Power consumption of the 6100 vs 5100

stephenw10

Not really, there are too many variables. It will use more if you are passing traffic over a VPN.

At idle with only 2 1G NICs linked and none of the extra components I have in there it will be less than 15W. The one I have here drops to 13-14W with only 2x1G links but still with the additional internal hardware.

It's always going to be more than the 1100 though whatever you do.

Steve

Cabledude

@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

keyser

@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,

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!

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?

stephenw10

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

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

stephenw10

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.

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.

stephenw10

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

Cabledude

@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?

stephenw10

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

NOCling

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.

Cabledude

@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?

keyser

@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.

keyser

@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.

Cabledude

@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.

keyser

@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.

Cabledude

@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?

stephenw10

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