Atom for very narrow-purpose box?

[CelticWhisper]

Hi all,

Thanks, first, to everyone who answered my VoIP question last week. Looks like I had the bar set kinda high on that one.

Now, on to my question: I've been looking at building a low-power file server for a while now but am concerned about yet another system contributing to the electric bill. What I'm looking for is a box to do basically two things:

-NFS/Samba file server for the house
-Torrent box (Free/CC content only - there be no Jolly Rogers flyin' over these waters, matey)

Currently I have no file server at all and am using my G5 Quad for downloads. At 180W idle to suck down files at 750K/sec, it's definitely overkill.

I've read some threads here already about using the Atom for file servers but they always seemed to have other purposes in mind too - web browsing, Netflix streaming, HTPCs, etc.

Would an Atom with, say 1-2GB of RAM and a huge, low-RPM HDD, running something like Lubuntu or...FreeNAS, was it called?...cut the mustard for a job like this? No office use, no browsing, no media playback, just hosting/uploading/downloading files to and from the local network and occasionally from the internet?

 

[cotak13]

Why don't you just buy one of those NAS boxes? A lot of them but BT clients.... most draw like 10 watts max.

 

[Edrick]

I see no reason why a dual core Atom could not handle this role as a file server. I was actually considering it as well as I have a file server setup for my wife's business. In the end I went with a low power i3 just in case I wanted to use it for something else down the road. I have a bunch of WD green drives in it setup as a RAID 5. Runs cool, silent, and stable. But I am sure an Atom 330 or better would do the trick.

 

[nyker96]

you can undervolt, underclock that i3 to save more power too.

 

[Fox5]

I'd wait for dc powered AMD Brazos systems to come out, they seem like they'll have lower idle power consumption than Atom.

 

[CelticWhisper]

Edit: regarding NAS boxes

I thought about that and the thing that's holding me back is trying to find an "open" one. Linux-driven, no weird firmware ties to particular HDD models, can SSH into it to configure if something goes wrong, etc. I'm sure they're out there but I guess I don't really know which ones combine features with low failure rates.

Definitely open to the idea though, if anyone has recommendations.

 

[Zap]

Would an Atom with, say 1-2GB of RAM and a huge, low-RPM HDD, running something like Lubuntu or...FreeNAS, was it called?...cut the mustard for a job like this?

Sure.

Why don't you just buy one of those NAS boxes? A lot of them but BT clients.... most draw like 10 watts max.

Most use proprietary firmware and most underperform on the network.

you can undervolt, underclock that i3 to save more power too.

I would personally leave it alone to manage power. These new CPUs do a great job on their own.

Edit: regarding NAS boxes

I thought about that and the thing that's holding me back is trying to find an "open" one. Linux-driven, no weird firmware ties to particular HDD models, can SSH into it to configure if something goes wrong, etc.

There are hackable models. For instance I have a Seagate one that is basically a Pogo something-or-other and people have hacked custom free OS on there. However, they still don't perform all that well.

How much capacity do you really need? If you can get by with under 1TB data you can use either a netbook with screen turned off or a nettop. These will be your lowest power draw, while still performing well over the network. Netbooks usually only have 10/100 NICs but at least they'll saturate it, and they will have lowest power draw.

Nettops like this one also have low power draw (probably a bit higher than netbook w/o screen) and have gigabit NICs for better performance. I have the dual core version and I think it idled around 12W or something like that (with 2GB RAM and an SSD). You don't need dual cores for file sharing or torrents.

The drawback for these is that they only take notebook drives. However, you might be able to use a SATA extension like this one to put a 3.5" drive externally. You can lower power even more by removing the WiFi module. I think it is a mini PCIe just like in a notebook.

 

[pm]

I have an Atom 550 running Windows Home Server. It pulls about 30W - although I have 4 hard drives on it - and it handles backups, restores for all of the computers in the house, I have some home automation stuff on it, a security camera on it recording and I store our photos and music on it. For this purpose it's been fine. I had a drive go bad and it rebalanced the new drive in less than a day (which was fine enough for me) and I had to restore the hard disk on my main desktop last week which is about 800GB and that took about 3 hours. For what I do with it, I'm happy enough. So give that your use model is similar to mine, I would think you'd be fine.

 

[CelticWhisper]

Thank you all so much for the information. Sounds like NASes are a little too hit-or-miss for my comfort, but I appreciate the suggestion.

Right now I'm thinking of this set:
Case/PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811154091
Mobo/CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128452
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148147

It's an Atom 525 and not a 550 - I'm guessing it's not that much slower but I'd also hate to get blindsided by crap performance. Also, something like FreeNAS or Slackware without X running should be less demanding than WHS, right? What about Debian or Ubuntu Server? I'm guessing the latter two have quite a bit of cruft that's not necessary for a simple fileserver, but I admit that the ease of apt repositories has a certain appeal.

I guess the other question would be pertaining to HDDs. I know that 3.5" drives are cheaper per GB than 2.5" drives, but in a small case like that they're more likely to impede airflow and suck more power too. Is the difference likely to be that great that I should drop the money on a high-capacity 2.5" drive or will it still be okay if the CPU's not under load and I get a low-RPM 3.5" drive?

Thanks again, you're all fantastic.

 

[Edrick]

I use 3.5 inch WB Green drives (5400RPM) for my file server. They are super quiet, low power, and have large caches to help performance. I tend to think 3.5 inch drives are more reliable than 2.5 inch, but thats just my opinion. If you get a big enough case, I see no reason to use 2.5's. I would only use them if space dictated it.

 

[chuck2002]

This is an old thread, but I thought I would offer this up as a possible solution for anyone else looking to do something similar for cheap.
You could make some minor, reversible booting software modifications to a 1st get Pogo Plug or Dockstar to make it boot from a USB flash drive that has a full installation of Debian on it and do whatever you want with it from there. (Install Samba in this instance, but could do a plethora of other stuff, as this is a full Debian install, not some slimmed down version) If you want to go back to standard PogoPlug server services, just remove the USB flash drive and boot the box and it will boot up normally with all of the out of the box Pogoplug functionality.
I have written a guide for making this all work and it is posted here:

http://chuckscoolreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/installing-debian-on-pogoplug-pink-full.html

 

[sm625]

Why not just find an old pc on ebay for 50 bucks. Something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/desktop-compute...0560483330?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item43a6c12002 Idle power draw on that will probably be under 100 watts. You're only saving 10-15 cents a day by spending god knows what on the latest and greatest low power system.

 

[86waterpumper]

a atom cpu is ungodly slow. I know, I am using my lenovo ideapad s12 to type this Earlier it installed some windows updates, and even overclocked to 2 ghz, with nothing else running it pegged the thing out at 100 percent cpu.... even light web surfing, if there is a animated banner ad on the page will run cpu at 60 some percent. It sucks too because the rest of the machine is entirely adequate. Even with the nvidia ion graphics, it struggles on 1080p streaming on youtube etc. A dual core atom might work, or a bobcat, but eventually you will want the system to do more functions than just a simple fileserver and then it will let you down.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

i bought the intel d510 board a couple years ago and it had horrible performance. i built it and i think i used it few than 5 times. youre much better off getting a low end i3

 

[dac7nco]

a atom cpu is ungodly slow. I know, I am using my lenovo ideapad s12 to type this Earlier it installed some windows updates, and even overclocked to 2 ghz, with nothing else running it pegged the thing out at 100 percent cpu.... even light web surfing, if there is a animated banner ad on the page will run cpu at 60 some percent. It sucks too because the rest of the machine is entirely adequate. Even with the nvidia ion graphics, it struggles on 1080p streaming on youtube etc. A dual core atom might work, or a bobcat, but eventually you will want the system to do more functions than just a simple fileserver and then it will let you down.

Network Attached Storage has no overhead. It doesn't take a 14GB install, or run Aero, or stream YouTube. The cheapest CPU you can find on NewEgg today will happily run a RAID-60 array while running a bittorrent client in the background. The dual-core CPU in my RAID controller is about as powerful as these get, which is about about as powerful as an iPhone-3.

With that said, Supermicro has Atom boards, in mITX, available with dual Intel LANs (concurrent streams to everyone). Plug those into a Trendnet switch, and structure the rest of your connections as the cable-length to the switch. These Supermicro mITX boards are around $200, but they are built to last, and they come with both an x4 PCIe slot and 6xSATA-II... one of them comes with IPMI: problems with your server? manage it from anywhere.

Endnote: AMD CPUs allow ECC memory on all platforms, regardlest of cost or marketing. This is a Serious thing to consider if you're going the DIY route.

Daimon

 

[Binky]

A headless server that only hosts and downloads files shouldn't need more power than an Atom can provide. Its a little silly to discuss the (pretty mediocre) user experience of an Atom system when the OP doesn't need a fast UI or 1080p video playback.

Atoms are great for the OP's intended use.

EDIT: Damn, I missed the fact that this thread was necro'd from about 7 months ago...

 

[Chapbass]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...042&Tpk=de2700

I use these occasionally for some people...not the fastest in the world, and only support for one drive, but its hard to beat 6"x6"x2" for a complete pc.

 

[paperwastage]

Hi all,

Thanks, first, to everyone who answered my VoIP question last week. Looks like I had the bar set kinda high on that one.

Now, on to my question: I've been looking at building a low-power file server for a while now but am concerned about yet another system contributing to the electric bill. What I'm looking for is a box to do basically two things:

-NFS/Samba file server for the house
-Torrent box (Free/CC content only - there be no Jolly Rogers flyin' over these waters, matey)

I use my Asus RT-N16 $90 loaded with tomato as a Samba server (for my Seagate Theater+ Media Player). roughly 5MB/s read/write over the wireless network

there's optware for the tomato firmware that allows for ssh, bittorrent, download from megaupload/rs/blah... i don't use them, but it's possible

not sure if you need the NAS speed. Could also go with a cheaper $20 Asus RT-N13U, but I like the massive ram/cpu/rom that the RT-N16 has- never crashed or lagged at any point


but i wonder why we are digging up an old thread