Anyway, I’m trying to understand this whole power consumption thing too. See my other post if you’re interested. And my conclusion is that it just doesn’t make sense. There are a lot of factors involved. Nuanced things, like quality and of components, firmware etc. You can’t just say old == bad power consumption, new == good consumption. Your 2012 server is a good example of that.

In my opinion, the best thing to do is just look up the specific model you intend to get and check what people’s experiences are for that particular model. And there is your expected power consumption.

Out of curiosity, what’s your desktop setup? Particularly motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU model and capacity? 30W idle without a GPU is exceptionally good for a 6 year old PC.

Thanks for your comment!

This is the kind of info I was looking for.

I’m not only looking to find out how to reduce the consumption of this specific machine (although that is a goal too), but want to better understand what hidden factors affect power consumption. Why can seemingly similar machines have very different power characteristics.

Based on your comment, some of the hidden factors that I wasn’t aware of may be:

• CPU cores. More cores might draw more at idle regardless of max TDP.
• Chipset, memory controllers, and PCIe lanes.
  • Notes: I have just checked the chipset on Intel’s website, and it says TDP is 7W. I’m not sure whether it is indicative of the total power draw a motherboard with said chipset. There may be other stuff on the board, even if we don’t count the integrated peripherals, like an Ethernet card.
• PSU efficiency, especially at low loads.
  • Notes: If I want a low power system, I should use a PSU with a low power rating and high efficiency. The Z440 came with either a 700W or a 550W PSU. I don’t know which one mine has at the moment.
  • Would be interesting to test the system with an efficient, 200-400 W PSU…
• BIOS settings that affect the CPU’s behaviour and low power modes.
  • Note, idea: There might be other differences in how different motherboards and different BIOS’s handle other system components in terms of their power saving modes. PCIe lanes, USB slots, and pretty much everything has power saving modes nowadays.
• Memory voltage and speed.
• GPU power saving states.

Thanks again for your comment. These are great ideas. I can imagine these can add up too and make a big difference when combined.

This is a very good comment, and answers many of my questions. Thank you for this!