Reduce voltage on the old i7 980X for your NAS project
Reduce voltage on the old i7 980X for your NAS project
Hello! I'm looking for a new NAS but can't afford another Synology model. I was thinking about converting my old PC, which has a 10-core i7 with 12GB RAM, into that setup. Everything looked good until I checked power usage—my Synology uses 10W while my current PC draws 90W. That's way too much for my budget. Should I try undervolting the CPU to cut power consumption down to 10-30W? Could that affect the processor? It's mainly for a Plex server and data storage with a few users online. Any advice?
It could work. With the right hardware you might be able to test it, especially with my X58 setup. I’m not sure how much you can reduce voltage or how power usage changes, but it probably won’t drop too low compared to normal idle levels. Since a NAS CPU will be running most of the time, efficiency gains at lower voltages won’t be as significant.
If you have the components, give it a shot. Also consider reducing the chip's maximum clock speed. In most cases, the CPU remains idle and powered down, so the cores consume minimal energy. Most of the power goes to other parts such as storage, RAM, network interfaces, and chipsets.
In comparison to load, yes. This model consumes significant power even when not in use, and the older version uses even more energy while idle.
The system is more powerhungry at idels, but the cpu cores are pulling very little of that power. Since undervolting only lowers power of the cpu core, there isn't much power usage in the cpu to reduce.