{"id":1302,"date":"2013-09-19T16:11:03","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T15:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2013-09-19T16:12:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T15:12:07","slug":"shuttle-xh61v-power-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/?p=1302","title":{"rendered":"Shuttle XH61V power consumption"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve recently got to setup up a Shuttle XH61V for a friend. I’ve read a few posts about how they make good VMware ESXi hosts for those power conscious folk running home labs. I figured this would be a good time to see just how power hungry, or not, one of these boxes is and how well ESXi runs.<\/p>\n

The box would end up with an Intel i3-2120 processor, 16GB RAM (2 * Crucial CT102464BF1339) and 126GB Crucial mSATA SSD (CT128M4SSD3). Quite a beefy XBMC media centre PC build from a selection of new bits and pre-owned bits! Anyhoo, while putting the components together I took some power readings along the way:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Description<\/th>\nPower (VA)<\/th>\nPower (W)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Power supply alone, i.e. without computer attached<\/td>\n20VA<\/td>\n2W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Power supply with bare case off<\/td>\n20VA<\/td>\n2W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Power supply with bare case on (turned on but obviously doing nothing)<\/td>\n24VA<\/td>\n3W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
PSU + case + 2*8GB DIMMs (turned on but obviously doing nothing)<\/td>\n24VA<\/td>\n3W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs (idling at BIOS)<\/td>\n46VA<\/td>\n37W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs + SSD (idling at BIOS)<\/td>\n46VA<\/td>\n37W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
PSU + case + CPU + 2*8GB DIMMs + SSD (switched off)<\/td>\n24VA<\/td>\n3W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Installing ESXi<\/td>\n32VA – 46VA<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ESXi with no VMs (High Performance power option)<\/td>\n40VA<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ESXi with no VMs (Balanced power option)<\/td>\n32VA<\/td>\n21W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ESXi with no VMs (Low power option)<\/td>\n32VA<\/td>\n21W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ESXi with three busy VMs (Balanced power option)<\/td>\n64VA<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows 7 x64 SP1 idle (balanced, low, high power options)<\/td>\n32VA<\/td>\n21W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows 7 x64 SP1 put into sleep mode<\/td>\n28VA<\/td>\n3W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, not too shabby when it idles. I will be interested in seeing what power a 22nm 3rd or 4th generation processor would consume while idling. It seems that this i3-2120 CPU idles at approximately 18W. During a heavy work load, the processor seems to consume approximately 21W extra for a total of roughly 40W – not quite the 65W TDP max Intel quote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I installed it with the standard ESXi 5.1U1 installation media. No issues, once I found a suitable USB drive to USB boot from! Both onboard NICs were seen and the mSATA SSD was recognised too.<\/p>\n

Note: It seems the included Realtek 8186 has reliability issues under VMware ESXi 5.1. The odd thing is that when I first installed ESXi 5.1 it worked fine and I was able to use to successfully. However, once I rebooted a couple of times, the NIC does not really work. It manages to get a DHCP IP address and is pingable for about 30 seconds before it drops off the network. No log entries on the host or the switch indicate the cause. Very curious!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve recently got to setup up a Shuttle XH61V for a friend. I’ve read a few posts about how they make good VMware ESXi hosts for those power conscious folk running home labs. I figured this would be a good time to see just how power hungry, or not, one of these boxes is and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[175,37,176,178,177,180,257,179],"class_list":["post-1302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical","tag-cpu","tag-esxi","tag-intel","tag-power","tag-shuttlexh61v","tag-va","tag-vmware","tag-watts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelm.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}