Very low power NAS server

[dbh]

I'm surprised I missed this but I think I just found my perfect case. Bit pricey but seems to have what I need in it. Only thing now is to find a decent high efficient low load psu.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...x-case-w-o-psu

[watercooled]

I'd do some measurements first - those cases are surprisingly big IMO.

Depending on how many HDDs you'll be using and what sort of platform, a PicoPSU or similar would give you about the best efficiency at low loads.

[dbh]

Indeed it's pretty big but should be able to fit that in my cabinet once I drop the adjustable shelf down a little. Looks sweet too. Deciding between that and the MILO but if I was to go the Milo route I'd have to get a hotswap bay and slim line bay combo but with the GD06B it's got that out of the box.

[badass]

I did think about that HP microserver space is a bit of a premium for me at the moment is the unit quite small though? I don't think I'll be running more than a 2TB drive at the moment though. Ideally am looking to keep power consumption low. Will have a looksee at the links you posted. Thanks.

These and the culv i3's are tickling my fancy. My budget is £200 but if I can fit a mini i3 machine like that for under £300 with case psu and ram I think I'll up my budget.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/re...031&sort=price

My Microserver with the HDD that came with it runjing WS2008 R2 used 22 watts at the wall. It was pretty quiet.
Thay aren't that quiet with more than 1 HDD though as they have no noise dampening and the HDD's spinning at slightly different rates (e.g. 5399.8 and 5400.1 RPM) causes resonance that "pulses"

[qinyanggl]

I built my NAS by buying some old laptops with dead display from ebay. Use Ubuntu as the OS.

[kingpotnoodle]

Indeed it's pretty big but should be able to fit that in my cabinet once I drop the adjustable shelf down a little. Looks sweet too. Deciding between that and the MILO but if I was to go the Milo route I'd have to get a hotswap bay and slim line bay combo but with the GD06B it's got that out of the box.

I had one of these style of case (Antec Fusion) in an open fronted cabinet, closed back. It overheated because the air flow was in from the side so it would form a pocket of hot air and recirculate it... you might need to watch for that. Might be OK with a very low power machine...

The lowest x86 idle power seems to be i3 2100T and a low power Intel motherboard, get one with the least fussy chipset you can find, least add-on chips possible, use a single stick of RAM if performance doesn't matter, or buy the 1.35V stuff.

2.5" drives make less noise and use less power than even "Green" 3.5" drives, there are plenty of adapters out there... If you can make do with 1TB as the maximum drive size and swallow the inflated cost.

For such a low power system you need a Pico PSU or similar, you could look for a motherboard with a DC-DC onboard, then you just need an external PSU - I've always wondered if one of those could be modded into a normal case in the normal PSU bay using some custom backplate...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Lowest idle power would be a Zacate based mini ITX motherboards espeic. The xbitslab review is not be trusted when it comes to the power consumption reading as it uses an 880W PSU and probably the worst Zacate motherboard out there(very inefficient). In another review with another Zacate motherboard they got much lower power consumption readings.

MSI E350IS-E45



Gigabyte E350N-USB3


This is confirmed by the following review:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/e-350-...-32224-16.html



The Intel DH67CF according to xbitslab has the lowest idle power consumption of the mini-ITX socket 1155 motherboards they tested:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mai..._12.html#sect0



The following review uses the MSI E350IA-E45:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20401/5

With a DC-DC power supply you get much lower power consumption overall.





All the Zacate motherboards have all the SATA ports running at SATA3.0 speeds but lack RAID. The cheaper Intel H61 motherboards have no RAID or SATA3.0 ability. The H67 motherboards do have RAID capacity.

OTH,a Core i3 2100T and an H67 mini-ITX motherboard will set you back around £180 and with an H61 ITX motherboard around £150. The Intel Core i3 2100T and the Intel DH67CF will cost around £190.

I would probably look at the G620T too. You can get a cheap H61 mini-ITX motherboard with the processor for around £110.

The important factor to consider is the number of VRM phases. The Intel DH67CF has very few phases and so consumes less power at idle.

You really don't need a very powerful CPU in most cases TBH. Even an el-cheapo Atom motherboard would do the job. If you look at many of the cheaper NAS devices under £300 you will be lucky to even get an Atom.

This Atom mini-ITX motherboard is around £73:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...-raid-mini-itx

With the case choices, if you intend to use 3.5" drives I would make sure there is some sort of active cooling for the discs.

However,the HP MicroServer when on offer still seems to be the best value:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer

[dbh]

Thanks guys. Will have a good read about this over the weekend. It must be a sign as most of the S1155 parts I was eyeing up plus the cases are on today only so I might pull the trigger this weekend. I'm leaning towards an intel build atm though I can see the nice points of the E350 (plus cost savings). However if it means paying extra to get that DC-DC board (I know you can get a 150W ISK-300 Antec case but it's limited to 2x 2.5" drives) I think I'd rather pay for a higher efficiency normal PSU. I'd like to see what an underclocked and undervolted i3 2100 and G620 come out as compared to the E350 (unless that's what CAT-THE-FIFTH posted?)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks guys. Will have a good read about this over the weekend. It must be a sign as most of the S1155 parts I was eyeing up plus the cases are on today only so I might pull the trigger this weekend. I'm leaning towards an intel build atm though I can see the nice points of the E350 (plus cost savings).

The thing is you don't need a powerful CPU though. An Atom is enough for such purposes. Unless you are creating something like a RAID5 array it is just a waste of money and TBH you probably would also be looking at a dedicated card too. For yonks I used an XP2800 with 1GB of DDR RAM for streaming,storing music and videos and backing up files and it was OTT anyway. Of my mates is running an ancient P4 and has a few TB of storage in his server. Bagnaj97 has an Athlon II X2 for his media server with some low end media card and it runs fine too.

If you are running single discs or just mirroring discs don't waste your money.

However if it means paying extra to get that DC-DC board (I know you can get a 150W ISK-300 Antec case but it's limited to 2x 2.5" drives) I think I'd rather pay for a higher efficiency normal PSU. I'd like to see what an underclocked and undervolted i3 2100 and G620 come out as compared to the E350 (unless that's what CAT-THE-FIFTH posted?)

The problem is that of the low power CPUs consume very little power and most PSUs are not efficient at low loads. A lot of the 100W to 300W bundled PSUs are based on old designs just like the one in the 150W version of the Antec ISK300. This means they are not efficient at all.

OTH,DC-DC PSUs tend to be quite efficient even at lower loads.

Out of interest do you have a PS3 or XBox 360?? You can adapt these for media server use.

Edit!!
I still think the HP MicroServer is the best choice overall.

[MadduckUK]

I still think the HP MicroServer is the best choice overall.

microserver and something like http://www.ebuyer.com/267867-emachin...p-pt-nbzec-004 is the way to go. slap xbmc on the emachine and a bunch of HDD's in the microserver. trying to combine a home server with a media player leads to issues and annoyances in my experience.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

microserver and something like http://www.ebuyer.com/267867-emachin...p-pt-nbzec-004 is the way to go. slap xbmc on the emachine and a bunch of HDD's in the microserver. trying to combine a home server with a media player leads to issues and annoyances in my experience.

The £100 cashback is still active until the end of the month:

http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/prol...ver/index.html

[MadduckUK]

The £100 cashback is still active until the end of the month:

http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/prol...ver/index.html

it seems to be active until the end of every month so, so good though, acer... dell... nobody has an answer for it. VIA must have done their wrists when that came out.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am tempted to get one myself too. OTH,I already have a DAS which does the job for now. Too many things to buy and too little budget!!

[MadduckUK]

i reeeally dont need one... but i reeeeally want one. look at it! LOOK AT IT! everyone wants one even if they have no idea what for.

i think i made a thread about this a while ago, sadly nobody suggested a killer app that couldn't be done on a VM

[dbh]

The thing is you don't need a powerful CPU though. An Atom is enough for such purposes. Unless you are creating something like a RAID5 array it is just a waste of money and TBH you probably would also be looking at a dedicated card too. For yonks I used an XP2800 with 1GB of DDR RAM for streaming,storing music and videos and backing up files and it was OTT anyway. Of my mates is running an ancient P4 and has a few TB of storage in his server. Bagnaj97 has an Athlon II X2 for his media server with some low end media card and it runs fine too.

If you are running single discs or just mirroring discs don't waste your money.

The problem is that of the low power CPUs consume very little power and most PSUs are not efficient at low loads. A lot of the 100W to 300W bundled PSUs are based on old designs just like the one in the 150W version of the Antec ISK300. This means they are not efficient at all.

OTH,DC-DC PSUs tend to be quite efficient even at lower loads.

Out of interest do you have a PS3 or XBox 360?? You can adapt these for media server use.

Edit!!
I still think the HP MicroServer is the best choice overall.

I do have a 360 as well it's sitting in the cabinet where I was thinking of putting my box (I know kind of defeats the purpose of having the 360 there then doesn't it) Ok I know I mentioned main purpose being a NAS, media server etc... but as a mini render box the i3 would be pretty decent performer as well right? (After Effects, 3ds max) I'm running a Q6600 as my main machine atm for benchmarks seems to do about the same CPU wise which isn't too bad considering. Also didn't realise the 150W ISK300 was an AC PSU thought it was just a beefier brick PSU. Will take a look at the brick PSU options then.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I do have a 360 as well it's sitting in the cabinet where I was thinking of putting my box (I know kind of defeats the purpose of having the 360 there then doesn't it) Ok I know I mentioned main purpose being a NAS, media server etc... but as a mini render box the i3 would be pretty decent performer as well right? (After Effects, 3ds max) I'm running a Q6600 as my main machine atm for benchmarks seems to do about the same CPU wise which isn't too bad considering. Also didn't realise the 150W ISK300 was an AC PSU thought it was just a beefier brick PSU. Will take a look at the brick PSU options then.

For things like rendering and video encoding a mildy overclocked Q6600 will beat a 65W Core i3 2100. A Core i3 2100T based setup would probably be slower than a Q6600 at stock clockspeeds.

Look at this thread where different HandBrake results are compared:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ded-power.html



TBH,you are better off with a Llano A8 3850. This has very low idle power consumption and for rendering and CPU only video encoding is faster.



However,I still think you are better off buying the HP MicroServer as with cashback you are looking at around £130 to £140 with a 250GB hard drive. It has low idle power consumption as many people in this thread have mentioned and this is for the whole NAS with discs.

Look at this review I mentioned earlier:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1193-page5.html

"The power draw of the system is quite modest. With two WD Green drives, the power draw ranged 24~35W in normal use, with the average not much higher than 32W. With the more likely 4-drive setup , it went up about 10W, to around 40~43W average.

Surpringly,with the two Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160 GB drives, the server idled (in MWS 2008) 9W higher than the two WD Greens. Peak power went up by the same amount, so it seems clear that the Barracudas are the cause the of extra power consumption. However, note that the idle CPU temperature in MWS 2008 was some 6°C higher than in Windows 7."

Even building your own NAS with an Atom or Zacate motherboard would be cheaper than getting a Core i3 based one. The Cost of a Core i3 2100,motherboard and RAM would cost more than the MicroServer with the included 250GB hard drive or DIY Atom or Zacate based server without a hard drive.

If you are interested in rendering and similar things I would save some more money up and upgrade your main PC. A Core i5 or a Phenom II X6 would be a big upgrade for rendering and you could to do the upgrade for between £250 to £280.