Moved SSD from one motherboard/pc to another -> Higher temperatures and fan speeds

[othenone]

Hello!

I have recently upgraded my homelab server. I moved from a Optiplex Micro 7090 with i5-10500T to a Optiplex Micro 7000 with i5-12500T. This upgrade was done by moving my SSD and RAM over to the new mini pc.

After the change, i am experiencing higher temperatures and fan speeds overall. After researching the topic, i have the following possible reasons the temperature and fan speed are higher in the new pc:
- The heat release of the new mini pc is not as good as the old one. This could then be the fan not being effective or the heat is not led well enough to the cooling block. I have plans to put new thermal paste onto the CPU of the pc, but havent found the time yet to do so.
- Changing pc leaves configurations in proxmox not customized for the new CPU, which might make them inefficient in some way.
- The new pc simply emits more heat than the old pc, therefore, there might not be anything that might substantionally get the heat and fan speed down.

What i would like to know from the community:
Could there be any configurations within proxmox that causes these CPU temperatures and fan speeds to go up? What could these be? I have considered backing up all vm servers and make a fresh installment of proxmox onto the new pc, but i dont know if it makes sense to do so.

Additional information:
- Previous pc: around 2200 RPM fan speed with 50°C cpu core
- Current pc: around 3200 RPM fan speed with 56°C cpu core
- All temperatures and fan speeds with a CPU usage of around 1.0% of 12 CPUs.

 

[news]

And what do you expected?
You got the CPU with more power and the new system so ask the manufacture.

 

[meyergru]

Unless you use some Linux tools to set it explicitely, the actual power modes are determined by the BIOS. Both Intel CPUs should use around the same power when idle, the difference is the ACPI settings which determine how deep the sleep states can go.

There is a tool named cpupower, which can be installed via "apt install linux-cpupower". I use it like this:

cpupower --cpu all frequency-set -g powersave
cpupower --cpu all set -b 6

This means: Use the "powersave" CPU governor and a performance bias leaning a little to the higher side. You could use 15 instead of 6 for maximum power savings.

However, the maximum ACPI C-states are also dependend on the chipset and peripherals installed.

 

[othenone]

And what do you expected?
You got the CPU with more power and the new system so ask the manufacture.

I would think with a higher rated CPU, the power usage might be lower and more efficient for the same task and load, but i might very well be wrong.

If i want answers regarding CPU specs and power usage, then i will ask about that in relevant forums. In the Proxmox Forums, i would hope some knowledgable Proxmox user could let me know if there could be mismatched configurations in proxmox regarding switching CPU that could cause these higher power usage. If someone can confirm that there should not be any mismatches and Proxmox registers the new CPU correctly, then please let me know, then i'll check that point off the list and move on to other forums.

 

[proxuser77]

In the Proxmox Forums, i would hope some knowledgable Proxmox user could let me know if there could be mismatched configurations in proxmox regarding

I think, you're approaching this from the wrong end, and in my opinion, that's the less likely scenario. The CPUs architectures between the two CPUs aren't that different, and unless you've done some very specific tuning on the old system that isn't compatible with the new CPU, I don't think Proxmox or the Proxmox kernel will behave much differently in that regard.

EDIT:
To rule that out you could also try to boot with a different kernel version, or boot another linux distro and see if it behaves differently. Also, if you did any customazions/optimsations on the old system, try to revert them. Generally I would always start with the defaults when doing optimasations on a new platform.

could cause these higher power usage.

Are you sure it actually uses more power?

I think it's much more likely that one of the other possibilties you listed is causing the problem. For example, it could be the BIOS settings, the CPU paste, or a less efficient fan. And yes, different airflow in the case or a different CPU cooler block can have a big impact, but you probably can’t change much about that in a proprietary Dell PC except replacing the fan.

 

[Impact]

Give something like this a look

grep -r . /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/constraint*
grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy*/energy_performance_preference

There might also be PL1/PL2 options in the UEFI of the device. My MiniPC doesn't have that so I use these options to keep it quiet.
Also compare cpupower frequency-info between the devices and check turbostat While running stress-ng or similar.
I do not expect a reinstall to make a difference here but there's a lot of things that could make them behave different
The arch wiki has some related information about some of that
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_frequency_scaling
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
Fan speed is not really comparable across different devices.

 

[meyergru]

Guys, you are missing the point - like I did: The OP does not want any helpful hints from this forum, he strictly wanted to know if Proxmox does do anything special w/r to power settings.

The answer has been given: No. Proxmox acts like any other (Debian-based) Linux. Especially, there are no specific things that are done only once during install that might have an influence when the CPU and/or platform are changed later on without a reinstall.

While that may be clear to us all (which is why we jumped to offer additional hints), it obviously was unclear to the OP, who has expressed that he wants to seek further advice somewhere else.

 

[proxuser77]

Guys, you are missing the point - like I did: The OP does not want any helpful hints from this forum, he strictly wanted to know if Proxmox does do anything special w/r to power settings.

So what? A few extra hints and tips won't do any harm, will they?

 

[othenone]

Guys, you are missing the point - like I did: The OP does not want any helpful hints from this forum, he strictly wanted to know if Proxmox does do anything special w/r to power settings.

The answer has been given: No. Proxmox acts like any other (Debian-based) Linux. Especially, there are no specific things that are done only once during install that might have an influence when the CPU and/or platform are changed later on without a reinstall.

While that may be clear to us all (which is why we jumped to offer additional hints), it obviously was unclear to the OP, who has expressed that he wants to seek further advice somewhere else.

Yes, this is exactly what i wanted clarified, thank you. And i can tell you, it's not clear to me with 1/2 year of experience with Linux, mostly in Ubuntu. Although, further help besides Proxmox related does not hurt, so all suggestions are welcome

 

[othenone]

Alot of suggestions already, thank you! To answer some of the comments above:
- I have not done any custom tuning on the previous server.

And as @proxuser77 says, all suggestions are welcome, Proxmox specific ones, but also BIOS and hardware like. Although i wont expect non-Proxmox suggestions in a Proxmox Forum, this i understand ofcourse, but please dont hold back if you have non-Proxmox suggestions

If i'll try to configure Proxmox according to some of the suggestions, then i'll post the result on this thread, although i will first try to change thermal paste, once i get the time...