Minimize power consumption of OPNSense Router

Started by phanos, February 20, 2024, 02:00:26 PM

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Hi I am running the latest OPNSense version on a Fujitsu Futro s920 machine. I am pretty happy with it so far, really stable and efficient, but I was wondering if it is possible to get its power consumption to go lower that it is now.

According to a power wattage meter that I install for this particular case, the power consumption of the machine is fluctuating between 15~25 watts while the router is operating. This is the same either if I am home operating the internet or while I am away.

I have already played around with the options in OPNsense under System-->Settings-- Miscellaneous. If I set the "Power Savings"  to "Maximum" the power consumption goes up. If I set up the mode to "Adaptive" or "Minimum" the power consumption goes down a little and to the level I mention above. At this point I have set it up to "Adaptive" which I believe gives a good balance between efficiency and consumption and I do not think I can gain any more out of this option unless someone can pinpoint something I missed.

What I notice however is that if I plug a monitor on the back of the Fujitsu Futro s920 machine I get video. As I understand this also consumes power and I would like to turn the video off after the router has boot up since this is a headless machine most of the time.

Is this possible in OPNSense? Is there an option/hack that can cause video out to turn off after some time of inactivity like on a desktop computer running a Linux/Windows OS?

Are there any more option/hacks that I did not consider in order to minimize the power consumption of my machine running OPNSense?

Thanks

Phanos