Low voltage/power processor worth it for NAS?

[Phantomaniac]

I'm going to be building a NAS soon, and I decided that I need a bit more power than an Intel Atom or AMD Zacate can offer since I want to run PS3 media server to transcode HD video on the fly to my PS3. At first I was looking at 35W low voltage CPUs since I want to keep my power costs low. Later it dawned on me that I'm only going to be transcoding for a few hours per day, the rest of the day the NAS is powered on the CPU will probably be idle. So my question is, do these low voltage CPUs have even lower idle power states? Is there any way I can find out and compare idle power usage? In particular I was looking at the Pentium G630T, and was wondering if its idle usage would be lower than a G630.

 

[anikhtos]

I'm going to be building a NAS soon, and I decided that I need a bit more power than an Intel Atom or AMD Zacate can offer since I want to run PS3 media server to transcode HD video on the fly to my PS3. At first I was looking at 35W low voltage CPUs since I want to keep my power costs low. Later it dawned on me that I'm only going to be transcoding for a few hours per day, the rest of the day the NAS is powered on the CPU will probably be idle. So my question is, do these low voltage CPUs have even lower idle power states? Is there any way I can find out and compare idle power usage? In particular I was looking at the Pentium G630T, and was wondering if its idle usage would be lower than a G630.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2100t.html
look these review
i3-2100t has 4 times the cpu power only for 2 more times the power
at idle and low cpu it has the same power loads as the atom
soooooo if you want that extra kick look for the i3-2100t

well if that not covers you there is
e3-1260l with 45watt 4 cores/8 threads and you will have ecc
it is not cheap but it is around i5-2400 perfomance

but if you could wait wait for ivy bridge
then you can get the sandy cheapers or get an ivy
ivy low power will be somethign 100mz more than the previous sandy

the cheapest from atom will be i3-2100t

 

[dtgoodwin]

I'm going to be building a NAS soon, and I decided that I need a bit more power than an Intel Atom or AMD Zacate can offer since I want to run PS3 media server to transcode HD video on the fly to my PS3. At first I was looking at 35W low voltage CPUs since I want to keep my power costs low. Later it dawned on me that I'm only going to be transcoding for a few hours per day, the rest of the day the NAS is powered on the CPU will probably be idle. So my question is, do these low voltage CPUs have even lower idle power states? Is there any way I can find out and compare idle power usage? In particular I was looking at the Pentium G630T, and was wondering if its idle usage would be lower than a G630.

Sounds like you may already be looking at the 2100t. I made the decision to purchase this for my Windows Home Server. It is overkill performance-wise as I do not do any transcoding. To answer your question about idle power draw, every review I saw after I purchased it, showed that the idle draw is the same, and even loaded power draw isn't much more for the standard 2100. It isn't even close to a 65-watt processor. In fact, the 2100t is slightly less efficient in performance/watt than the standard 2100. Save your money and buy what you want performance-wise. Almost all of the Sandy Bridge processors draw the same idle power (within the same core count, anyway).

 

[Phantomaniac]

Sounds like you may already be looking at the 2100t. I made the decision to purchase this for my Windows Home Server. It is overkill performance-wise as I do not do any transcoding. To answer your question about idle power draw, every review I saw after I purchased it, showed that the idle draw is the same, and even loaded power draw isn't much more for the standard 2100. It isn't even close to a 65-watt processor. In fact, the 2100t is slightly less efficient in performance/watt than the standard 2100. Save your money and buy what you want performance-wise. Almost all of the Sandy Bridge processors draw the same idle power (within the same core count, anyway).

Thank you, that is exactly what I needed to know! If the idle power consumption is going to be similar, I am going to go for a 65W processor that will have a higher clock speed when I need to transcode.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Get a good low power Power Supply(the wattage values have to be lower, not just efficient), and read reviews for low power motherboards. Low voltage DDR3 like 1.35V will help as well.

 

[anikhtos]

Get a good low power Power Supply(the wattage values have to be lower, not just efficient), and read reviews for low power motherboards. Low voltage DDR3 like 1.35V will help as well.

http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT
http://www.mini-box.com/M4-ATX?sc=8&category=981
if you are going in small watt envelope consider those
they are rather expensive but it is the most efficient you can find
for the watt you are targeting

 

[blckgrffn]

I used a G620 for my WHS, works great, sips the power...

Consider the 300W Seasonic Bronze PSUs. For a NAS application, they are a really good fit IMHO.

I ended up recycling a 80+ Earthwatts 380 in mine, but if I ever have issues with it I won't hesitate on the Seasonic. I have one that is ~7 years old powering my ESXi box without any issues at all...

 

[sm625]

A G530 would be fine. The power supply is where you're going to get the most savings. But I wouldnt spend $30 on a more efficient supply just to save 10 watts. Remember it only costs about a penny extra per day for every 5 additional average watts you are pulling.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The question is how do you hook up 10 hard drives to those low wattage power supplies? I have a stupid 750W PSU on mine and its fully modular so I was able to put 10 HDs to it. In retrospect I should've gotten a lower wattage fully modular one and bought the cables... but for other PSUs I do not understand.

For the record I bought the Corsair AX-750. I contacted Seasonic for their modular cables and I bought some extras.

Edit: sorry for derailing.

And for the OP, you can downvolt a CPU pretty easily. There's an article on SPCR about i5-2400S and i3-2100T. The i5-2400 when downvolted can match an i5-2400S pretty well. I used CPU-z and watched my i5-2400 ramp down in idle using just the basic ASRock power saving utility, and idling at 0.888 vcore gives me pretty decent wattages. If anything my case fans are drawing too much power.

 

[Concillian]

The question is how do you hook up 10 hard drives to those low wattage power supplies? I have a stupid 750W PSU on mine and its fully modular so I was able to put 10 HDs to it. In retrospect I should've gotten a lower wattage fully modular one and bought the cables... but for other PSUs I do not understand.

Erm... 2 of these?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=8794&seq=1&format=2

 

[Phantomaniac]

A G530 would be fine. The power supply is where you're going to get the most savings. But I wouldnt spend $30 on a more efficient supply just to save 10 watts. Remember it only costs about a penny extra per day for every 5 additional average watts you are pulling.

You think a G530 could transcode 1080P smoothly? I'm all for getting as cheap a CPU as possible, but that's my minimum requirement.

 

[ethebubbeth]

My NAS is running an AMD E-350 on an ITX board and it handles my needs just fine.

However, I am not doing any video transcoding. It is just a 4 drive FreeNAS RAID-Z box that also runs SSH/SFTP and Transmission for bittorent.

 

[Ken g6]

You think a G530 could transcode 1080P smoothly?

Define "smoothly"? In real-time? An E-350 can produce transcoding results equal to an i7-2600k - it just takes longer.

The x264 2nd-pass results in Bench may be of interest to you if you want real-time transcoding. If you'll be using Quick Sync for faster transcoding, an i3-2105 might interest you.

Edit: I see what you're doing. An nVIDIA GPU could also help a low-end processor with the transcoding.

 

[SickBeast]

OP this is just a question so please don't take offense, but why don't you:

1. Buy a proper media player that does not require transcoding and can play MKV files natively.

2. Get a pre-built NAS (not a computer, but a portable unit)

3. Profit.

This will be way cheaper than building a whole PC, it will also be smaller, more silent, and will consume *way* less power.

 

[BrightCandle]

I've had an atom (525) for a media PC/NAS before. It was painfully slow. It was fine when the video was encoding perfectly for the processors hardware acceleration, but if the encoding was off then it was unusable.

I also upgraded a P4 to an i3 SB for NAS duties as the P4 could only push about 60MB/s across a 1gbit network combined with reading the raid 5 drive array. It used to sit at 100% CPU usage while just transferring files on samba. The i3 maxes out the connection (~100-120MB/s) for about 10% CPU usage.

I would say that a low end SB will more than do both jobs and sip power for all the rest of the time its idle.

 

[Phantomaniac]

OP this is just a question so please don't take offense, but why don't you:

1. Buy a proper media player that does not require transcoding and can play MKV files natively.

2. Get a pre-built NAS (not a computer, but a portable unit)

3. Profit.

This will be way cheaper than building a whole PC, it will also be smaller, more silent, and will consume *way* less power.

I would rather go the media player route, but there are 2 TVs in the house (one PS3, one Xbox 360) and I was trying to take advantage of their built in DLNA capabilities instead of spending $200 on two media players.

I don't really agree with you about the pre-built NAS. My current G620 NAS build costs $260 (without HDDs) and can house 6 HDDs. Show me a 6 bay pre-built NAS for that cheap.

 

[BrightCandle]

I would rather go the media player route, but there are 2 TVs in the house (one PS3, one Xbox 360) and I was trying to take advantage of their built in DLNA capabilities instead of spending $200 on two media players.

I don't really agree with you about the pre-built NAS. My current G620 NAS build costs $260 (without HDDs) and can house 6 HDDs. Show me a 6 bay pre-built NAS for that cheap.

I've used the PS3 and the xbox 360 for this purpose and they are both horrid. They are both quite narrow about the formats they accept, outside of that they don't work at all. If your encoding your own videos then you can spend the time to find the magic settings necessary to maintain the 5.1 sound and decent visuals and still have the PS3 or xbox 360 play it. However if you are downloading or otherwise getting encodings that might differ then getting them to work without transcoding is a royal pain in the backside.

So a dedicated PC that can play basically anything using XBMC is a million times more usable and wont choke on a high bit rate file because the CPU is capable of playing it back as its not 2006 hardware.