I made some power measurements in idle (the use case that corresponds the most to a home server or NAS). For this, I installed the board in an APLUS mini-itx CS-CUPID 2 enclosure which contains its own power adapter board (12V to ATX connector). I’ve equipped the system with 4 SSD, 2*intel X25M 160GB, 2*intel 530 180GB, and a 10GbE NIC (the one I mentioned here). I also tested an aliexpress 12V jack-to-ATX “160W” adapter. I measured the voltage an current at the connector. Here are my measurements:
- 12V via the aliexpress ATX 160W adapter: 1.06 * 11.83 = 12.54W
- 12V via the enclosure’s adapter board: 1.16A * 11.95V = 13.86W
- 12V via the motherboard’s jack, ATX adapter still connected: 1.15A * 11.95V = 13.74W
- 12V via the motherboard’s jack, ATX unplugged: 1.02A * 11.96V = 12.20W
Thus the board’s power design looks extremely efficient, beating the other two. There’s 1.7W saved here by powering the board via its own jack instead of the enclosure’s adapter. Pretty good!
In addition I measured the individual power draw of various components, all powered from the motherboard’s jack:
- removed all SSDs: 0.81*12.03 = 9.74W => 2.45W drawn by the 4 SSDs in idle
- no SSD and 10GbE link down: 0.59 * 12.14W = 7.16W => the 10GbE RJ45 link draws 2.58W alone.
- no SSD, 10GbE adapter removed: 0.40 * 12.21 = 4.88W => the 10GbE adapter draws 2.28W with a link down, and 5.88W with a link up
Regardless, that does make an excellent 10GbE NAS: there are not that many options out there for 10G, fanless at 12W! I’m going to write more about the setup and share photos later. The SSDs are dated but sufficient to read at 10+Gbps (I think in fact we’re not far from saturating the PCIe x2 of the SATA controller).