Any news on Mini-ITX Atom availability?

I've been looking for ages to build a small, low-power, always-on server.

This would sit in a cupboard with a large amount of storage and my printer and act as a file and print server, bittorrent downloader, and interface for remote access. It'll probably run Windows Home Server, just as soon as they fix the file corruption issue!

In order to sell this to the other half, it needs to have very low power consumption indeed - we need to be in "But darling... It's only consuming 5w - over a whole year, that's less than your hair straighteners!" territory.

So, having seen an Atom board here on Hexus, it occurred that this would be ideal!

Three questions then:

1) Anyone got any idea when these might be coming to market?
2) With a couple of gigs of RAM, do you think it'll run WHS okay?
3) Any viable alternatives? (That's nearly a pun!) How low-power are VIA boards these days?

Many thanks!

The hard drive will take about 5w, so I think you are onto a loser if you are aiming anywhere near that low.

How much storage do you actually need? I would have thought an old laptop off ebay with a broken screen could be mutated into what you want as long as you don't want a large rack of drives (or don't mind them being USB). Might even come with its own built in UPS that way as well :)

For Via Systems, running a Via C7 Processor, I have usually seen between 25 and 30W, depending on configuration, always using 2,5" Hard disks, no more than 1GB of RAM, and no CD/DVD.

At home, I run an Intel based platform, using Intel D201DLY2 motherboard, 1GB Kingston DDR2-533 RAM Module, 2.5" Toshiba Hard disk, a MiniBox MiniPSU and a 8cm fan (this was quite a disappointment, as I hoped it would be unnecessary, being a fanles mobo). Using an Outlet power meter, it uses 40W, although It seems that an unappropriate AD/DC used near it's limit is causing some power lose due to thermal dissipation... Measuring the system at the lab, it was about 30W...

(Sorry but can't post the links for components, due to forums restrictions to new users...)

As operating system, I use Ubuntu 7.10. It runs ok, though the SIS graphics in the motherboard is quite upsetting... and terrible for video!

Anyway, It will be pretty hard to attain your 5W objective... is not only the mobo!, but everything you have to plug in it... For the hard disk, after initial spinning, shouldn't be a problem... mobile hard disks are even powered through USB, which is 5V and 500mA (though some of them need aditional help to start...)

Best Regards!

remeber the north bridge on the atom boards is going to use more juice than the CPU as long as its still a 945!

As LocoVecino said your 5W dreams are way out, as even the most expensive SSD will probably sup that much.

Didn't the latest SSD from Samsung use something around 0.9w?

I think more realistically, you could be looking at the 40-50w range, which despite being relatively high compared with your 5w hope, is still going to mean it uses less electricity than say, cooking your dinner, or boiling the kettle over the course of the day.

I'm using a Via C7 1.5ghz (or 2, can't honestly remember) with 1gb of RAM and 4 HDDs & an Optical drive. It is a box the same size as a Shuttle, and its been stable continuously for the last 30 days. It is running Win2k3 server atm, and whilst a little sluggish on sustained IDE to SATA transfer, it is a perfect low power media server.

In your situation, you could run a 2.5" drive for boot, then 2 or 3x 3.5" drives off a RAID card to allow you RAID5 storage. With the price of TB drives, thats going to be relatively easy.

the Eee box and some atom based netbooks have been shown to idle around 10-12w from the wall...thats as low as your getting with a 2.5" HD in there.

ISTR Ebox is around 14-17W but yes, very low compared to most PCs.. not quite as low as a NAS box using an ARM CPU but the Ebox has a nice VGA output which the NAS doesnt!

I'm in the market for a mini-itx machine and was contemplating going for the Atom platform.

There's a 60W power supply that would minimize noise, the electric bill. But I was also hoping to cram in a DVD burner, 2-gigs of ram, perhaps a wireless pci-card if there's juice to spare.

I've seen specs for the power consumption of the various parts, but was unsure of a good rule of thumb for how much of the power supply should be used, for stability's stake?

To those of you who have built similar machines, is this project feasible with 60W or am I attempting a project that isn't realistic?

Thanks

Dave