What CPU for low power NAS

[Mech0z]

I currently have a AMD X4 640 and 5 x 1 TB in Raid 5 and 3 x 3TB in RAID 5, but this setup uses 100-110W which is way too much

Also due to the raid card I use the drives cant sleep, so 8 drives consumes a lot of power all the time

So within the next 6 month I would like to change it to a low power CPU together with only running 3TB drives and then using http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/

I have looked at Richland CPUs (A4-4000) and Brazoz 2.0 (E350), Richland seems to consume alot (50+ watt), not sure how much it consumes in idle if its undervoltet though
Brazos only have 4 SATA unless you take the very expensive Asus motherboard (The Sapphire model is not available in Denmark)

Is there other cheap possibilities I should consider? Also is a new Brazos on the way in the near future?
And will Atom Bay Trail come to desktop or only be tablet/laptop?

 

[NTMBK]

Richland's peak usage is pretty high, yeah, but the platform has a very low idle power usage- lower than Ivy Bridge, in fact.

 

[ShintaiDK]

6 months? That also opens up for dualcore Haswell and Bay Trail. Yes, it will come to desktop too.

 

[Nothingness]

6 months? That also opens up for dualcore Haswell and Bay Trail. Yes, it will come to desktop too.

Yes, it will come to desktop, it's on the price list : http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/...nch_J1750_J1850_and_J2850_ULV_processors.html

Official price list : http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...Aug_11_13_Recommended_Customer_Price_List.pdf

Rather pricey compared to older Atom IMHO, unless one needs the extra CPU performance, which isn't obvious for a NAS (most higher-end home NAS happily use current Atom).

EDIT : only talking about Bay Trail

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yes, it will come to desktop, it's on the price list : http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2013/...nch_J1750_J1850_and_J2850_ULV_processors.html

Official price list : http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...Aug_11_13_Recommended_Customer_Price_List.pdf

Rather pricey compared to older Atom IMHO, unless one needs the extra CPU performance, which isn't obvious for a NAS (most higher-end home NAS happily use current Atom).

EDIT : only talking about Bay Trail

Those prices are placeholders. Its still an unreleased product. Plus its list prices. Nobody pays listprices.

 

[NTMBK]

6 months? That also opens up for dualcore Haswell and Bay Trail. Yes, it will come to desktop too.

Actually, dual core Haswell may be an excellent choice. If someone produces a Haswell SoC mini-ITX/micro-ATX motherboard for this sort of application, it would be fantastic.

 

[Nothingness]

Those prices are placeholders. Its still an unreleased product. Plus its list prices. Nobody pays listprices.

If I took the time to post the official Intel price list it's because it also lists older Atom prices, so these should be comparable from an end user point of view.

 

[Mech0z]

Richland's peak usage is pretty high, yeah, but the platform has a very low idle power usage- lower than Ivy Bridge, in fact.

From what I can see the G1610 is lower?

6 months? That also opens up for dualcore Haswell and Bay Trail. Yes, it will come to desktop too.

Whats the TPD of duel core haswell? Think Bay trail should use alot less power and be plenty powerful

Something like http://www.techpowerup.com/185040/ecs-kbn-i-amd-kabini-soc-motherboard-smiles-for-the-camera.html with 5-6 SATA ports would be perfect

 

[ShintaiDK]

From what I can see the G1610 is lower?



Whats the TPD of duel core haswell? Think Bay trail should use alot less power and be plenty powerful

Something like http://www.techpowerup.com/185040/ecs-kbn-i-amd-kabini-soc-motherboard-smiles-for-the-camera.html with 5-6 SATA ports would be perfect

Remenber it depends alot on the motherboard as well. There can be up to 20-30W difference between 2 motherboards.

Dualcore Haswells is 54W and can be had down to 35W. But remember they got FIVR and the platform power is extremely low. So for system power, you cant even compare say a 77W IB with a 84W HW and conclude that the IB uses less. because then you would be wrong.

 

[Mech0z]

Remenber it depends alot on the motherboard as well. There can be up to 20-30W difference between 2 motherboards.

Dualcore Haswells is 54W and can be had down to 35W. But remember they got FIVR and the platform power is extremely low. So for system power, you cant even compare say a 77W IB with a 84W HW and conclude that the IB uses less. because then you would be wrong.

But FIVR requires me to get a new PSU as well, will need to read up on that to see how much that saves in power at idle

 

[ShintaiDK]

But FIVR requires me to get a new PSU as well, will need to read up on that to see how much that saves in power at idle

Why would it require you to get a new PSU? Atleast the last 5-6 years of PSUs works fine with Haswell with a few possible expections.

 

[Mech0z]

Why would it require you to get a new PSU? Atleast the last 5-6 years of PSUs works fine with Haswell with a few possible expections.

Not sure how to check if, but pretty sure I use http://www.corsair.com/builder-series-cx400.html

 

[atari030]

Is there other cheap possibilities I should consider? Also is a new Brazos on the way in the near future?
And will Atom Bay Trail come to desktop or only be tablet/laptop?

The obvious choice, and I'm surprised no one has suggested it, would be either a dual or quad core Kabini all-in-one solution which is pretty much the modernized successor to the Brazos. Here are some example boards coming: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7033/computex-2013-spot-the-desktop-kabini.

The CPUs in question draw either 9 or 15W, depending on the variant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...Kabini.22.2C_.22Temash.22_.282013.2C_28_nm.29). From what I've heard, these boards should start being available within the next few months. I expect their pricing would be similar to E350/E450 all-in-ones or slightly higher.

 

[Mech0z]

The obvious choice, and I'm surprised no one has suggested it, would be either a dual or quad core Kabini all-in-one solution which is pretty much the modernized successor to the Brazos. Here are some example boards coming: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7033/computex-2013-spot-the-desktop-kabini.

The CPUs in question draw either 9 or 15W, depending on the variant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...Kabini.22.2C_.22Temash.22_.282013.2C_28_nm.29). From what I've heard, these boards should start being available within the next few months. I expect their pricing would be similar to E350/E450 all-in-ones or slightly higher.

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

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Richland's peak usage is pretty high, yeah, but the platform has a very low idle power usage- lower than Ivy Bridge, in fact.

This.

I'd get an A-series or similar and avoid an E-series or an Atom. It's not that much more expensive, it's idle 90% of the time anyway, and you never know when you'll need a little extra CPU power. (Throw a minecraft server in a VM or something.)

 

[Broheim]

I'd say wait and see how bay trail turns out

 

[Insert_Nickname]

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

I think you'll need one anyway. 8 port boards can be quite expensive. The only 8 port board I can remember with a reasonable price tag is the Asrock FM2A85X Pro. Pair it with an A4-4000 and you're good to go.

(Apparently its a little difficult to find here in Denmark, so you might have to either order abroad or have a retailer order one home for you)

An alternative would be one of these (supports port multiplier) + a cheap H61 mainboard, with as many ports as you can find, and a Celeron G1610. The Celeron doesn't consume more then 6W idle undervolted to 0.5V...

 

[aigomorla]

what is the OS ur gonna use for NAS?

FREEBSD is not cpu dependant.. its RAM hungry like a mofo tho.
Ive seen it gobble 7.8gigs on my 10TB array easily for cache... and im actually considering adding another 8 gigs to it.

If your using windows home server 2011, that could be cpu dependent.
If ur gonna use windows server 2008 R2 for file sharing.. well thats kind of a waste.

I never tried snapraid.. if it uses ZFS format... u want ram... if its standard windows NTFS, id say go cpu heavy.

 

[AtenRa]

I currently have a AMD X4 640 and 5 x 1 TB in Raid 5 and 3 x 3TB in RAID 5, but this setup uses 100-110W which is way too much

Also due to the raid card I use the drives cant sleep, so 8 drives consumes a lot of power all the time

So within the next 6 month I would like to change it to a low power CPU together with only running 3TB drives and then using http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/

I have looked at Richland CPUs (A4-4000) and Brazoz 2.0 (E350), Richland seems to consume alot (50+ watt), not sure how much it consumes in idle if its undervoltet though
Brazos only have 4 SATA unless you take the very expensive Asus motherboard (The Sapphire model is not available in Denmark)

Is there other cheap possibilities I should consider? Also is a new Brazos on the way in the near future?
And will Atom Bay Trail come to desktop or only be tablet/laptop?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327822&page=10

AMD A4-4000
Asrock FM2A85-ITX
2x 4GB DDR-3 1333MHz 1.55v
256GB OCZ Vertex 4
Mini-iTX slim case with 120W PSU.
Windows 8 Pro 64bit
Logitech k400 Wireless keyboard with mouse pad.

Idle = 19W
XBMC Playing 22GB BattleShip @ 1080p H264 DTS-HD = 29-32W

ASROCK FM2A85-ITX has 7x SATA-6 ports.

Edit: Quad core 15W and 25W Kabini mini-itx motherboards should be in retail in a few weeks or early September, BayTrail Desktop will be available in retail in Q2 2014.

 

[2is]

Unless you need a full blown OS on there, why not just get a purpose built NAS enclosure? Quiet, Small footprint, most are powered by some type of ARM processor which is going to be far more efficient and a lot of them even have media server functionality build right into them.

 

[aigomorla]

Unless you need a full blown OS on there, why not just get a purpose built NAS enclosure? Quiet, Small footprint, most are powered by some type of ARM processor which is going to be far more efficient and a lot of them even have media server functionality build right into them.

cuz most of them have very small ram.
also extremely expensive for the hardware your going to get.
NAS software very cumbersome..

For example..my new FreeNAS blows away the synology setup i had in every aspect of it.
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...

 

[Mech0z]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327822&page=10


ASROCK FM2A85-ITX has 7x SATA-6 ports.

Edit: Quad core 15W and 25W Kabini mini-itx motherboards should be in retail in a few weeks or early September, BayTrail Desktop will be available in retail in Q2 2014.

The Kabini sounds very interesting! Just wonder if any board will come with a reasonable amount of SATA ports

 

[MegaWorks]

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

 

[Sweepr]

BayTrail Desktop will be available in retail in Q2 2014.

What?

Bay Trail-D will probably be available this month (some rumours say next week) or September (along with Bay Trail-T).

 

[bullzz]

@atenra
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32191-bay-trail-desktop-parts-coming-soon