I'm looking to build the lowest-power possible fileserver to keep always-on and serve files to my LAN, do multifunction internet things like download slow torrents for months on end, and also act as a PVR if possible, so onboard TVout and MPEG2 acceleration would be a plus.
I was looking at some prebuilt Intel XScale-based NAS enclosures like Infrant's ReadyNAS NV but I decided against them as they only offer some basic FTP function with the networked storage. If the price is a thousand dollars for a NAS-only box I may as well build a SFF box that can do more things than just networked storage.
Due to their ultra low power consumption(19W max on EK series) and built in MPEG2 decoding acceleration, I'm looking at the newer VIA Mini-ITX boards- EPIA-EN15000G: 1.5GHz C7, 1xDDR2-533, GbitE, HDTV TVout or EPIA-EK10000G: 1GHz 'Luke CoreFusion', 1xDDR1-400 with a PCI riser and additional cards. The main problem I see with these VIA boards is that they have no onboard RAID and they only offer one PCI slot, not PCI-X or PCI-E. For a multiport RAID5 card I think the standard PCI bus on these EPIAs will be a major I/O bottleneck.
I plan to run 4 to 8 7200RPM drives on a RAID card. As I understand it, 7200RPM drives can't physically spin fast enough to even saturate PATA-133 let alone SATA-150 or SATAII-300. I've seen benchmarks for 7200RPM drives hover around 70MB/s max burst rate down to 30MB/s, so lets say an avg of 50MB/s per accessing drive. 2 or 3 7200RPM drives transferring at once will probably not bottleneck the standard PCI bus. 5 or 6 7200RPM drives transferring at once will definitely bottleneck the PCI bus. VIA's page is also unclear what revision of PCI they are using for their 1 PCI slot.
I noticed there is a newly announced Mini-ITX board with a PCI-E x16 slot, not for purchase yet. Runs Pentium M 760 2.0GHz(27W) or Celeron M 370 1.5GHz(?W), 2xDDR2-533 DIMM/2GB max, 2xGbitE on the PCI-E bus, but it has very basic features on its Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics. The ability to use a PCI-E RAID card solves any I/O bottlenecks for sure, but that option kills the ability for a PCI-E video card with adequate PVR features -since the integrated Intel graphics are lacking. I suppose the functions of a RAID fileserver and a PVR shouldn't be mixed, but it would be nice to do both in the same box.
I was wondering if anyone recommends a Pentium M based SFF board that has either onboard RAID or PCI-X/PCI-E for a RAID card, onboard GbitE would be nice. PVR VI/VO stuff like onboard hardware MPEG2 encoding(heh), MPEG2 accelerated decoding, HDTV TVout would be a plus. I'm also curious about the power consumption of the Pentium M versus the VIA C7 or the 19W 'Luke CoreFusion' in the new EPIAs.
I was looking at some prebuilt Intel XScale-based NAS enclosures like Infrant's ReadyNAS NV but I decided against them as they only offer some basic FTP function with the networked storage. If the price is a thousand dollars for a NAS-only box I may as well build a SFF box that can do more things than just networked storage.
Due to their ultra low power consumption(19W max on EK series) and built in MPEG2 decoding acceleration, I'm looking at the newer VIA Mini-ITX boards- EPIA-EN15000G: 1.5GHz C7, 1xDDR2-533, GbitE, HDTV TVout or EPIA-EK10000G: 1GHz 'Luke CoreFusion', 1xDDR1-400 with a PCI riser and additional cards. The main problem I see with these VIA boards is that they have no onboard RAID and they only offer one PCI slot, not PCI-X or PCI-E. For a multiport RAID5 card I think the standard PCI bus on these EPIAs will be a major I/O bottleneck.
I plan to run 4 to 8 7200RPM drives on a RAID card. As I understand it, 7200RPM drives can't physically spin fast enough to even saturate PATA-133 let alone SATA-150 or SATAII-300. I've seen benchmarks for 7200RPM drives hover around 70MB/s max burst rate down to 30MB/s, so lets say an avg of 50MB/s per accessing drive. 2 or 3 7200RPM drives transferring at once will probably not bottleneck the standard PCI bus. 5 or 6 7200RPM drives transferring at once will definitely bottleneck the PCI bus. VIA's page is also unclear what revision of PCI they are using for their 1 PCI slot.
I noticed there is a newly announced Mini-ITX board with a PCI-E x16 slot, not for purchase yet. Runs Pentium M 760 2.0GHz(27W) or Celeron M 370 1.5GHz(?W), 2xDDR2-533 DIMM/2GB max, 2xGbitE on the PCI-E bus, but it has very basic features on its Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics. The ability to use a PCI-E RAID card solves any I/O bottlenecks for sure, but that option kills the ability for a PCI-E video card with adequate PVR features -since the integrated Intel graphics are lacking. I suppose the functions of a RAID fileserver and a PVR shouldn't be mixed, but it would be nice to do both in the same box.
I was wondering if anyone recommends a Pentium M based SFF board that has either onboard RAID or PCI-X/PCI-E for a RAID card, onboard GbitE would be nice. PVR VI/VO stuff like onboard hardware MPEG2 encoding(heh), MPEG2 accelerated decoding, HDTV TVout would be a plus. I'm also curious about the power consumption of the Pentium M versus the VIA C7 or the 19W 'Luke CoreFusion' in the new EPIAs.