CPU: 2.52874 W
CPU: 3.24621 W
CPU: 5.04997 W
CPU: 4.82628 W
CPU: 3.47802 W
CPU: 5.08537 W
CPU: 5.08959 W
CPU: 5.13903 W
CPU: 5.16094 W
CPU: 5.12926 W
CPU: 5.12029 W
CPU: 5.09636 W
CPU: 5.08849 W
CPU: 5.08531 W
CPU: 5.16234 W
CPU: 5.08098 W
CPU: 5.08031 W
CPU: 5.05791 W
CPU: 5.13707 W
CPU: 5.06194 W
CPU: 5.07646 W
CPU: 5.08153 W
CPU: 5.14635 W
CPU: 5.0833 W
CPU: 5.06969 W
CPU: 4.97234 W
CPU: 5.11748 W
CPU: 5.05937 W
CPU: 5.05809 W
CPU: 5.13713 W
CPU: 3.77404 W
CPU: 2.52532 W
I5 7400 was at 82F (28C) while testing.
Around 9% usage. Realtek NICs!
I wanted to show this because people think they need to buy an super efficient nuc pc or arm router with and max TDP of 10W. The i5 7400 has a TDP of 65W. Its using 2.5W while normal browsing or web search and 5W on my max 300MBPS network test.
It was 100% free btw, got it from the trash of a local computer shop. I asked.
I tested on the default settings OpenWRT 25.12.4 version.
The command i used in ssh:
a=$(cat /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/energy_uj); while sleep 1; do b=$(cat /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/energy_uj); echo "CPU: $(awk "BEGIN{print ($b-$a)/1000000}") W"; a=$b; done
And then there's a power supply unit with an efficiency factor of 25-30%.
It's nice to know how much wattage the single components draw, but in the end the only thing that really counts is what the whole box draws from the wall socket.
Your measurements remain useless, unless you can back them up with measuring the actual values at the wall (with decent measuring equipment, measuring highly volatile usage <5 watts is not trivial).
The futro using less than a fifth (almost a sixth) of the electricity the M800 would need. At 0.40 ct per kW/h, that would amount to 12.23 EUR vs 57.66 EUR per year, just a tiny difference...
...and under actual load, the futro barely touches 10 watts, while the M800 reaches around 80 watts. Yes, the M800 is faster and can do more work than the futro, but both can handle 1 GBit/s routing without breaking a sweat.
I shutdown my router everytime i dont need it. I also try to save money that way. Its cool to play around with it, build this or that and watch videos. Being in the internet for too long is not healthy. My router runs 10h/day.
Do you guys turn off your routers or not during the night?
Being flexible is useful, your devices are top but not as customizable as an old pc. I have an i5 10400T laying around. Its has a TDP of 35W.
I could reuse everything. So 2x faster and more efficient CPU for almost nothing. There are also a lot of settings that let you limit power consumption that a normal device doesnt have.
I dont understand how you hit 80W with the same cpu one generation older. What did you test? You can try this command to disable turbo mode in etc/rc.local:
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo
Probably bad firmware.
What brand is the best one for measuring at the wall?
They're all pretty much the same as far as I can tell. The last one I bought was this one's little brother over four years ago, and it has worked fine with constant use since then... Go to ali express or wherever is cheapest.
I use a $5 LSC smart power plug to turn on my old PC (core2Quad 2,8 GHz) which has no wake up on lan that smart plug also measures the power used but no idea how accurate that thing is.
I usually only switch it on for testing purposes it has proxmox and a couple of VM's with different versions of OpenWRT
But when I leave it on for 12H it consumes about 500 W (= $0.25) but as I have 15 solar panels it is actually free
When you start doing things like wireguard, efficient arm socs just destroy the intel laptop chips in power use. Odroid n2 for instance can run a couple of vms doing 300-450 mbit/s wireguard and not even crack 6w, rk3588 based stuff it's like 400-550 and not even 8w.
Yeah, our array is only 14 panels, but even running 300w (at idle, around +300 on that when running a build or testing things) of servers, routers, switches, APs and workstations 24/7, we still have a daily net usage of about -10-15,000 Watt-hours during the summer (goes to about +5k in the winter if we run the furnace).
FYI: I use 4-core mini PC N5105 @ 2.00GHz with 5 x 2.5GBe (only two ports in use). NVME storage.It is fed by PoE ejector and draws 13-ish Watt (measured by PoE switch) in semi-idle. This is including DC/DC conversion losses taking place in PoE ejector.
When you run owrt virtualised in proxmox you can mess it up without worries and restore a previous version from backup. Data backups are a thing in a serious home-lab. So I have 2 proxmox hosts : one for my "projects", and one for "networking/pihole and a PBS vm with 2 individual disks passed to it". The network host consumes 67watts (2 HDD, 1 nvme, 10Gb/s nic, i7 skylake). The prod box (i7 kabylake, 4 ssd's in a 5.25 enclosure, zfs, 1 nvme, 10 Gb/s nic) consumes 37 watts.
Backups are scheduled : I set them and a claude process checks them (that's a lie: claude set them too), I receive exceptions over Signal.
So yeah that's a lot more dollars than a routing-only box, but within the constraints of my risk model, it is not excessive.
Both i7 run 70% of their time in c7. Not looking back from proxmox or x86 for that matter.
For anyone wanting to measure power from the wall, use Google to find "IKEA GRILLPLATS". These devices are accurate to about 5% and cost under $10. There are versions for use in the EU and N. America. And for networking geeks, Matter over Thread is a cool IPv6-based mesh network that works with Apple, Google, HA, or any ecosystem.
If you remove one ram stick you may save a watt. Aslo this thing is very stacked damb. I expect my system to have the same power usage. We will see when my adapter arrives.
Intel Nics are just crazy i got a i350x2 and my cpu stays below 5% usage while testing my max bandwidh of 300mbps.
My realtek nics used 2x more cpu. So it is basically idle, it wont go over 2% while watching youtube playing videogames.
Always below 2.6W
Also i want to build an openwrt wifi mini/pocket router. It has to be very small and good wifi thats it. Budget is 50, any suggestions?
Write more details. Intel 350 are server gear nics and they aren't designed to be power efficient, my m920q with x520 and esxi idle at over 20W, but wen i replace nic to some old quad port broadcom it goes under 8W. Also i have bqeel y8 max with armbian and usb3 hdd, it idlles at 3W and max out at 8W.
I5 7400
4gb ram
120 gb ssd
10gtek i350 t2 (4w under full load) i guess it uses around 2W while doing normal things it also isnt warm at all tho it has very bad heasink
I cant tell you much i didnt measure at the wall but this is very smooth. I didnt have a single lag or loading time while watching movies and now world cup..
I also disabled some stuff enabled power saving features on cpu drivers and other stuff to save power. Theres no warmth coming from it maybe bc it is summer.
After running powertop --auto-tune, package went down from C2 to C3 and the power consumption dropped by about 2W (the NIC prevents package going to lower states). No hiccups detected so far.
