I can see that is my 9th Team UK position about to go under! Still - it is good for the team and that is all that matters.

Morning all,

Hope that sickness clears up Stephen.

The beauty of these 4 node servers is they share a single power supply and cooling solution so (in theory) they're already more efficient than say a workstation with the same processors in - which I tried and was true although the workstation motherboard had more arguably a higher spec. Not directly comparable but I remember my 24thread server with a pair of X5650's consumed 300w for about 80k points a day whereas the c6100 consumed 600w for about 200k per day.
If you're going to boot from USB then you could try removing the entire SATA array from the front, this will have two benefits - improving airflow and perhaps a slight drop in consumption as I'm sure there's some supply needed to a controller on it. Someone on 'Servethehome' did this, so worth a look there.
It comes with an 1100w supply, i tried a 750w in it just for fun but there was no noticeable difference in draw so I swapped back as I liked the fact it had plenty of headroom. I've still got the 750w somewhere, if the PSU breaks I'll mail it over.
It's already on a minimum memory config so you can't go smaller, you could look at low voltage memory sticks there might be a couple of watts per node save there, although they looked prohibitively expensive before.
Using USB as I think you will, will save you some over the mechanical drives I had on it. The servers can be remotely controlled over IPMI so you could fire them up at will or even get them to wake/sleep at preset times.
Under 'computing preferences' the BOINC client allows daily schedules to be set-up - perhaps a sunshine mode

enjoy.

A great idea mac1, I have removed the sata array after much scratching of my head, but there is a wire attached to it that I can't find the end of to disconect it. Don't even know what it does. I will add a picture link so you can see what I mean.
Removing the controller should save a few watts.
Finally found my thermal paste and will get the cpu's done tomorrow, hopefully.

USB sticks should arrive by Friday, in the meantime I will test each node with the one stick I have, going to do that tomorrow as well as I'm still fixing one PC.
I think along the same lines as yourself regarding the power supply so will stick with the original one, thanks for the offer though.
I will check out IPMI, think I will need ito use it.
Can't think of any other ideas for reducing power usage, will try some old fashioned googling and the Servethehome forums.
Right now, I am off into the roof space to find my old 4 port switch.

Thanks for helping.

Photo is here https://ibb.co/kudTmx

FYI, tomorrow (Sunday) I'm intending to replace the disk array on my server, which means (amongst other things) that the WCG stats website will be offline.

You won't believe it, 35 minutes after posting my last post, my mother called for me to take her to A+E, she broke one of her fingers. got home at 2:45am.
Had to abandon working on the server so won't get it working until Sunday afternoon.