Any way to lower power usage of a idling system?

[Mpegger]

I need to leave my PC on 24/7, and it idles around 180-200 watts from the wall. I tried using the built in Power Plan with the Power Saver setting, and that lowered the wattage usage, to around 170-180 watts....

Are there any other methods (preferably one-click solution) to get the power usage even lower? I know a system like mine wont idle at Raspberry Pi wattage, but it also shouldn't be almost 200W just sitting there doing nothing 90% of it's idling time.

 

[freeagent]

If you turn off PBO then you would be limited to stock socket power. I know my 5900X can do 240w PPT, I can only imagine what a 5950 is capable of. Run your fclk/mclk at 1600 or so, things like that..

Edit:

Killing RGB can save 10-20w

 

[EarthDog]

That's awfully high stock voltage for that board. It should idle around 80-100W depending on fans and such.

Is it actually on idle? Like you're seeing 0-1% CPU use and near nothing on anything else in Task manager? What power supply is it? Rating?

 

[Mpegger]

Task manager reports around 2% average when idle from what I observe.
Power supply is a Corsair RM1000x Gold rated, so 180W from the wall is probably 135w-140W actual system usage. I do have my 5950x overclocked so it is pulling more power then stock, and I want to avoid having to underclock it just to save on power, especially since again, the PC is on 24/7, no reboots. So unless there is something that can be done while in Windows, changing values in Bios is out. I also want to avoid software overclocking/underclocking as that can lead to instability as well, but if there is some way to lock the cpu at it's lowest clock speed possible with a simple on/off, I'm hopeing that would help.
I dont think the GPU should be much of a power drain, but it doesn't seem to downclock the memory when idle like it should. I think this is a driver bug that comes and goes with every driver version that AMD releases, so right now I'm stuck with it at full speed.
Other then that, I have 2 NVME, 2 SSD, 2 HDD, and a 10Gb SFP+ card, and lots of fans (7 120mm, 2 140, a 240mm, 3 on the GPU & chipset) and a water pump.

I don't run much RGB except whats on the mobo and GPU, but it seems to drop around 5-10W on the meter.

 

[EarthDog]

I didn't imagine turning off rgb would do much. They sip on power.

I'm going to say that you're about right then after describing your system. Custom water, a shed load of fans, etc...

How are you overclocked? Maybe consider an offset/adaptive versus fixed?

With 13900k and 4090, 2 aios (5 fans), 3 fans, misc m.2, ssd and hdd, my system idles around 120W.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Are your fans on PWM control? Mine turn off below set temperatures. With that many, it'll make a difference.

 

[freeagent]

I do have my 5950x overclocked so it is pulling more power then stock, and I want to avoid having to underclock it just to save on power, especially since again, the PC is on 24/7, no reboots.

Then that's it.. its about as good as your gonna get without turning off the OC .

 

[Mpegger]

I managed to get the video memory to clock down by setting the refresh rate to 60Hz. Looks like the AMD drivers locks the memory @ max clocks when running 4K@120Hz, and if I remember correctly, this may have been done on purpose to prevent instability from an older driver update I read. I also further tweaked the Windows power profile and set the cpu usage limits to 0% min 5% max.
This helped alot as I now see the system pulling 108W from the wall when left idle for some time.
I'll take a look at the fans as they are on pwm. I'm not 100% sure if Fan Control will allow a zero speed under certain temps or just run the fans at thier lowest possible rpm, but its worth a try since when idling the water circulating in the loop should be enough to keep thr cpu cool even with no fans running.
But is there really no way to lock cpu frequency/multiplier via software while in Windows? I have the AMD overclocking software installed but I never really gave it much of a look over as I always did my overclocking in bios, @EarthDog it is adaptive, not fixed (5150 all core stable [could run 5200 but would require some fine tweaking and probably limit cores]).