Sub 60w server... Possible?

[Matt]

I am looking to move house soon, and preparing options for a fully networked up home

For this i will require a server, but i have no desire to have a big powerful, noisey and expensive to run machine. What i am looking for is something that will allow me to have 2x TV cards, 2-3x HDDs, no optical drives, and be able to run media portal TV server, sql server, and not a lot else.

Ideally it will be rack mounted, and sub 60w power consumption. It will have no monitor attached to it, and will be hidden away somewhere.

Is this goal achievable yet? and if so, what components would you recommend?



Thanks

 

[joey2cool]

intel atom cpu perhaps, and eco hard drives is the only real help i can give tbh. When you get a PSU you wont need anything to bulky as they are their most efficient near their max power, so you wanna spec a good enough but not excessive psu

 

[Ryan-3]

I was thinking you could go for a MicroATX setup instead?

Like this?


+ i don't have any knowledge of servers you see

 

[joey2cool]

hmm only 1 pci on that mobo sadly, btw onboard gfx is what you need to save power too!

 

[joey2cool]

i dont think you can get more than 1 pci on an itx mobo, so it would have to be an m-atx?

 

[wonko]

Sounds entirely possible. You'll probably have to choose between an Atom/Ion based system that is very low power but limited on horsepower and expansion capability, or a more conventional mobo/cpu setup. I ended up doing the latter, choosing an energy efficient PSU, mobo, AMD CPU and 7 WD GP drives which idles at 55W (or at least it did before that particular PSU went south and more disks were added - which reminds me to chase up the RMA...). The server's nothing particularly special, but there are a few piccies at: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14816121&postcount=26. I went for routing the network cabling into the airing cupboard so that it didn't tie up a room as forever being the 'server room'.
Good luck with it. It's a pretty obvious comment, but if you're intending running cables round the house then it's worth putting more cables in than you ever think you'll need now, plus any for TV/sat/cctv distribution, home automation (electric curtains, anyone?) av/speaker cables, and an alarm system while the floorboards are up... Lots of mess involved though !

 

[joey2cool]

Sounds entirely possible. You'll probably have to choose between an Atom/Ion based system that is very low power but limited on horsepower and expansion capability, or a more conventional mobo/cpu setup. I ended up doing the latter, choosing an energy efficient PSU, mobo, AMD CPU and 7 WD GP drives which idles at 55W (or at least it did before that particular PSU went south and more disks were added - which reminds me to chase up the RMA...). The server's nothing particularly special, but there are a few piccies at: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14816121&postcount=26. I went for routing the network cabling into the airing cupboard so that it didn't tie up a room as forever being the 'server room'.
Good luck with it. It's a pretty obvious comment, but if you're intending running cables round the house then it's worth putting more cables in than you ever think you'll need now, plus any for TV/sat/cctv distribution, home automation (electric curtains, anyone?) av/speaker cables, and an alarm system while the floorboards are up... Lots of mess involved though !

that is epic!

 

[Matt]

Are ITX solutions powerful enough yet? as that would save a lot of power compared to a normal system. If they aren't then i think i will struggle to get anything with low enough power consumption

 

[wonko]

If you're not trying to do any real number crunching like video transcoding, then an atom would probably do the job fine. It's the limited number of sata ports and single pci slot that was the kicker for me - if you get a dual tv tuner card then that's your pci slot used up.
The actual scope for saving money isn't that great either - it's roughly £1 per year for each Watt used (if leaving it on 24/7), so maybe £15 per year less running cost for at atom-based ITX system over a mATX system.

 

[Cycrow]

u could run a via epia as a media server fine. Only 1 pci slot, however, u can get dual pci risers to fit 2 cards in, as long as you have a case that has horizontal cards.

the epias only use about 14w of power for the whole system, althou not sure how that compares to atom pcs

u can of course look at getting external tv cards, u can get the wintv nova-td usb cards that come with 2 tuners and wont use any pci slots then.

i was running a via epia as my media server just fine, running as a mythtv back end
i only recently changed to a full size systems as im now using 8 tuners

 

[wonko]

the epias only use about 14w of power for the whole system, althou not sure how that compares to atom pcs

Wow - only 14W - was that the 'at the wall' consumption including the psu and disks? Either way, it looks like I may have underestimated the potential power saving compared to a 'conventional' system. My 15W difference figure was what I remember from a comparison between an Atom 330 ITX mobo (pre-Ion) and my current gigabyte 780G chipset mobo and AMD 4850e CPU.
Fair comment about pci risers and using usb devices too...

i only recently changed to a full size systems as im now using 8 tuners

Another wow. How much TV do you watch?

 

[Cycrow]

Wow - only 14W - was that the 'at the wall' consumption including the psu and disks? Either way, it looks like I may have underestimated the potential power saving compared to a 'conventional' system. My 15W difference figure was what I remember from a comparison between an Atom 330 ITX mobo (pre-Ion) and my current gigabyte 780G chipset mobo and AMD 4850e CPU.
Fair comment about pci risers and using usb devices too...

the original system was using a flash drive rather than a hard drive, but one of the ecogreen drives dont consume much power either, so even with a few drives, the power it uses wont be a lot higher

Another wow. How much TV do you watch?

i would say a lot
i run a mythtv back end and have several front ends that watch tv, so theres plenty of tuners for all of them to watch seperate channels as well as recording multiple shows at a time.

its 3 dual pci cards, and a dual usb one giving 8 in total

 

[Matt]

I have just checked my current HTPC again, and whilst under normal conditions (eg recording tv), it sits at < 65w, whilst watching tv it goes to ~85w. I think 60w should be easily beatable now, apparently AMD have some 25w CPUs now? My machine runs a 45w 5050e at the moment, so a 20w drop is quite significant.

 

[mavers]

check out ASUS AT3IONT-I DELUXE
spec:
Atom 330
NVIDIA ION
DDR3
Bluetooth
WiFi
4st SATA2
1x PICIEX X16
HDMI with audio, D-sub
Analog RCA stereo outputs
IR remote
Optic SPDIF
90W AC/DC power supply (DC input on the board)
3st SATA power connectors
Fanless cooling

 

[mavers]

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=iHWm73RqE6MCmCtw
link for the motherboard

 

[Matt]

I've just done some more checking and my current HTPC runs at 55w-80w (measured at the wall). ~80w when playing video.

So really it's not too bad considering what it does!