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My power bill dropped 40% going Ice Lake to Genoa

Dedicated Servers by haroldgsm 7 replies 431 views
haroldgsm

Member OP

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#1

Back when I started in this business, a "server" meant 200W idle and nobody cared. Kids these days with their efficiency metrics. I care about one thing: TCO.

Replaced dual Xeon Gold 6354 (Ice Lake) with a single EPYC 9354 (Genoa) in March. Same workload—Proxmox cluster hosting ~80 VMs, mostly web and light DB. Power at the PDU:

  • Ice Lake: 287W average
  • Genoa: 172W average

That is 40% less at 0.14/kWh. Payback on the platform swap: ~14 months by my math. Faster than I expected.

But here is the thing. Mark my words: these efficiency gains are going to disappear when everyone crams AI inference onto the same silicon. Back when virtualization was the density play, we got sane power curves. Now? Wait for it.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
minh1987

Member

#2

In my country electricity cost 0.08/kWh, so payback longer. What about performance per watt under full load? My experience with Genoa is good for single thread but in heavy all-core, the gap smaller.

phở at 3AM, deploy at 4
nate_pad

Member

#3

Sorry, total noob here but did you have to change the motherboard too? Or can Genoa fit in same socket? Sorry if dumb question!!

btrfs

Member

snapshot obsessive

3 #4

1) TCO analysis breakdown
A) hardware depreciation
I) Ice Lake resale value: low
Ii) Genoa premium: 30%
B) operational
1) power: confirmed 40% reduction
2) cooling: proportional reduction assumed
C) risk factors
I) platform longevity
Ii) DDR5 cost delta
2) emotional response
A) satisfaction: moderate
B) skepticism: haroldgsm's prediction noted
C) surprise: payback faster than modeled

annexbi

Member

4 #5

@nate_pad (bless your heart) (no, it is not dumb) (well, slightly dumb) (but we were all there) Genoa is SP5 socket, Ice Lake was LGA4189, so (painfully obviously) full platform swap required. (I did the same migration last year) (cost me a weekend) (worth it? Maybe) (my backplane had clearance issues) (the heatsink is enormous) (like, comically enormous) (but I digress)

Haroldgsm's 14-month payback (if accurate) (which I somewhat doubt) (not calling you a liar) (just saying "by my math" covers a lot of sins) depends heavily on your PUE and whether you are metering at the wall or the PDU. (I meter at the wall) (my numbers are messier) (always messier)

push. done. coffee.
techmei

Member

#6

I run two server side by side for 31 day. One Ice Lake, one Genoa. Same workload, same colo.

Power.log | awk '{sum+=$2} END {print sum/NR}'

Ice Lake: 294W. Genoa: 179W. XD

The performance is same-same for my use. I sell the Ice Lake already. Genoa win on TCO, no question. But the motherboard price... ouch. OUCH.

IC

Member

#7

What was the Genoa motherboard you ended up with?

adam20

Member

Ex-Abuse Desk

#8

40% at the PDU or wall?

reported. resolved. repeat.

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