Xeon rackmonts

Trey Palmer trey at isye.gatech.edu
Tue Mar 11 19:56:43 PST 2003


On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 04:03:30PM -0800, Michael Stein wrote:
> Beware.  The dual Xeon 1U (2.4 Ghz) I saw measured ran 125W *idle*.
> 
> Run a few processes of burnMMX and burnP6 on it and the power used
> will double.
> 
> 250W for each 1U.

I agree that power consumption doubles when loaded.

Our test cluster of 32 Supermicro P-6012Pi's (each 2x2.4 GHz Xeon,
4x512MB, 1x40GB, no cards) draws 25 amps idle, and about 50 amps
loaded, as measured by the APC PowerStruxure they're powered from.

It's regulated 110V power, so this works out to ~170 watts per node.

I see the same idle to loaded ratio on the Sun V480 compute boxes.  
They draw 4 amps idle, 8 amps loaded. (!!!)

I'm told that dual Athlons draw more like 250 watts though.  That
was the deciding factor for us.  We had initially gotten quotes for
quad Athlons (two duals in a 1u), but we decided we'd rather have
a cramped machine room than pay for 4 more tons of AC and 12kW
more power....  
   
-- 
Trey Palmer       Unix Systems Administrator     trey at isye.gatech.edu 
Georgia Tech Industrial and Systems Engineering          404-385-3080 



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