I enabled powerd, then opened the shell and ran "sysctl dev.cpu.0.cx_supported" to find out the lowest C-State supported by my CPU. After that I just created the tunables shown in the picture. Your CPU might support lower C-States, however, if you experience any lags when all cores are set to the lowest C-State you should try to set the first core to the 2nd lowest and see if that fixes the problem.
A reboot isn't needed for the changes to take effect.
What is your setup? 350W sounds way too high. How did you measure that?
OK first of all, powerd seems to be enabled on my server (under Settings > advanced) (checkbox ticked). Then, I ran the command suggested by Rand:
Code:
sysctl dev.cpu |grep cx
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 416us
dev.cpu.1.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.1.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 60754us
dev.cpu.2.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.2.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.2.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 6583us
dev.cpu.3.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.3.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.3.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 94571us
dev.cpu.4.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.4.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.4.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 371us
dev.cpu.5.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.5.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.5.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 187us
dev.cpu.6.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.6.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.6.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 26155us
dev.cpu.7.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/1 C3/3/35
dev.cpu.7.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.7.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 5163us
So If I understand this, the lowest state my CPU's support (pair of Xeon L5420), is C1. Would I see a major energy difference between C1 and C2?? I fear performance would dramatically reduce.... Like I said, my server is used for backups about 3 times a day (small daily rsync runs from Linux servers), and mostly idles or is used for video playback on a Kodi (XBMC) media center... No CPU usage at all, CPU's are 99.9% of the time below 10% usage. I will try C1 for now and see what happens...
As for my actual energy usage, its indeed between 340 & 350W. This is an old Supermicro SC836 16 bay chassis with 8x SATA2 & SATA3 drives, running off of a pair of IBM M1015 HBA controllers. 48GB RAM and a pair of redundant 710W (or 800W, I cant tell without pulling the server off the rack) PSU's. The actual power reading is provided by my APC UPS which the freenas server is connected to.
I know, this is CRAZY. The fans are running at the second lowest speed but the IPMI card being defective (its working fine but for whatever reasons started to throw sensor reading errors a while back), I cannot rely on the readings too much. Nevertheless, ipmitool provides this:
Code:
[root@freenas] ~# ipmitool sensor list all
CPU Temp 1 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU Temp 2 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU Temp 3 | 30.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 76.000 | 78.000 | 80.000
CPU Temp 4 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
Sys Temp | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU1 Vcore | 1.656 | Volts | nr | 0.680 | 0.688 | 0.696 | 1.624 | 1.632 | 1.640
CPU2 Vcore | 1.656 | Volts | nr | 0.680 | 0.688 | 0.696 | 1.624 | 1.632 | 1.640
3.3V | 1.984 | Volts | nr | 2.912 | 2.928 | 2.944 | 3.648 | 3.664 | 3.680
5V | 2.904 | Volts | nr | 4.416 | 4.440 | 4.464 | 5.520 | 5.544 | 5.568
12V | 8.832 | Volts | nr | 10.464 | 10.560 | 10.656 | 13.344 | 13.440 | 13.536
-12V | -20.500 | Volts | nr | -10.500 | -10.600 | -10.700 | -13.300 | -13.400 | -13.500
1.5V | 3.248 | Volts | nr | 1.296 | 1.312 | 1.328 | 1.664 | 1.680 | 1.696
5VSB | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
VBAT | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
Fan1 | 0.000 | RPM | nr | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan2 | 4400.000 | RPM | ok | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan3 | 3700.000 | RPM | ok | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan4 | 3600.000 | RPM | ok | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan5 | 0.000 | RPM | nr | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan6 | 0.000 | RPM | nr | 200.000 | 300.000 | 400.000 | na | na | na
Fan7/CPU1 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
Fan8/CPU2 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
Intrusion | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0000| na | na | na | na | na | na
Power Supply | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU0 Internal E | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0000| na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU1 Internal E | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0000| na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU Overheat | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0000| na | na | na | na | na | na
Thermal Trip0 | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
Thermal Trip1 | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
BIOS | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
According to ipmitool, the fans would be running in the 4000RPM range. I am not sure if this is accurate or even realistic, but all I can tell is that they are noticeably quiet, about half of what they sound like when I boot up the server (they run at 100% speed). With the way they are spinning now, the HDD's are all below 32C, and all cores are reported below 60C.