Today | News | Books | Recipes
Notes | QuickTake | Wiki | Browse
Maps | Reference | Reddit | YouTube
Chat | Games | About

TuM'Fatig - Overview of AOOSTAR WTR Pro on *BSD

Open Original Page

TuM'Fatig - Overview of AOOSTAR WTR Pro on *BSD

Overview of AOOSTAR WTR Pro on *BSD

2026-09-08


2263 words, 11 minutesaoostar

Finding a NAS that provides NVMe and SATA storage while being tiny
enough to sit in my 10" rack, have a CPU that's not hogging, use a
small amount of watts and offers usage of a non-proprietary OS is not
simple. Especially when you have the "must run any BSD" to the equation.

But here we are, the AOOSTAR WTR Pro Ryzen edition meets all my
prerequisites. And here's what I discovered.

Note that I aimed this machine at running FreeBSD. So I just had a quick look
at other BSDes just to get a rough idea of what you get "by default".
It's not a fair features and power usage comparison. I spend way more
time tuning FreeBSD.

The case is using metal, not plastic. And in a 25-27 degC room, it
always feels rather cold to the hands. It also fits pretty well in my
10" rack space.

RAM and NVMe slots are located beneath the machine and accessible using
screws. The slots are numbered so that you don't have any surprise when
you plug stuff and look and the IDs in the OS. If you ever care about
this...

The SATA disks are accessible from the front. The front cover uses magnets to
stay in place and hide the caddies and LEDs. The caddies have click and
pull mechanism. 3.5" SATA disks are set and removed using a tool-less
mechanism that is quite smart. 2.5" SATA disks need to be fixed to the
tray using screws. Those are a bit less trouble free. It took me quite a
few tries & fails to succeed in plugging the 2.5" disks in. You seem to need
to lift the caddy up a bit. But once it's done, everything goes as
expected. Also, SATA disks are numbered from bottom (SATA 1) to top
(SATA 4). This may be important if you have to deal with device number
IDs.

The fan is quite noisy by default and produces a low-pitched sound.
Also, I don't know how to describe it but you hear the metallic case in
that sound.

Here's YouTube videos I watched before buying that machine:

Hardware Haven - The Home Server I've Been Wanting

Robtech - AOOSTAR WTR Pro Review

Aoostar WTR Pro Ryzen 7 5825U BIOS walkthrough

SecureBoot is disabled by default. Running FOSS system is
straightforward. Hitting <F7> on boot gets you to the selection menu
while hitting <Del> gets you to the BIOS.

With a single 32 GB memory module and no storage at all, waiting in the
BIOS' PC Health Status page uses about 28 W. System Temp is 26 degC, CPU
Temp is 68 degC, CPU Fan speed around 1900 RPM, System Fan Speed around
820 RPM. That explains the whistling noise...

Uplugging the USB 10" LCD 800x600 and USB keyboard does not change the
power usage. Plugging the RJ45 cable does not change power consumption
either.

Adding two NVMe drives does not seem to change the power consumption
that much. I'm using a Fibaro FGWP-102 and Home-Assistant to keep an eye
on power usage, so I may sometime miss a Watt or two :)

Review videos announced some really low power usage using Proxmox in
IDLE mode. Not knowing it that much, I went installing Linux Alpine and
Debian 13 to serve as power consumption base.

Once the installer is started and let IDLE for a couple of minutes, the
power consumption is about 12 W.

Once installed on one NVMe, the other not being used at all, power
consumption is about 13 W and the fan is still audible. htop indicates
that the CPU idles at 1 GHz.

After installing powertop and running powertop --calibrate, the
overall power consumption was about 12 W. Once ran using powertop --auto-tune, the power consumption dropped to 11 W. This was with
Alpine Linux. When I did the same on Debian 13, the power consumption
dropped down to 9W.

The fan was still (way too) audible to my likings. lm-sensors reported
about 34-38 degC for various parts of the system.

Disconnecting the USB keyboard and screen made power usage drop to 8 W
on Debian. I forgot to do this test with Alpine Linux.

Once booted and waiting for the keyboard layout selection, the power
usage was about 19 W.

At first boot, after idling a bit, the power plug indicates 18 W. A look
at sysctl shows the system knows about 3 frequencies. The CPU currently
runs at the highest: 2000 MHz.

Once estd is installed and run (estd -os), the power consumption is...
still 18 W.

# sysctl -a | grep freq
machdep.dmi.processor-frequency = 2000 MHz
machdep.tsc_freq = 1996259000
machdep.cpu.frequency.target = 1600
machdep.cpu.frequency.current = 1600
machdep.cpu.frequency.available = 2000 1800 1600

# envstat
Current CritMax WarnMax WarnMin CritMin Unit
[amdzentemp0]
cpu0 temperature: 40.750 degC
Unplugging the USB keyboard didn't change a thing. But disconnecting the
10" USB monitor dropped power consumption down to 14 W.

I haven't found any extra tricks to tune while reading the online guide. There may
be some more things to do. But to be honest, NetBSD was not the target
system for this machine so I didn't spend much time on it.

The full dmesg is available online.

Once the system is installed and the wizard waits for the (S)hell, (H)alt or (R)eboot choice, the power consumption is about 21 W.

After the first boot, the power usage is about 15 W. Once the USB
keyboard and 10" screen are disconnected, the power usage drops to about
10 W.

The CPU runs by default at the full identified speed (2 GHz).
Using apmd does not seem to lower power consumption.

# rcctl enable apmd
# rcctl set apmd flags -A
# rcctl start apmd

# sysctl hw.sensors hw.cpuspeed hw.setperf
hw.sensors.cpu0.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu2.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu4.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu6.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu8.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu10.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu12.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.cpu14.frequency0=1400000000.00 Hz
hw.sensors.ksmn0.temp0=37.25 degC (Tctl)
hw.sensors.nvme0.temp0=31.00 degC, OK
hw.sensors.nvme0.percent0=100.00% (endurance used), OK
hw.sensors.nvme0.percent1=100.00% (available spare), OK
hw.sensors.nvme1.temp0=38.00 degC, OK
hw.sensors.nvme1.percent0=1.00% (endurance used), OK
hw.sensors.nvme1.percent1=100.00% (available spare), OK
hw.cpuspeed=1600
hw.setperf=0
Given that the 8.0 release is not that far, I gave the snapshot branch a
try. But nothing new enough, that I'm aware of, seemed to allow even
less power consumption. Same here, I didn't plan to run OpenBSD on this
machine so the exploration was really short in time.

The dmesg are available online
here
and
there

The power usage during installation was about 19 W.

After the first boot, and leaving the computer idling a bit, the power
usage dropped just a little down to 18 W.

Disconnecting the USB keyboard and 10" screen had power consumption
drop down to 15 W.

I noticed, using htop, that CPU seemed to always run at 2 GHz. Also,
temperature was not available. Using stock tool, I could verify this:

# sysctl dev.cpufreq.0.freq_driver dev.hwpstate.0.freq_settings \
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels dev.cpu.0.freq \
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest
dev.cpufreq.0.freq_driver: hwpstate0
dev.hwpstate.0.freq_settings: 2000/2437 1800/1710 1600/1460
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 2000/2437 1800/1710 1600/1460
dev.cpu.0.freq: 2000
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/18 C3/3/350
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1

# sysctl -a | grep "cpu.*temp"
Temperatures are not available by default but can be accessed once the
amdtemp module is loaded:

# sysctl dev.amdtemp.0.core0.sensor0 dev.cpu.0.temperature
dev.amdtemp.0.core0.sensor0: 39.7C
dev.cpu.0.temperature: 39.7C

# echo 'amdtemp_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf
The CPU C-states usage is not set for energy-saving mode by default. But
this can be changed:

# sysctl dev.cpu.0.cx_supported dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest dev.cpu.0.cx_usage
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/18 C3/3/350
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% 0.00% 0.00% last 3504us

# sysctl hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest=C3
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C1 -> C3

# sysctl dev.cpu.0.cx_supported dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest dev.cpu.0.cx_usage
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/1/1 C2/2/18 C3/3/350
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C3
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 0.00% 0.00% 100.00% last 7996us

# echo 'hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest=C3' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
This allows the power usage to lower down to 12 W.

CPU frequencies are still not moving. After a bit of reading, I suspect
something happens around hwpstate. On some of my Intel laptops, I get a
hwpstate_intel0: <Intel Speed Shift> on cpu0 reference in dmesg.
With this machine, I get hwpstate0: <Cool'n'Quiet 2.0> on cpu0 when
hwpstate_amd exists in sys/x86/cpufreq/. Things seem to happen in
the 15 and 16 source tree but I guess it's not ready for this machine or
processor. The only solution I found what to run the ancient powerd.

# service powerd enable
powerd enabled in /etc/rc.conf

# echo 'powerd_flags="-a adaptive"' >> /etc/rc.conf

# service powerd start
Starting powerd.

# sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels dev.cpu.0.freq
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 2000/2437 1800/1710 1600/1460
dev.cpu.0.freq: 1600
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to save any watts...
It also doesn't seem to impact system responsiveness, CPU temperature
and fan speed. So I decided to not run it at all.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/TuningPowerConsumption
recommends setting
hw.pci.do_power_nodriver to "3" in order to power down all PCI
devices without a device
driver
."

# echo 'hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3' >> /boot/loader.conf
# reboot
After a reboot, this allows sucking only 11 W from the wall.

Forcing USB devices to power mode does not seem to impact power usage
that much. But, I don't have anything connected on the USB ports...

# usbconfig
ugen0.1: <XHCI root HUB AMD> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen1.1: <XHCI root HUB AMD> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen1.2: <Audio Adapter (Unitek Y-247A) C-Media Electronics, Inc.> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON (100mA)

# usbconfig -d 1.2 power_save

# usbconfig
ugen0.1: <XHCI root HUB AMD> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen1.1: <XHCI root HUB AMD> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen1.2: <Audio Adapter (Unitek Y-247A) C-Media Electronics, Inc.> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=SAVE (100mA)

Links

Browse another page: