Lowest power chipset/cpu combo for WHS?

[nerp]

I'll keep it short. What's the lowest power consumption configuration with stability for WHS that I can build? Dual core atom? I need a decent number of SATA ports, would prefer integrated graphics and something that won't screw up if suspended/hibernated. I plan on using Lights Out and my nforce4 dual core opteron has been great for WHS but I want to use less electricity and it will hang coming out of resume 3 out of 5 tries. I can't tolerate the hanging and the platform is old. Time to move on.

Dual core celeron? low power AMD? Atom? System will have 2GB ram and about 5TB of storage in 6 sata drives. I could use more SATA ports.

Thanks alll.

 

[RebateMonger]

Most commercial WHS servers use Atoms. The early ones used older Celerons. All handle the "standard" uses of WHS (backups and file serving) just fine.

The "problem" with Atoms is that the motherboards come with limited SATA ports. You will need to put a SATA disk controller in the (usually) one available expansion slot if you need more than a couple of SATA ports.

I'd probably get a board with the SATA ports I needed and put a $50 Celeron 3200 or 3300 in it. Those are pretty fast, very low power and have VT extensions in case you ever need virtualization for anything.

 

[mfenn]

The Atom is going to be the lowest power that you can get. This motherboard has 4 SATA ports and you could get a PCI SATA controller (like this) to add a few more. Of course, when using a PCI card, your disks will be limited to SATA 1.5 Gb/s speeds because the max throughput of the PCI bus is only 133MB/s.

A better option might be to do as RebateMonger suggested and get the lowest TDP chip available on Newegg (the Celeron 430 as I write this). That will allow you to pick up a normal uATX mobo with 6+ SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports such as the ASRock G43Twins-FullHD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I third the idea of getting a standard microATX board with 6+ SATA ports, and a low-power desktop CPU like a Celeron 3300.

 

[nerp]

Thanks for the input, guys.

Is there anywhere I can get power ratings for atom vs. celeron 3300 etc? Like, actual wattage of basic systems.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks for the input, guys.

Is there anywhere I can get power ratings for atom vs. celeron 3300 etc? Like, actual wattage of basic systems.

I can tell you that my Atom D510 with a 2GB(?) of DDR2 and a CF card as it's disk draws about 30W from the wall. It's using some random ass SFX PSU that came with the mini-ITX case, so I'm sure most of that power draw is from PSU inefficiency.

 

[JackMDS]

I run E3200 on Gigabyte G31M-ES2L + 4 GB DDR2, using the onboard video

Regular ATX PSU + one HD + DVD RW + 2 Network Cards, idles at 60 Watts (Kill-a-Watt on the outlet).

Extra Busy HD and CPU takes it up to 80 Watts.

 

[Claudius-07]

If you have to upgrade... and are willing to buy a ready-made package, the Acer Easystore H340 is pretty hard to beat. Has 2 GB or RAM, Atom processor, and comes with one 1TB drive installed. It goes and comes out of suspend like silk... uses so little power and is DEAD quiet. I mean if you are going to buy a new mobo and new CPU etc and or if you need to also purchase a license of WHS, this is really hard to beat. If you just need a CPU and want to use all your stuff.. the nevermind.

 

[Muse]

I can tell you that my Atom D510 with a 2GB(?) of DDR2 and a CF card as it's disk draws about 30W from the wall. It's using some random ass SFX PSU that came with the mini-ITX case, so I'm sure most of that power draw is from PSU inefficiency.

In my interminable research in going to a WHS box I'm finding that the case/PSU is the toughest nut to crack. I've posted but no dice. I'm occasionally reading the reviews at Newegg for the D510 mobos, and there's some info in those. I've been reading them since there were only 2 reviews. I'm a little less busy now, so maybe I'll actually make some decisions, either buying components or a put-together system. That gigabyte D510 linked above with it's 4 SATA connections looks interesting, although I don't anticipate needing more than 2 right now. I too am very concerned with power draw and would like to use Lights Out if it works nicely.

I can tell you that my Atom D510 with a 2GB(?) of DDR2 and a CF card as it's disk draws about 30W from the wall. It's using some random ass SFX PSU that came with the mini-ITX case, so I'm sure most of that power draw is from PSU inefficiency.

What is the point of running a CF card in those? Why exactly do people do that?

 

[pukemon]

What is the point of running a CF card in those? Why exactly do people do that?

I think in the at least in the MSI Wind PC's case, it's so that you can load an embedded OS like m0n0wall or FreeNAS that primarily operates in read-only mode after you've configured it. And it frees up the SATA ports to be used for data-only drives.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

This is what I just bought:

1 x ($119.99) CPU INTEL|CORE I3 530 2.93G 4M R - Retail
$119.99



1 x ($99.99) MS WIN HOME SERVER POWER PACK 1 % - OEM
$99.99



1 x ($119.99) MB GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3 LGA1156 R - Retail
$119.99



2 x ($29.99) MEM 1G|KST KVR1333D3N9/1G R - Retail
$59.98


It's not as lower power, but it has TONS of extra processing power for any future upgrade/expansion/features/video.

 

[mfenn]

I think in the at least in the MSI Wind PC's case, it's so that you can load an embedded OS like m0n0wall or FreeNAS that primarily operates in read-only mode after you've configured it. And it frees up the SATA ports to be used for data-only drives.

Yeah basically. My Atom box is a pfSense router, and there is really no need to have a spinning disk in there.

 

[vhongandglad]

absolutely this time atom has the lowest power consumption. over the other build on CPU.

 

[Muse]

Yeah basically. My Atom box is a pfSense router, and there is really no need to have a spinning disk in there.

So, is the idea that the OS is on a solid state device and this minimizes disk usage and power usage? The disks in the box then are spun down when there's no network access?

I think in the at least in the MSI Wind PC's case, it's so that you can load an embedded OS like m0n0wall or FreeNAS that primarily operates in read-only mode after you've configured it. And it frees up the SATA ports to be used for data-only drives.

Would this also be the case with WHS?

 

[mfenn]

So, is the idea that the OS is on a solid state device and this minimizes disk usage and power usage? The disks in the box then are spun down when there's no network access?

Well, in my case, I'm using it as a router, so there are no other disks. In a NAS box, it's nice to have the OS installed on a separate disk than the data, but it seems like kind of a waste to put a full disk in when you only need a could hundred megs!

Would this also be the case with WHS?

Perhaps, I've never tried it. I do know that Windows refuses to install to any media that it detects are removable, not to mention that it is not optimized for such a use case anyway. You would probably burn out the CF card with writes to log files and the page file.

 

[heyheybooboo]

The Egg has a combo with the Zotac GeForce 8200-ITX WiFi and a Sempy 140.

Sleeps at 3w, idles at 30w with a x2 4850e so I guess the Sempy 140 would be similar, or maybe even less. The latest BIOS supports 'new Sempron' --- hopefully it would boot and allow you to update (if that is a problem for you).

And I don't think the GF 8200 can 'unlock' the Sempy.




--

 

[nerp]

So I ended up ordering that Gigabyte board with the Atom 510 on it. Got 2GB of memory and the sweetest ITX case I could find: Lian Li PC-Q08b.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811112265

The ability to fit a standard PSU and *6* internal drives makes this a killer case for WHS. I have a spare Antec Earthwatts 380 for it and 5 HDs so everything should fit nicely.

Now I have to install WHS fresh on the new server, uninstall the client software on every computer and arrange for a large transfer of stuff across the network from the old WHS box to the new. I bought a new 1TB drive for the new box so I'll just install WHS and start moving data from the old drives one drive at a time, expanding as I go. Should occupy a little bit of my weekend.

I'll order a PCI sata card in a few weeks to connect the drive left dangling after the upgrade. I'm currently at 4 drives. Buying the new one makes 5 and the gigabyte board only has 4 SATA slots. No biggie since the drive that will be unused for a bit is only 500gb.

Thanks for the suggestions from everyone in this thread.