⚡ Blade Server Power Consumption Calculator
Calculate total power draw, heat output, and cooling requirements for blade server deployments
| Chassis Model | Max Blades | Chassis Overhead (W) | Rack Height (U) | Max Chassis Power (W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP BladeSystem c7000 | 16 half-height | 850W | 10U | 10,650W |
| HP BladeSystem c3000 | 8 half-height | 550W | 6U | 4,550W |
| Dell PowerEdge M1000e | 16 half-height | 900W | 10U | 10,500W |
| Cisco UCS 5108 | 8 half-height | 600W | 6U | 6,200W |
| IBM BladeCenter H | 14 half-height | 750W | 9U | 7,550W |
| Supermicro MicroBlade | 20 half-height | 700W | 6U | 5,700W |
| Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 | 18 half-height | 780W | 10U | 7,380W |
| Blade Type | Idle (W) | 50% Load (W) | 100% TDP (W) | BTU/hr at TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low-Power Blade | 40W | 75W | 100W | 341 |
| Half-Height Blade | 80W | 150W | 200W | 682 |
| Compute-Dense Blade | 140W | 255W | 350W | 1,194 |
| Full-Height Blade | 160W | 300W | 400W | 1,365 |
| GPU Blade | 250W | 450W | 600W | 2,047 |
| Storage Blade | 60W | 110W | 150W | 512 |
| Circuit Type | Voltage | Amperage | Max Usable Power (80%) | Suitable For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard 15A circuit | 120V | 15A | 1,440W | 1-2 half-height blades |
| 20A circuit | 120V | 20A | 1,920W | 2-3 half-height blades |
| 30A circuit | 240V | 30A | 5,760W | Half-filled chassis |
| PDU 30A (L6-30) | 208V | 30A | 4,992W | ~6 half-height blades |
| PDU 60A | 208V | 60A | 9,984W | Full chassis (half-height) |
| Three-phase 30A | 208V 3Φ | 30A | 14,976W | Multiple full chassis |
| Deployment | Blades | Total Power (W) | Heat (BTU/hr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Lab (half-fill) | 4 half-height | 1,650W | 5,630 |
| Dev/Test Environment | 8 half-height | 2,450W | 8,360 |
| SMB Full Chassis | 16 half-height | 4,050W | 13,819 |
| Virtualization Farm | 16 full-height | 7,250W | 24,737 |
| GPU Compute Cluster | 8 GPU blades | 5,650W | 19,278 |
| Enterprise Full Row | 48 half-height | 10,450W | 35,655 |
blade server systems store big computing skill in small space, even so that happens at real price. Average power consumption for a blade server system, that includes cooling commonly surpass 4 000 watts. Compare that with a whole stand of 1U-servers, that consumes only around 2 500 watts.
Like this one gets much bigger power consumption for something, what seems more compact.
Blade servers use much more power than rack servers
Typical blade server cases require around 4 500 watts. If one counts the power outside the blades self, stays only division by the number of blades inside. For usual rack servers use 1U x86-models around 300 to 350 watts, while 2U two-processor x86-servers consume 350 to 400 watts.
Bigger 4U four-processor servers avreage 600 watts, but in heavy setups they can reach 1 000 watts.
The case self consumes much energy even before one adds any blades. A sample shows, that the setup of the case alone draws almost 700 watts. Old HP C7000 use 423 watts when fully empty and 560 watts with only one blade installed.
Another system without any active blade has basic power consumption of around 200 watts, that grows too 300 watts when all fans work fully.
That really is a real challenge. Blade server centres start with much more high base level power consumption compared to stand alone rack servers. They also lose more energy during conversion of power and cooling.
One stand alone server with alike gear only consumes 350 watts under load. On the other hand, fully loaded C7000-case with 16 doubly dense blades reached 8 kilowatts when the power limit ran. That case carries 32 two-processor servers in only 10U of stand and served for high end computing.
Partly used blade server cases waste space and still swallow much energy. They also make much heat. When some launch a blade server case at home and it consumes 1 000 watts, that matches to 1 kilowatt-hour for every hour of use.
Multiply that by the local power rate to guess the monthly cost.
Although blade server systems spare around 6U of space, they can cost around 4 amps of power capacity, that otherwise could join to other servers. For instance, the C7000 do not work well with 120-volt power. It is important to check the specific sheets about power consumption before buying.
One blade server case or multi-server node can reach several kilowatts when fully filled, especially with GPU-servers that draw from 800 to more than 3 000 watts each unit.
blade server systems can be hard to expand. If the blades run out, maybe you need to add awhole new case as only fix.
