SPCR

There is only one question to be asked.

Will the following system fit within the 90W (80W in reality) power limit with both cores being thrashed (a worst case scenario if the machine gets infected with a virus).

Antec ISK110 with a 90W power brick but an 80W DC/DC board, according to the printing on the underside of the DC/DC board in the review linked below.

Gigabyte GA-H61N-USB3 - Or Similar.
128GB Samsung 830 SSD.
WD Black 320GB/500GB HDD for backups.
No Optical Drive as there isn't a provision for one in the case.
2x 2GB DDR3 (branded for reliability + warranty purposes) RAM.
Intel Celeron G530 (as its the cheapest) - "T" varieties of 35W CPU's seem to be impossible to buy, meaning that I will end up with a "65W TDP" CPU.
A USB Keyboard and Mouse.

http://www.funkykit.com/component/conte ... ml?start=3

Note that the reviewer didn't have any "problems" whilst testing, but they didn't look into this issue with any detail at all, or even test the external power draw and make a DC draw estimate.

This is going to be a server in a small business, I have carefully selected components that are reliable/have good warranties so I wont likely get any grief from failures..... that's where the PSU's "real" power rating comes into it, that's not a component that I can simply swap if it fails, failure would be a real pain in the arse and failure because the DC/DC board or Power Brick are overloaded or close to their maximum load is not something that I would consider.

If its too close for comfort, its going to be a mATX system with a 430W PSU because I wont take the risk with reliability and would rather have a larger system than an unreliable one. And no I don't want to get a horrible puny Atom system that would not save a lot of money (£25) and doesn't even have SATA-3.


Andy

If someone relies on this build to earn money with, i'd go mATX with solid fans and stuff, even think about some raid1. i'd go as conventional as i could, putting in enough thermal headroom and pick proven components.

If someone relies on this build to earn money with, i'd go mATX with solid fans and stuff, even think about some raid1. i'd go as conventional as i could, putting in enough thermal headroom and pick proven components.

I might end up doing just that, but it would be nice to be able to build a nice little server with a single fan that I can bolt onto the back of a monitor, especially as the mATX system that I specced was £15 cheaper, basically identical components picked for reliability etc.

RAID-1 is pretty shit unless its in a serious server with on-site admins constantly checking over everything, not least because a virus would still infect both of the RAID-1 drives. In any case SSD's are more reliable than HDD's, the 830 is one of the best anyway, and on top of that the system will do a backup every night, and I will keep a system image of the machine once its built, installed and configured, and there will be a copy on the backup drive as well as an MB Backup Image, so swapping the SSD out would not be a major issue at all, and all of the data would be safe on the backup drive, and so long as the customer does their weekly manual backup to their external drive there would be a 3rd data source as a a backup as well.


Andy