Hi All,

I've been reading this forum for a few months now, just decided to register.

I'm having a problem finding the perfect cpu/motherboard combo, it will be used for a NAS/Server/Backend etc etc.

I settled on one CPU then go to buy it and find it's discontinued!, i've spent all day today looking and getting fed up so far.
I need something that supports 5/6 SATA drives (though I can always add a card to a board that only supports 4 SATA, low power consumption at idle/load.

I've discounted the Atom platform, it's not really suitable.

I've read good things about the AMD 5050e but I can't source one anywhere, also there is not a lot of information on any newer low power AMD cpus.

The other option is Intel e5200/e5300/e7200/e7300/e7400 etc etc. some of these seem to have decent power consumption and are quicker than the amd 5050e, but i'm not sure which one to go for and what motherboard as i've spent all month reading up on AMD boards, and havent a clue to what the Intel based c2d/"pentium" motherboards can offer in terms of power consumption/reliability/ideal feature set. All the information I can find on everything seems to be from 2008, it's now q4 2009 so things must have changed a bit.

Also, I cant seem to settle for a case, I need something with a minimum of 3 5" bays to house something like a icy box 3 to 5 hot swap bay, or has hot swap bays already. I'm only going to populate it with 2x samsung eco drives for storage and a 2.5" laptop drive for the OS, i'd like the remaining 2 bays for future expansion.

I've got a coolermaster igreen 430 psu I can use for now, which looking at reviews has 83-85% efficiency.

Any in depth information or recommendations on the above would be gratefully appreciated

Dale.

To Intel's credit, 6 SATA Intel mobos cost an arm and a leg and draw a lot more power compared to AMD counterpart. Intel's low-end integrated and troubled VGA chipsets like 945, G31, G41 all come with 4 SATAs.

To achieve cheap, quiet, energy efficient NAS, you need an AMD 740G board and a 45W dual core -- 240e is coming soon, be patient. Otherwise, purchase an used 4x50e for your system.

I'm running 65W 245, and very satisfied with its power consumption.

Thanks for the reply

It looks like i'll have to hold out till the 240e comes out then, also a plus 1 for the athlon platform is ECC support.

I just grabbed the open-box Biostar 760G board mentioned in a thread on here--along with a 4450e (slightly slower than the 5050e). Board from Newegg, cpu from ebay. Hopefully I get under 30W idle also.

heres the thread: linky

NAS needs only VERY modest CPU. What are your other tasks that caused you to reject Atom?

One sub-20W board that looks interesting to me is the Via EPIA M700. Paired with a couple of 2 TB drives mirrored seems like plenty for NAS.

Thanks for the reply,

The chipsets on the Atom boards use too much power, so a lower power amd setup will use approx +/- the same power but yeild a lot more performance.

I'll be using it for a squeezecentre server, CCTV stuff, downloading torrents remotely, webserver, linux dev stuff via a remote desktop, possibly eventually run diskless computers off it around the house.

See the Jetway NF94-270-LF and D945GSEJT this two boards use the mobile version of Intel chipset and CPU the same used in notebooks so they use less power with the same performance the main difference is that the mobile Atom is not 64bit so you can only use 32bit OS.
This boards use 10-12W of power.

I have been thinking about this issue myself as I want a low energy server for mythtv/transmission/squeezecenter

I am leaning towards the new atom N470 with integrated igp

plus a raid card for raid 10

Well i've got a EEEPC 901 which is an atom and I find that really slow and laggy, this is the 901 with the faster 16gb single SSD too. It's either a amd 240e or hang on and have a look at the new atom boards that are coming out.

I also have the EEEPC 900A 16GB SSD and Atom and I will say that is fine but if you need more processor power and can wait then maybe the core i3 will be a good solution they will probably use less power especially if undervolted and uderclocked even at 2GHz this core i3 will be 4 to 6x more powerful than a single core atom. The new atom will not be more powerful then the current one.