In that same post, I documented my personal requirements for a NAS system:
- Ability to host at least six SATA drives on a fast bus (i.e. motherboard southbridge, or expansion cards on PCIe)
- Low power (generally implies BIOS voltage controls)
- Gigabit network (2x would be ideal, especially with Intel chips, but not necessary)
- ECC RAM support
- Free PCIe slot for future upgrades
I was browsing newegg's selection of socket 1156 server motherboards, which use the Intel 3420 chipset. I would assume this is basically the "server version" of their P55 chipset (which itself isn't much more than the oldish ICH10 southbridge). The neat thing about 1156 is: no northbridge, and the 3420/P55/ICH10 chipsets are fairly low power. Going with a "server" motherboard quite often means they throw in some basic (meaning low power) video chip, and often have dual NICs. For example, this Intel S3420GPLC looks promising, as does the Supermicro X8SIL-F (though not yet available on newegg).
As far as I can tell, to get ECC support on a socket 1156 chip, you have to buy from the Xeon line. Usually the Xeon chips aren't tuned for low power consumption. However, if I remember correctly, these new Lynnfield (and Nehalem) processors have very low power states for idle times. At least my NAS system will be idle virtually all the time. So the CPU should be able to live mostly in the least power state.
Still, quad core is overkill for a simple NAS. But I can't seem to find any single- or dual-core Intel 1156 CPUs with ECC support. But, for someone willing to spend the big bucks, the Xeon L3426 looks almost magical (see also here). TDP is listed at 45 watts; voltage range .65V-1.400V. My guess is that on an idle system, the CPU will automatically drop down to 0.65V (or very close), and undervolting may not even be necessary.
So... ignoring cost (which, with this solution is obscenely high), how low do you think idle power consumption will be with a 3420-based motherboard and a Xeon L3426 CPU? I know it's impossible to tell without getting the hardware and testing (not to mention implementation differences from one board to the next), but, in general: could this configuration beat the Biostar A760G in terms of power consumption?
Thoughts in general?
If somebody wants to buy me these parts, I'll build the system and do an analysis!