ASRock J3455-ITX board with a J3455 CPU (up to 2.3GHz), a mini ITX motherboard, and DDR3/DDR3L sticks (note Intel’s memory limits). This configuration uses about 2 native SATA 6 Gbps ports plus two SATA ports managed by an ASMedia controller, keeping power draw under 10-15 watts when idle. A newer model with DDR4 is available but still capped at 8 GB due to Intel’s design choices: the ASRock J5040-ITX offers around half the performance of a Ryzen 2200GE or Ryzen 2200G.