Lowest power commodity computer

[Bozz]

I have a remote site that is powered by hydroelectricity for a project that requires a few specific details -

The computer needs to consume as little electricity as possible.
Video performance is irrelevant. Onboard is preferable or no video is fine too
Must have two PCI slots for the data logging cards
Must have cheap commodity parts - if the computer gets stolen, we dont want to be buying expensive 12v DC power supplies or expensive notebook motherboards
Must have a solid state HD due to conditions - 4Gb is plenty. Will be using a handful of 4Gb USB thumb drives to archive compressed data, these will be swapped weekly.
2Gb RAM
Preferably a dual core CPU so it doesn't stutter while compressing the dataset and recording new data.

I need the most efficient, best bang for the buck that can be had at the present time. I'm in Australia so local suppliers are preferable if anyone has the knowledge. I need the computer some time in the next week or two.

Thoughts?

 

[Bozz]

A few other points I forgot to mention

There will be regular power outages, it needs to have the ability to turn itself back on without user intervention. Most boards have the option in BIOS however this is a deal-breaker, if it doesn't support AC-back functionality then it's not suitable.

A few watts up or down isn't an issue. 20w up or down is.

We're hoping for 60-70 watts at idle for the complete system. Any better and we'd be stoked.

Thanks

 

[Shortass]

Are these operations taking place in outer space? Inside a waterfall? Inside the earth's core? I don't really have any advice at this time, I'm just intrigued as to the scenario.

 

[Bozz]

heh, I wish it were something that cool

Its for a volunteer organisation. I've never been asked to do something like this before so I dont really know what I need. Doesn't seem like many others do either

 

[jaqie]

I doubt you will need a dual core for this, and this is especially ill-suited to a dual core system as the system must be low power.
What kind of data collection will need 2GB of ram!? Seriously, dataloggers even of large volumes of data can easily run off of 64MB of ram if you use a small efficient linux distribution. You need to seriously check over your actual hardware requirements of this project before going any further, in what will truly be needed.
Compressing data with a dual core processor to be saved to a solid state drive!? do you have any idea how slow most solid state drives are!?

Something is seriously wrong with your supposed hardware requirements here. The actual requiremenets need a serious going-over by someone who knows what is actually needed.

 

[Bozz]

Originally posted by: jaqie
I doubt you will need a dual core for this, and this is especially ill-suited to a dual core system as the system must be low power.
What kind of data collection will need 2GB of ram!? Seriously, dataloggers even of large volumes of data can easily run off of 64MB of ram if you use a small efficient linux distribution. You need to seriously check over your actual hardware requirements of this project before going any further, in what will truly be needed.
Compressing data with a dual core processor to be saved to a solid state drive!? do you have any idea how slow most solid state drives are!?

Something is seriously wrong with your supposed hardware requirements here. The actual requiremenets need a serious going-over by someone who knows what is actually needed.

I'm told these PCI cards only have Windows 2000 or XP drivers- so 512Mb is minimum. Solid state drives being slow? Last I checked the bigger ones were reasonably fast, not the same performance as maximum sequential write speed of most 7200RPM drives however close to. They benefit from not drawing much power at all. A notebook drive is quite probably more suitable due to price.

I sincerely thank you for offering to come onsite, free of charge and give it all a serious going-over. See, that's what I'm doing. I'm the only one in the crew with any knowledge of IT and need additional help with a topic I have never had direct experience with (low power inexpensive computing). Yes, dual core may be over the top. Yes I can schedule the compression with low priority. If idle power of dual core is only a few watts more, its worth it. If these people needed help with systems administration, virtualisation, deployment, networking security or any other subjects I am familiar with, I certainly wouldn't need to ask.

Thank you for your quality input.

Can anybody else please help with hardware that may be suitable?

 

[jaqie]

As for the RAM requirements, 2000 works quite well for basic tasks with 128MB ram, I have no idea where you got the insane 512MB requirement from. 256MB would be plenty if going with 2k, even if the data collection program is insanely ram-intensive, which chances are, it is not.

The laptop drive idea is an incredibly good one, especially with how cheap decent PATA and SATA laptop drives are nowadays, give it very serious consideration.

As for system requirements, if I was you I would seriously look into a low power celeron based system, and only if the celeron is not potent enough then going to a c2d mobile cpu. a micro ATX board with integrated video would be perfect as well.

As for power, you should seriously look into a used UPS for it from www.refurbups.com, which will allow it to power down (and back up) automatically with the available power.

 

[jaqie]

Also, a via C7 based system (or similar mini- ITX board) would be great for this, the only quit pro quo is that you would have to get a dual PCI riser board to support two pci slots, and then get a case that handles the riser. travla.com sells some great cases for mini itx boards that include a 2 slot riser.

 

[Bozz]

The site has a 600w inverter, connected to a large lead acid battery bank which retains (from memory - only been there once) about 200 amp-hours of reserve.

The datalogging software is not the best I've seen. It writes about a meg per minute of raw data. It's currently in an old P3 system - it writes very large files full of redundant data. A gig of this data compresses to about 10-20mb - again from memory. The intended method was to use a scheduled task every couple of hours to zip it up and archive it on the memory stick. I'd use something like 7-zip because its freeware, it is scriptable via CLI, using it on the fastest LZMA compression (mx=1) resulted in the compression ratio above. My thoughts are the power cost vs the additional time spent compressing for a few Mb saving are not justified using a higher compression. The USB memory stick gets exchanged weekly.

I'm going to know more soon, I'm going there tomorrow and will play around some more.

 

[Bozz]

Oh, the 2Gb idea came from the intention to use a RAM drive to save data to, thereby reducing physical drive access. When a stick of DDR2 2Gb is dirt cheap and the power penalty is perhaps 1 watt, I thought that would be more justified.

I'm completely open to ideas, that's why I'm asking.

 

[jaqie]

If the data is important and the power unreliable, saving to a ram drive even temporarily is a very, very, very bad idea.
It is beginning to sound like an old used laptop would be absolutely perfect for this, even one with a bad battery. Something like, say, this configured so it will run with the lid closed, and set to auto spin down the drive, would be perfect for this situation in so many ways, except you need two pci cards. Honestly, a few MB a minute won't even make a C7 break a sweat, even recompressing it. those c7s are potent little things for the little power they pull. And you can get a low RPM notebook drive to run it with, those take less power then the faster ones and at a MB/minute times two (writing, re-reading, then writing a very small file once compressed) is *NOTHING* to those drives.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: jaqie
If the data is important and the power unreliable, saving to a ram drive even temporarily is a very, very, very bad idea.
It is beginning to sound like an old used laptop would be absolutely perfect for this, even one with a bad battery. Something like, say, this configured so it will run with the lid closed, and set to auto spin down the drive, would be perfect for this situation in so many ways, except you need two pci cards. Honestly, a few MB a minute won't even make a C7 break a sweat, even recompressing it. those c7s are potent little things for the little power they pull. And you can get a low RPM notebook drive to run it with, those take less power then the faster ones and at a MB/minute times two (writing, re-reading, then writing a very small file once compressed) is *NOTHING* to those drives.

Along those lines... I was thinking of the Asus Eee PC. No HD, but thumb drives are cheap enough. They're $300 in the USA for the 2G Surf, I'm not sure what it would cost in AU.

 

[jaqie]

The device has to have two PCI slots, lxskllr, or that would be good.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: jaqie
The device has to have two PCI slots, lxskllr, or that would be good.

Yea, I saw that requirement... I was just adding to your post in case the pci card need could be worked around. It would be interesting to know exactly what those cards are. There may be some other inexpensive solution.

 

[jaqie]

I doubt it. I have seen such, and unless you know how to program an adurino decimilla or the like board yourself to get around the hardware (which in itself will take a lot of time, and time is money for people in the know) it just isn't happening.

 

[Bozz]

Good stuff - i'll investigate the C7's. I've heard of them in the past however I recall the first gen (733 & 800MHz???) were slower than a cel300 (the non-"a" model, without any L2 cache) in many tasks. I'm hoping they've improved since, and retain the ultra low power consumption.

Will report thoughts,

Cheers

 

[Bozz]

The oldschool notebook probably isn't a good idea, even if we didn't need the PCI cards - I dont know of any notebooks that have AC-back functionality.

Cheers

 

[Peter]

Sounds like you might like the VIA PC2500 mainboard, to build your own box around it:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initi...00_mainboard/index.jsp

Or that fellow here (replace HDD with solid-state disk):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16883118005

 

[jaqie]

I actually prefer the jetway via mobos, more/better parts onboard for a lower price.

 

[CSMR]

Maybe too late but:
Should work out how much CPU power you need. Would the D201GLY2 be good? Would be about 30W max for complete system at the wall with an efficient PSU.
But your power requirements are very easy even for a normal system especially with a ssd. An AMD system with intergrated graphics and low power dual core processor should be sub 50W, maybe around 40W.

 

[Zepper]

I don't see more than one PCI slot on the Jetway mini ITX mobos...

.bh.

 

[Modelworks]

Shame it has the pci slot requirements.
Datalogging is an area that embedded micros do extremely well.
A AVR or ARM based board could do everything you want, except implement the pci card interface.

 

[jaqie]

Originally posted by: Zepper
I don't see more than one PCI slot on the Jetway mini ITX mobos...

If you had read my earlier statements, you would see I have been speaking of using a mini ITX mobo in conjunction with a dual PCI backplane board and a case that supports them.