What CPU for low power NAS

[AtenRa]

Interesting, lets see

 

[Mech0z]

Don't forget to get a 80 plus platinum power supply, believe me it makes a world difference!

Those are major expensive, and if I got a Kabini or Bay trail I would only need like 100W, and getting one of those with plus platinum seems impossible?!

 

[ShintaiDK]

Just be careful. You might sit with a system where it doesnt matter if the components draw 10W or 20W because the efficiency factor of the PSU is too low at those draws. So AC wise you end up using the same.

Plenty of those examples.

And you need to study PSU reviews to see what PSU does it. The 80+ marking is only for 20, 50 and 80% if I recall right.

 

[Mech0z]

Just be careful. You might sit with a system where it doesnt matter if the components draw 10W or 20W because the efficiency factor of the PSU is too low at those draws. So AC wise you end up using the same.

Plenty of those examples.

And you need to study PSU reviews to see what PSU does it. The 80+ marking is only for 20, 50 and 80% if I recall right.

Yes and if I get a Silverstone 450W SFX gold its still way to powerful for a Jaguar or Bay trail cpu, might to see if I can find a case with a build in one with 120-150W, but probobly hard to find one with spot for 4-5 3.5" disks

 

[Mech0z]

Interesting, lets see

What PSU are you using for your system?

 

[AtenRa]

What PSU are you using for your system?

For the A4-4000 ??? 120W from the Mini-iTX slim case.

 

[Mech0z]

For the A4-4000 ??? 120W from the Mini-iTX slim case.

Ok cool, think this one seems cool http://www.chieftec.eu/images/stories/produkte/psu/smart_series/psf/PSF-180MP_PSU-DATASHEET-EN.pdf

 

[NTMBK]

Unless ur talking about the HP's Micro servers
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=5336619#!tab=features

I wanted to get my hands on one of those guys...

Those guys are pretty sweet- one of the guys at my work bought one, I got to see it when it got delivered to the office. Compact little box, packs a hell of a lot of storage. Shame that the processor is getting pretty old, as is the motherboard chipset it's attached to- I'd like to see them make a revamped version with a Temash SoC, and a RAID chip on the mobo connected by PCIe lanes.

 

[Broheim]

Those guys are pretty sweet- one of the guys at my work bought one, I got to see it when it got delivered to the office. Compact little box, packs a hell of a lot of storage. Shame that the processor is getting pretty old, as is the motherboard chipset it's attached to- I'd like to see them make a revamped version with a Temash SoC, and a RAID chip on the mobo connected by PCIe lanes.

the new Gen8 microserver has an ivy bridge dualcore and an even smaller formfactor (you loose the 5.25" drive bay).

the old version is still sold and is pretty solid for a nas or fileserver.

 

[Mech0z]

Any Kabini motherboards on the way, and do anyone know what the limit for SATA ports on such a motherboard (Not sure what chipset it uses)

 

[monstercameron]

beat this! http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/C60M1I/#specifications

9W tdp, ~20W platform before drives
6x sata 6Gb/s
4x pcie lanes
12x usb 2
1x 1Gb lan

also http://www.amazon.com/192w-AC-DC-Power-Adapter-12v/dp/B00905I1TI/ref=pd_sim_pc_1
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page3.html

this psu has great efficiency in lower wattage range

 

[pablo87]

I think you should be evaluating the Hard drive power consumption first (by disconnecting one of the drives in the array and measuring the drop in power). 8 x 7200rpm in full read/write mode should consume a ton of power, not to mention the raid controller and the inefficiency inherent in the power supply. Consolidating is the way to go, using bigger drives (Toshiba has now re-entered the 3.5" SATA biz with 4TB models) also saves power and may allow you to expand later. Even lower RPM drives that consume less power should be considered.

Once you know how much power each drive consumes, you can figure out how much the base mb/cpu consumes (you could also unplug the controller and plug a bootable SSD on the mb but that's very risky and not recommended). I suspect its much less than the hard drives and raid controller in your setup.

You also need to consider that monies saved on the new mb/cpu combination and perhaps retaining the enclosure, the power supply and the memory can be used to buy bigger, more energy efficient drives.

Last opinion: for mb Raid, go with Intel for the support and drivers. You have obviously been satisfied with your current RAID controller save for the power consumption issue you're having, do not assume that all RAID controllers are reliable and well supported. Do your homework.

 

[KingFatty]

Just for ballpark ideas, what do NAS setups typically consume in power? I mean the OP talked about 100 watts for a full blown computer, but how do the little NAS systems compare to that. Maybe like a 2-bay synology or whatever?

But if you are going to get a 2-bay NAS, Could someone conceivably run a laptop as a dual-drive NAS instead? I mean you'd already have the hard drive bay so put your first drive there, and then get one of those hard drive enclosures that is meant to replace the optical drive, so it's like your 2nd hard drive instead of the DVD drive? Hmm maybe I need to try this myself, but I have no idea what my laptop consumes, time to find that kill-a-watt meter I have in a drawer somewhere...

 

[bullzz]

baytrail nuc can be an option
http://liliputing.com/2013/09/139-intel-nuc-bay-trail-chip-way.html

 

[Fjodor2001]

If it's mostly power consumption you're worried about, I don't think that will be a problem even if you'd choose e.g. a 4770K. Because it's mostly going to be in idle mode where the power consumption will be very low anyway. So it should not matter that it has 84W TDP. Its contribution to the total system power consumption at idle should not be much anyway I think.

 

[monstercameron]

If it's mostly power consumption you're worried about, I don't think that will be a problem even if you'd choose e.g. a 4770K. Because it's mostly going to be in idle mode where the power consumption will be very low anyway. So it should not matter that it has 84W TDP. Its contribution to the total system power consumption at idle should not be much anyway I think.

I think he mentioned price limitations too.

 

[Mech0z]

beat this! http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/C60M1I/#specifications

9W tdp, ~20W platform before drives
6x sata 6Gb/s
4x pcie lanes
12x usb 2
1x 1Gb lan

also http://www.amazon.com/192w-AC-DC-Pow...ef=pd_sim_pc_1
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page3.html

this psu has great efficiency in lower wattage range

I have thought about this one, but the performance is pretty bad, and now that we have the new Jaguar cores they should perform better and maybe have better tpd. Also no stores in denmark have it in stock (Hopefully a sign of new models coming) and performance is not strictly needed, but makes it capeable of running a small webserver and the likes.

 

[monstercameron]

I have thought about this one, but the performance is pretty bad, and now that we have the new Jaguar cores they should perform better and maybe have better tpd. Also no stores in denmark have it in stock (Hopefully a sign of new models coming) and performance is not strictly needed, but makes it capeable of running a small webserver and the likes.

so close

 

[crashtech]

Just for ballpark ideas, what do NAS setups typically consume in power? I mean the OP talked about 100 watts for a full blown computer, but how do the little NAS systems compare to that. Maybe like a 2-bay synology or whatever?

But if you are going to get a 2-bay NAS, Could someone conceivably run a laptop as a dual-drive NAS instead? I mean you'd already have the hard drive bay so put your first drive there, and then get one of those hard drive enclosures that is meant to replace the optical drive, so it's like your 2nd hard drive instead of the DVD drive? Hmm maybe I need to try this myself, but I have no idea what my laptop consumes, time to find that kill-a-watt meter I have in a drawer somewhere...

Porta-NAS... I kinda dig the idea. It is easy to get 4TB into a normal laptop (albeit a bit spendy), and run FreeNAS off of a stick... Hmm...

 

[KingFatty]

Uh, yeah, so I'm typing this on my laptop and it's at 14 to 20 watts according to the kill-a-watt. I think that's while spinning the single hard drive. So I think I'm just going to add a 2nd hard drive and use my laptop as a file server, just leave it on all the time.

 

[Concillian]

But they have 1-2 SATA ports, then I need a 4+ port SATA card for PCI-e that also use power and are often pretty expensive (At least here in Denmark) If there will be "deluxe" boards then it is proberly the best solution

And very likely Bay Trail will have the same issue.

These low power platforms are low power, but they cost so much that it doesn't make sense to save the power. a $90+ Atom? F that.

Unless you absolutely NEED the extreme low power draw, it's going to make sense to use Richland or a Celeron in terms of overall cost.

 

[Mech0z]

so close

Huh?

And very likely Bay Trail will have the same issue.

These low power platforms are low power, but they cost so much that it doesn't make sense to save the power. a $90+ Atom? F that.

Unless you absolutely NEED the extreme low power draw, it's going to make sense to use Richland or a Celeron in terms of overall cost.

Right now my server consumes 100-110w in idle, but thats while I live a place where power is included in the bill, when I move I will pay around 0.40$ (2.5danish krone) per mega watt.

I want the system thats is the cheapest over a 3 year period.

And drives wont be spinning all the time due to me not using "real" raid http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/ as the data is no super crucial, so if it crashes then it dosnt matter that the snapshot I have is 1 day old

Here is what I have considered buying which is available now
http://www.gratisimage.dk/graphic/images/2013/September/16/C328_5236B076.jpg

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Right now my server consumes 100-110w in idle, but thats while I live a place where power is included in the bill, when I move I will pay around 0.40$ (2.5danish krone) per mega watt.

I know how you feel, being Danish too... :whiste:

What kind of PSU are you running? There might be more to save from getting a gold/platinum rated unit instead of what you're using now. 100W on an X4 620 sounds like a lot to me, even accounting for the HDDs. Most AM3(+) systems I have seen idle at ~50-60W. With a GFX card that most likely uses as much, if not more, power then 8 HDDs.

I want the system thats is the cheapest over a 3 year period.

If you're building from scratch I'd suggest an ITX board and a Celeron/Pentium. There are a couple of ITX boards on the market with 6 SATA ports. You can always add a cheap controller if you need more (which you do, if your sig is accurate).

 

[Concillian]

Huh?




Right now my server consumes 100-110w in idle, but thats while I live a place where power is included in the bill, when I move I will pay around 0.40$ (2.5danish krone) per mega watt.

I want the system thats is the cheapest over a 3 year period.

And drives wont be spinning all the time due to me not using "real" raid http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/ as the data is no super crucial, so if it crashes then it dosnt matter that the snapshot I have is 1 day old

Here is what I have considered buying which is available now
http://www.gratisimage.dk/graphic/images/2013/September/16/C328_5236B076.jpg

1) I highly doubt the Bay Trail will be the cost effective platform. They're pricing way too high compared with Richland and Core based Celerons for power consumption to make up for the up front cost. We'll see when they show up what the full platform cost is, but even when I bought my E350 a couple years ago it was close to a push with regular desktop CPUs (with desktop CPUs that consumed quite a bit more power than they do now.) My E350 consumes about 35w at idle with two HDDs, but one is spun down most of the time.

2) RAID is a bad idea for home servers IMO... unless you need capacity higher than one drive can deliver. Too much stuff can be accidentally deleted, and on a RAID it's gone in that case. I strongly prefer a time delay between backups. I use 1 main drive, then imaged that drive to 2 others. One spins up and incrementally backs up nightly, then spins down again. The other is taken to work and brought home once a month or two to backup via USB. I just have home movies / family photos and some personal documents like taxes and such on my server, so it fits on drives that aren't very large.

 

[crashtech]

When paying such high rates for electricity (I assume Mech0z means $0.40/KW/h) the power portion of the TCO rises dramatically.

It's more accurate to say RAID0 is a bad idea. RAID1 is much safer, for instance, though perhaps wasteful of HDD space.