Atom 1.6 GHz single or dualcore gutsy enough for MP3 encoding?

[alyarb]

it does have a motherboard per se, but the only thing on it is a RAID controller that sits right on the SATA bus by way of "port multipliers." you can do JBOD or RAID, but yeah it's basically just a rack and power supply for disks. some of the larger ones can be modded to fit mini-itx boards and therefore make awesomely compact server cases, but it is a lot of work. i wish ITX servers were more popular on the market. but it's probably easiest to just get a smallish microATX case.

for instance, this case is only a little larger than that RAID enclosure, but it will fit an ITX board and up to 6 disks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...apex%20sfx

and it certainly takes up less space than an MSI wind and RAID enclosure combined. i know you want to wait for prebuilt systems and you've been researching this forever, but you do have to know-how to do it from scratch and it would save space, energy, time, and money if you tailored the machine precisely to your purpose.

 

[Muse]

OK, let me edit that post (edits in bold), to make sure I got your meaning:

it does NOT have a motherboard per se, but the only thing on it is a RAID controller that sits right on the SATA bus by way of "port multipliers." you can do JBOD or RAID, but yeah it's basically just a rack and power supply for disks. some of the larger ones can be modded to fit mini-itx boards and therefore make awesomely compact server cases, but it is a lot of work. i wish ITX servers were more popular on the market. but it's probably easiest to just get a smallish microATX case.

for instance, this case is only a little larger than that RAID enclosure, but it will fit an ITX board and up to 6 disks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...apex%20sfx

and it certainly takes up less space than an MSI wind and RAID enclosure combined. i know you want to wait for prebuilt systems and you've been researching this forever, but you do have the know-how to do it from scratch and it would save space, energy, time, and money if you tailored the machine precisely to your purpose.

Thanks!

 

[alyarb]

heh, correct

 

[Muse]

heh, correct

Your suggesting that I build my own system from parts rather then buying a system has me thinking why not? I've done it before. Before, however, I wasn't concerned with such things as keeping the power usage down, so I'm feeling tentative without assurances from others.

At Newegg I only see one D510 MB right now, this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121399&cm_re=d510-_-13-121-399-_-Product

Only one review, which was made yesterday. He likes it, wishes it had DVI out, but overall he's thrilled.

This mobo accommodates 2 RAM pieces, so it could have 4 GB, whereas the MSI Wind is maxed out at 2 GB.

I did a little searching and Newegg has several cases by the same manufacturer as the one you linked at Provantage, Athenatech USA. They also have that case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811190109&cm_re=athenatech_case-_-11-190-109-_-Product

Another Athenatech case is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811190110&cm_re=athenatech_case-_-11-190-110-_-Product

It would be nice to have room for an optical drive in addition to two 3.5" HDs, but that may not be available in a mini-itx case. It's not a big deal, because I can use a 5.25" bay for a 3.5" HD with brackets. What would be nice is if I can use the PCI slot to temporarily install one of my PCI IDE controller cards (I have two of these, identical by Promise), and use a DVD-ROM drive I have to install the OS. Once the OS is installed, I can remove the controller card and DVD drive and install the other HD. With the MSI Wind machines, I don't believe I could do that and I would have to buy an SATA DVD drive to install the OS or else work out some way of installing WHS from a flash drive. I heard that's possible, but I'm not sure and it seems like just another level of complexity. :\

Actually, the idea of using the PCI slot for a controller card to run the IDE DVD drive might not work out. It might be necessary to be at least booting from an OS disk to install the Promise driver. Don't know if there's a workaround.

 

[taltamir]

I'm currently doing a lot of MP3 encoding from audio line-in on my desktop machine, but figure that since the server machine is going to be running 24/7, it would be greener to do the MP3 encoding right on the server machine.

1. if you are interested in "green energy" then change to a 100% clean energy provider. That way the more energy you use, the more money they make, and the more you are subsidizing the cost of deploying more green tech, thus reducing cost and increasing the amount of people that move over to it... reducing electricity consumption is a sensible and valid way of saving money, but it has nothing to do with being green.
2. the cleanest power source is nuclear
3. CO2 does not actually cause global warming; neither do humans... just because some ignorant people say "humans can't change the environment" doesn't mean that humans are the cause. Humans CAN change the environment, they just aren't in this specific case.
The science shows that we weren't the cause of global warming (which ended already, we are now in a global cooling cycle). I highly recommend you go to the geoscience department in your local college and ask them about the subject. Rather then believing what politicians say about the science.

4. now to the actual "question" you had... you are basically asking if you can save electricity by "encoding on your server machine".
the answer is to simply compare the performance per watt of each machine.
Take a large sample file, encode with with identical settings on the two machines, while using an "at the wall" power meter.
You will need to measure the power consumption in watts at load (while encoding)
the power consumption at idle (while standing idle)
and the amount of time it took each machine to encode said file.

then via simple math you get your answer... (power@load - power@idle) * time = amount of power needed to encode the exact same sample on two different machines.
if you are assuming that the server machine is "on already" and that the regular computer WOULD be turned off if it wasn't encoding (you should really do the encoding in the background while surfing the internet to maximize power savings)... then you would want to compare the (power@load - power@idle) * time for the server to the power@load * time of the other machine.

 

[Muse]

I was using the "green" tag to denote using less energy, maybe I should have said I want to save a few bucks/year instead. I'm pretty good at being frugal, and frugality is what concerns me here. I'll not get into the altruistic levels, although sometimes I think that if I can lessen the gas, oil and nuclear usage by conserving energy it's a good thing.

The encoding I'm talking about here is real time, so I'm not sure your thinking applies. The program I'm using might be able to produce results even when the machine used isn't up to the requirements of real time encoding, I don't know the issues. Perhaps it can save temporary files in lossless format using less cycles and encode later at the necessary leisurely pace. In that event, I can see the validity of your methods. On my current PC (Beauty in my sig), the save at the end of an hour MP3 encoding takes a few seconds. On one or two occasions something was wrong and the save took a very long time on the order of 1/2 hour. What I think happens in all instances is that the MP3 is saved to a temporary directory and at the end of the process it's moved to the permanent folder by the program, Total Recorder Standard Edition.

 

[alyarb]

this server would have to be on at all times because you're unpredictably capturing and saving audio out of the blue, right? i think that would rule out any larger CPUs.

 

[Muse]

this server would have to be on at all times because you're unpredictably capturing and saving audio out of the blue, right? i think that would rule out any larger CPUs.

Yes, I think it would need to be on all the time, one reason that the D510 Intel looks so attractive with its great power saving abilities. I was hoping that the system would support suspend with wake on LAN that would activate when one of the machines on the network makes a data request (WHS doesn't support it, but there's a free add-on called Lights Out that may support it, evidently). Also, if an encoding is scheduled it would have to wake up and do that. My desktop has a TV card whose software supports the wake from suspend to do a scheduled recording and if so configured it also will put the machine back to sleep or shut it down, if that is chosen (MyHD 120 HDTV card). I don't think that my current Total Recorder Standard Edition supports wake from suspend, but a modest investment of around $20 will upgrade me to the professional edition, which I think does support that. I posted my inquiry about WHS, whether it's possible to run applications on it at WeGotServed Forums:

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?/topic/12465-can-i-run-applications-on-whs/

Even if suspend can't be utilized, the low idle power draw of the D510 makes it pretty practical for a 24/7 machine. If I can't encode right on the server, it's a powerful argument to use an OS other than WHS on the server machine. I'd need to find alternatives to WHS's purported stellar backup features, however.

 

[taltamir]

I was using the "green" tag to denote using less energy, maybe I should have said I want to save a few bucks/year instead. I'm pretty good at being frugal, and frugality is what concerns me here. I'll not get into the altruistic levels, although sometimes I think that if I can lessen the gas, oil and nuclear usage by conserving energy it's a good thing.

That is a completely different aspect. If you wish to save money than you need to take into account the power consumption, the cost of power in your area, the cost of cooling the additional heat produced, the costs of buying the extra (or more efficient) component, the cost of maintaining said components, the cost of installation, etc...
I always make such cost analysis before purchasing anything. For example, I looked at the new 1.35v ram... and I calculated it will save 0.3$ (if i recall correct) per 4GB of ram per year on a computer that is on 24/7... a complete waste of money since they cost much more then regular ram.

The method I originally posted will give you an efficiency comparison between the two machines, which could be used with more math to compute some relative costs of even real time operation... say, @50% usage on computer A vs 10% usage on another. Your own personal circumstances also matter, a whole lot. Do you turn off the main machine when not in use? is the recording device ALWAYS on? can an atom machine even perform said encoding in real time?

please explain in further detail EXACTLY what you need it to do, what is an acceptable sacrifice, your budget, your current plan, etc... The more info we have, the better we can advise.

 

[Muse]

Your own personal circumstances also matter, a whole lot. Do you turn off the main machine when not in use? is the recording device ALWAYS on? can an atom machine even perform said encoding in real time?

please explain in further detail EXACTLY what you need it to do, what is an acceptable sacrifice, your budget, your current plan, etc... The more info we have, the better we can advise.

My machines are almost always off when not in use, or else suspended. The laptops, suspended, the desktop off, or in suspend when programmed to record HDTV (happens occasionally).

I anticipate that the server machine will either be on 24/7 or suspended when not asked for data for some period, perhaps 1/2 hour if that functionality is supported (i.e. if it can be set up to wake when asked for data by one of the other machines or asked to do an audio encoding). I suppose it's even possible I could have my HDTV card/software record to the server but there's no very good reason to do that right now -- the desktop needs to be on to do that anyway.

Read in the thread here and you will see that people are optimistic that the dual core Atom processors (the Atom 330 and the new D510 Pine Trail) are up to the audio coding task. The question seems to be whether or not the OS on the machine supports it.

I don't have an exact budget in mind but it looks like the whole project of setting up a server machine is going to cost about $500, maybe less by $100 if I use a free Linux distro (i.e. Ubuntu, probably).

 

[alyarb]

if you use linux you should come in at around $440 and that is including 3 tb of samsung F2 drives and a 16GB mini-pcie SSD for the OS.

or you could get a $30 PCI SATA controller and just reuse some other hard disk for the os...

 

[Muse]

if you use linux you should come in at around $440 and that is including 3 tb of samsung F2 drives and a 16GB mini-pcie SSD for the OS.

or you could get a $30 PCI SATA controller and just reuse some other hard disk for the os...

Ah, why would I want either of those devices (the SSD or the PCI SATA controller)? IOW, and I think this is what you mean, why would I want to boot to a different device than one of those Samsung F2 drives? You said before that it might be to support RAID 1. Is that the reason? Or is there some reason that the system can't boot from one of the HDs? I know, you are miles ahead of me here... I really appreciate your help with this! I'm not giving up, I'm going to do this. I'd like to know what I'm doing!

Is the server going to be snappier because it's using an SSD for the OS?

Regarding the PCI SATA controller option: I do have HDs lying around, such as 40 GB, 60 GB, even 80 GB I think. All 3.5". Of course, I figure the more HDs involved, the more energy is going to be required to run the server.

That's another thing I'm wondering about. Cases with a 150w PSU (or bigger) are going to have 2 fans, one in the PSU and a case fan. That means more energy used and more noise. That's one thing attractive about the 65w external adapters, but I'm not sure those are adequate to power a box with those two Samsung F2 1.5tb drives.

My post at WeGotServed Forums got this response from a major moderator:

Depends on the drivers really. Since WHS is based on Server 2003, you may have issues getting drivers to work. But if you can get them to work, I don't see why not. I've been using my server as a speaker system, with a few devices going into line in.

I figure he's probably referring to the Realtek chipset driver (?) and I see them available for download for Windows Server 2003, one for 32 bit, another for 64 bit. I figure that the 32 bit one should work for WHS. Well, it's a maybe. Anyway, WHS evaluation copy is freely available and I can try and see if I can set up audio encoding on the server. If not, Linux or XP. I'm a FoxPro programmer, and I think I could probably write an application that does custom backups if WHS doesn't work out for me. Well, maybe.

 

[Muse]

Bump, I really need info on the following snip from the last post:

Why would I want either of those devices (the SSD or the PCI SATA controller)? IOW, and I think this is what you mean, why would I want to boot to a different device than one of those Samsung F2 drives? You said before that it might be to support RAID 1. Is that the reason? Or is there some reason that the system can't boot from one of the HDs.

Is the server going to be snappier because it's using an SSD for the OS?

I have no intention at this time of employing RAID.

 

[alyarb]

yeah, only if you're fulfilling a quasi-NAS role with your encoding server and want redundancy for all the encodes that you save. otherwise do whatever you want for storage.

 

[Muse]

yeah, only if you're fulfilling a quasi-NAS role with your encoding server and want redundancy for all the encodes that you save. otherwise do whatever you want for storage.

Well, backups will be important. If I'm using WHS I can set them up automatically on a folder by folder basis, as I understand it. Or I can work something else out without resorting to RAID. So, those ideas, SSD for boot or an SATA controller with the OS on another HD are just if I want to actually use RAID?

 

[alyarb]

the point of using a mini-PCIe SSD is to have a RAID array using only the limited onboard connectivity included on the D510MO board (they only give you two SATA slots). You can always add more SATA devices later with a PCI controller card.

 

[Muse]

the point of using a mini-PCIe SSD is to have a RAID array using only the limited onboard connectivity included on the D510MO board (they only give you two SATA slots). You can always add more SATA devices later with a PCI controller card.

I actually have a couple of PCI IDE controller cards (currently unused, same model Promise cards). Would they suffice for a HD for the OS that would leave the two SATA connectors for the HDs in a RAID array? Also have a few modest sized IDE HDs (40, 60, 80 GB). Or is SATA a real advantage for that? Actually, that would tend to negate the energy savings aspect of the system, wouldn't it? IOW, having 3 HDs in there instead of 2.

 

[alyarb]

yeah. IDE would just be slow and cumbersome especially running from an add-in board. plus there is the chance that the motherboard won't want to boot to it.

 

[Muse]

yeah. IDE would just be slow and cumbersome especially running from an add-in board. plus there is the chance that the motherboard won't want to boot to it.

Thanks. I'm thinking right now that if I don't wait for integrated D510 systems that I figure are on the horizon, I'll get two green HDs, probably the Samsung 1.5tb, and boot to one of those. JBOD, and skip RAID (I've never done any RAID stuff at all), and either use WHS or work out a roll-my-own backup scenario with another OS.

Can you recommend an enclosure for this? I want to accommodate the 2 HDs, low power but enough for the system, not too loud. I know it's hard to know without hands on experience, so it's cool if you can't really say, I understand. I may wait until there are more comments at Newegg for that board and see what people are doing.