D510 for a whs?

[emperus]

What do you guys think about the D510 motherboard for a whs build? Want something low powered. But is this too underpowered?

 

[dtgoodwin]

I have a WHS running on a 330 Atom. The D510 is a little faster. The biggest problem is expansion. My system is a nettop, and has only 2 SATA ports with the only other expansion other than USB being a mini PCI-E slot. Using more than two drives (highly recommended), results in some of them being USB. If your network isn't Gigabit, then you will likely not run into major issues, but I wouldn't hang more than one or two drives off USB if it can be avoided. As far as processing power, the Atom is slow to open the console, but very few tasks on WHS are CPU intensive. The one thing is that you will not save much power, if any, over the i3 2100. The Desktop ATOM has no speedstep or power saving abilities. The i3 probably runs at lower power when idle than the ATOM, and your WHS will be idle 95% of the time unless you desire to do any transcoding. If you do, you will definitely want an i3 or better. All Sandy Bridge processors have impressively low idle power consumption.

 

[emperus]

Thanks. Will look for another option then. Power saving was my priority but I guess I can do that with another option.

 

[386DX]

A Sandy Bridge based Celeron G530 would be be the logical step up from a D510 Atom. Don't let the 65W fool you, real world usage is about 20W idle and 40W load. About 10-15W more then the Atom under load but the CPU is magnitudes faster.

The epensive and probably impossible to find solution would be the mythical 15W Intel Pentium 350 processor.

http://ark.intel.com/products/61272/Intel-Pentium-Processor-350-(3M-Cache-1_2-GHz)

It's a dual core 1.2 GHz based Sandy Bridge with hyperthreading.

 

[dealcorn]

Because the D510 is a couple of generations old, I assume this is a redeployment question. WHS is a wonderful, well regarded product that does many different things for different people. If you want a D510 to simultaneously stream and trans code, it is not going to work. If your interest is in the use of WHS for home file sharing and backup, you may be in the sweet spot where you can pat yourself on the back for a good decision. The problem is you must purchases a WHS license and forever mate it to the D510 to figure out whether you will be happy.

If your interest is in file sharing and backup, consider some variant of Linux (like Ubuntu) and the application Samba which will provide your Windows shares. You must become smarter, but it is free. There are reasons most commercial NAS device runs Linux and the D510 has long been a highly credible CPU for this specific application. There are many things a D510 can not do well, but running Linux NAS on a D510 is exactly where Atom is generally regarded as a proven solution.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

atom is awful. i would just get i3

 

[Minot]

A Sandy Bridge based Celeron G530 would be be the logical step up from a D510 Atom. Don't let the 65W fool you, real world usage is about 20W idle and 40W load. About 10-15W more then the Atom under load but the CPU is magnitudes faster.

The epensive and probably impossible to find solution would be the mythical 15W Intel Pentium 350 processor.

http://ark.intel.com/products/61272/Intel-Pentium-Processor-350-(3M-Cache-1_2-GHz)

It's a dual core 1.2 GHz based Sandy Bridge with hyperthreading.

The Celeron G530 is exactly what I used for my home server. I paired it with a Gigabyte H61 motherboard and 8 GB of DDR3-1333 running Linux. Quiet and energy efficient yet modern and far more powerful than an Atom D510.

 

[Binky]

My older Acer H340 WHS box runs a 1.6ghz Atom chip. I never felt it was too slow when it was doing its job as a headless server, doing backups and serving files. Things like installation and any remote access feel a little slow.

It's more of a personal choice. It should work perfectly fine, but there are obviously CPU's out there that are a LOT faster. The Atom cam easily be run fanless in the right setup and it will happily chug along every day idling at 60C or higher, and spiking to 70C, with no heat issues.