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    Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • keyserK
      keyser Rebel Alliance @Cabledude
      last edited by

      @cabledude said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

      @stephenw10 Thank you for your instant reply. Yes I figured the 6100 will always take more energy than the 1100.

      New question, if I may:
      if I'd drop the need for NtopNG, would the 1100 manage the following load:

      Day time:

      • cable 500/40 1G (we typically use no more than 150 mbps)
      • FTTH TV over WAN VLAN 4
      • pfBlocker

      Night time:

      • No TV obviously
      • S2S VPN backups 1 AM - 4 AM, 40 mbps max but probably less
      • pfBlocker

      How about getting a SG-2100? It’s the same as 1100, but has 4Gb RAM and an additional NIC with allows a good deal more peak throughput (about 600’ish Mbps).
      So it will handle the 500Mbps if you do not enable NTOPNG. If you enable that, expect the throughput to drop to 250-300Mbps peak.
      Most importantly: power consumption is very very low,

      Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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      • C
        Cabledude
        last edited by Cabledude

        @keyser Thank you for spending your time to look into my situation 👍

        I would like to continue this discussion in a separate topic, to improve search accuracy for other members looking for a similar topic and to avoid going more OT than I already did. I would appreciate your thoughts. The new topic can be found here: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/167435/can-sg-1100-handle-this-s2s-vpn.

        Thanks!

        Pete
        Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
        Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
        Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

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        • A
          Abula @stephenw10
          last edited by Abula

          @stephenw10 said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

          There is some variation in those values but they are for comparable states. 10G and and 2.5G NICs both consume more power than 1G. So with all interfaces linked it is going to consume considerably more than the 5100.
          A spot figure for a 6100 I have here is 15W with only 1x1G and 2x2.5G NICs linked but that also has other internal devices. Also that's using a completely un-calibrated kill-a-watt style meter so YMMV! 😉

          Steve

          Thank you Steve for the reply, wondering one thing, can you turn off some of the ports (in bios) on the 6100? the full 4x Intel 2.5gbe (Lan1-4) and SFPs (WAN3-4)? i would use WAN1 as my WAN and WAN2 as my LAN, wondering if it would push it below 10W idle?

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            No, it's not possible to disable any hardware in the BIOS, which is BlinkBoot, in the 6100.

            With the internal devices removed (wifi, modem, SSD), only an single 1G link and powerd enabled I see ~11W. That's at idle. Again that's using my uncalibrated plug-top style meter so take that as you will.
            I would say it's unlikely you would see as low as 10W in a real install.

            Steve

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              Cabledude @stephenw10
              last edited by Cabledude

              @stephenw10 said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

              With the internal devices removed (wifi, modem, SSD), only an single 1G link and powerd enabled I see ~11W. That's at idle. Again that's using my uncalibrated plug-top style meter so take that as you will.
              I would say it's unlikely you would see as low as 10W in a real install.

              Steve

              Hi @stephenw10 ,
              I dug up and reread this older topic. So it dawned on me you measured power usage for two different hardware configurations, probably 6100 Base and 6100 Max?

              Am I correctly assuming:

              • 15W for 1x1G + 2x2.5G + internal SSD (6100 Max version) + WiFi + modem
              • 11W for 1x1G no SSD (6100 Base version)

              ?

              Thanks, Pete

              Pete
              Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
              Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
              Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Yes, that's two different hardware configs. I forget if that one had an SSD at the time. The link states make more difference though, especially the 10G NICs.

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                • C
                  Cabledude @stephenw10
                  last edited by Cabledude

                  @stephenw10 said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

                  Yes, that's two different hardware configs. I forget if that one had an SSD at the time. The link states make more difference though, especially the 10G NICs.

                  Thank you @stephenw10 . Actually this phrase from your quote made me assume the 15W measurement involved an SSD:

                  With the internal devices removed (wifi, modem, SSD), only a single 1G link and powerd enabled I see ~11W.

                  It’s good to know that the 10 NICs attribute more. It will be years before I’ll be using those.

                  Pete
                  Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
                  Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
                  Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Oh there we go! Yeah I guess it did then. 😉

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                    • C
                      Cabledude @Cabledude
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10: you mentioned powerd:

                      powerd enabled I see ~11W

                      Now my aim is to make sure the internals stay cool for optimal longevity. By selecting a stronger CPU (6100 vs 4100) the CPU usage should stay lower and this cooler.
                      But at night the unit has less to do, so powerd could save energy. Do I understand this correctly?

                      Pete
                      Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
                      Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
                      Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Powerd will lower the CPU clock speed and voltage when it's under low load. It does it dynamically all the time if enabled.

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                        • N
                          NOCling
                          last edited by

                          My 6100 use 14-16W, 1G WAN and 2 * 1G LAN as LAG, SSD and depends on load.

                          PowereD is adaptiv, it's a nice low Power high throughput device.

                          Netgate 6100 & Netgate 2100

                          C keyserK 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • C
                            Cabledude @NOCling
                            last edited by

                            @NOCling said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

                            My 6100 use 14-16W, 1G WAN and 2 * 1G LAN as LAG, SSD and depends on load.

                            PowereD is adaptiv, it's a nice low Power high throughput device.

                            Thank you :-)
                            So may I assume that these figures are with powerd daemon enabled?

                            Pete
                            Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
                            Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
                            Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

                            keyserK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • keyserK
                              keyser Rebel Alliance @NOCling
                              last edited by

                              @NOCling I thought PowerD didn’t matter with newer Intel based CPUs as they are far better and faster at C-state jumping than software is, and thus has no effect.

                              Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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                              • keyserK
                                keyser Rebel Alliance @Cabledude
                                last edited by

                                @Cabledude I don’t think it does matter to be honest. My 6100 measures about 14 watt with two 1Gbe ports active (both using SFPs) and a 512Gb SSD installed. I do not have PowerD enabled.

                                Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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                                • C
                                  Cabledude @keyser
                                  last edited by

                                  @keyser Thank you for that, very helpful. Just curious: the 6100 Max offers a 128GB SSD but you say yours has 512GB. Is that DIY? I think I read another topic that concludes 6100 DIY SSD upgrade is not possible or at least Netgate discourages it.

                                  Pete
                                  Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
                                  Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
                                  Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

                                  keyserK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • keyserK
                                    keyser Rebel Alliance @Cabledude
                                    last edited by

                                    @Cabledude Yes, I installed a 512Gb SSD myself because I wanted to be sure not kill the built-in eMMC after noticing how hard/much I was writing to the filesystem with pfBlockerNG, NtopNG and Syslog-NG installed. It would have killed my eMMC in less than a year :-)

                                    It’s very easy to install a SSD yourself - they discurage it because you have to be a little carefull when taking it apart - It you just tear it open, you migh break the lightemmiting plastic rods that brings LED light from the MB to the front of the chassis.

                                    Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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                                    • C
                                      Cabledude @keyser
                                      last edited by

                                      @keyser said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

                                      @Cabledude Yes, I installed a 512Gb SSD myself

                                      So does your 6100 now has two active storage entities? Or can there be only one active?

                                      Pete
                                      Home: SG-2100 + UniFi + Synology. SG-1100 retired
                                      Parents: SG-1100 + UniFi + Synology
                                      Testing: SG-1100 w/ 120GB SSD via ext USB (eMMC dead). Works great

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        It only boots from one, unless you install as a mirror but I wouldn't recommend that across dissimilar devices.
                                        pfSense only has any built in handling for one drive. Some users have added scripts to allow a separate drive for caching or logs etc but that's all custom stuff.

                                        Steve

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                                        • R
                                          raystn @keyser
                                          last edited by

                                          @keyser I want to make sure I purchase the correct/compatible SSD. If you don't mind, can you please provide the brand/model of the 512Gb SSD you've installed? Thanks in advance.

                                          keyserK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • keyserK
                                            keyser Rebel Alliance @raystn
                                            last edited by

                                            @raystn said in Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100:

                                            @keyser I want to make sure I purchase the correct/compatible SSD. If you don't mind, can you please provide the brand/model of the 512Gb SSD you've installed? Thanks in advance.

                                            Transcend 512GB, M.2 2242, PCIE GEN3X2, B+M KEY (TS512GMTE452T)

                                            Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

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