Power Consumption

Let us now check on just how much power the N7710-G needs in sleep, idle, and during heavy throughput.

We use a GW Instek GPM-8212 power analyzer for all of our power consumption measurements.

Sleep, Idle and Load

The for a NAS highly clocked Intel processor and seven HDDs we installed consume close to 90 W with a single client under heavy throughput, or almost 70 W in idle. Pretty high numbers compared to other NAS units we have tested, you should keep in mind that this NAS doesn't use an underclocked Atom CPU to curtail power consumption, but a much stronger one, so it inevitably requires more juice.

Power Consumption in Standby Mode

Vampire power or phantom load is the amount of power a device consumes when it is switched off but still plugged into the power grid. According to the ErP Lot 6 2013 directive, Vampire power should be below 0.5 W.



The N7710-G clearly doesn't meet ErP Lot 6 2013 requirements.

Power Consumption Comparison Graphs

The N7710-G easily took "top honors" in the first two charts (and second in the third), which doesn't surprise us because it uses a normal desktop CPU, not an Atom one. However, computing power is often preferred over low power consumption in a business environment since the demand for system resources can be huge.