[Shopping cart] Low power & quiet HTPC / server

FUBAR · Post by **FUBAR** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:45 am

After reading tons of forum threads and reviews, here's what I've come up with:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 (2 x 2.3GHz, 45W TDP)
CPU cooler: Scythe Ninja Mini
Mainboard: Biostar TA690G mATX mainboard (apparently the best choice for the 690G chipset)
RAM: 2GB DDR2-800 CAS4 RAM (preferrably 1 stick, but 2 x 1GB is way cheaper)
HDD: Western Digital GP 750GB (x 2) in (software) RAID 1
Case: Antec Fusion 430 (aka Fusion v2)

I see the mainboards with the 690G chipset all have two small heatsinks. I'd like to replace both with two Zalman ZM-NBF47 chipsetcoolers, although I'm not sure they'll fit. Can anyone confirm / deny this?

Server roles:
- host for Xen and / or VMware Server
- HTPC (I don't have an HD TV yet, but having an HTPC that supports it might speed up the process

)
- network services: ftp, http, mail, database
- test bed for new stuff in virtual domains
- download machine

I'm planning to have it running 24/7 so low power consumption and noise are the key factors. I will be running Linux as the main OS, and maybe different Unix'es and / or Windows in virtual machines. Speed isn't really my main concern, hence the CPU.

Suggestions, advice, questions, I'd love to hear them!

Palindroman · Post by **Palindroman** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:38 am

Looks very good I'd have to say. What PSU will you use? PicoPSU might fall short so maybe you could go for a Seasonic or Antec EarthWatts?

Maybe you could also check out the 7025/7050 chipset (I thought nVidia had better driver support for Linux) because there's a good chance it's even more power efficient than the 690G chipset.

FUBAR · Post by **FUBAR** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:55 am

Antec includes an Earthwatts 430 PSU with the case. I'll read some reviews about the nVidia chipset. I completely forgot that the AMD/ATI chipset came with an ATI VGA.

JoeWPgh · Post by **JoeWPgh** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:29 am

I've been considering a similar set up, but can't decide between the Biostar and the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H.
The Gigabyte seems to be the consensus choice on the AVS HTPC forums, and Tom's hardware used one for thier solar powered PC. The Gigabyte board has weird SATA headers which I don't like, but an optical S/PDIF out, which I do. The Biostar has no S/PDIF on the back panel, but has a floppy header, which is of dubious value at this point. From there the difference is the placement of the PCIe 1x and 16x slots. This is something to consider if you add a graphics card with a passive cooler in the future. I'm leaning toward the Gigabyte, but it could come down to a coin toss, or waiting for another option.

Ashex · Post by **Ashex** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:47 am

FUBAR wrote:Antec includes an Earthwatts 430 PSU with the case. I'll read some reviews about the nVidia chipset. I completely forgot that the AMD/ATI chipset came with an ATI VGA.

No need to worry about that. In the past month or so AMD has released open-source drivers for the ATI chipset, so driver support has increased tenfold in the past few weeks and you can expect it to get better in the next year.

gentonix · Post by **gentonix** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:51 am

Are you sure you are not mixing things up? As far as I know, Ati's drivers are still binary-only (and the quality is still nothing short of abysmal) and they've only released some basic specs about their newest chips. This enables the community to write the open source drivers, which at the moment are very far from stable.

Ashex · Post by **Ashex** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:19 am

gentonix wrote:Are you sure you are not mixing things up? As far as I know, Ati's drivers are still binary-only (and the quality is still nothing short of abysmal) and they've only released some basic specs about their newest chips. This enables the community to write the open source drivers, which at the moment are very far from stable.

You're partially correct. I was incorrect in saying they released Open-source drivers. The latest release of the binary driver increases stability quite a bit, and enables people to use AIGLX. AMD is working with Novell on an open-source driver along with having released the driver specs, so there is an open-source driver in the works.

Palindroman · Post by **Palindroman** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:23 am

JoeWPgh wrote:I've been considering a similar set up, but can't decide between the Biostar and the Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H.
The Gigabyte seems to be the consensus choice on the AVS HTPC forums, and Tom's hardware used one for thier solar powered PC. The Gigabyte board has weird SATA headers which I don't like, but an optical S/PDIF out, which I do. The Biostar has no S/PDIF on the back panel, but has a floppy header, which is of dubious value at this point. From there the difference is the placement of the PCIe 1x and 16x slots. This is something to consider if you add a graphics card with a passive cooler in the future. I'm leaning toward the Gigabyte, but it could come down to a coin toss, or waiting for another option.

I have tested the GA-MA69VM-S2 a few months ago and it was a few watts less efficient than its nVidia 6100/430 counterpart, GA-M61PM-S2:

My guess is that the AMD 690G chipset isn't more efficient than budget chipset 690V. Now the Biostar is definitely more efficient than both them, with the 7025/630 chipset. I have tested another Gigabyte board yesterday, the GA-M68SM-S2 (nVidia 7025/630) and it's slightly less efficient -unfortunately - than its predecessor, the GA-M61PM-S2.

Two boards that I've read are the most efficient around are the Asrock Alive NF7G-HDReady (cheap) and the Abit AN-M2 (less cheap). Both of them come with the 7025 chipset. The Abit board also comes in the AN-M2HD flavor which features the 7050/630 chipset (better for hardware decoding and thus more efficient, with the 7025 chip the CPU does most of the work) and a HDMI port, I believe.

gentonix · Post by **gentonix** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:38 am

Ashex wrote:The latest release of the binary driver increases stability quite a bit, and enables people to use AIGLX.

Not to start an argument here, but not many people agree with you on that. Have you visited the AMD/ATI Linux driver section in the phoronix forums lately? People have tons of problems with the new driver.

As for the specs, they only cover the basic 2D functionality. The documentation of the 3D engine is to be released, but no timeframe has been given. So, right now Nvidia seems to be a lot better choice. Things may change in a year or two, but then again if you buy a mobo with Nvidia IGP, you can easily toss in a Radeon later if the drivers progress to be a killer graphical platform for Linux.

Ashex · Post by **Ashex** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:51 am

gentonix wrote:
Ashex wrote:The latest release of the binary driver increases stability quite a bit, and enables people to use AIGLX.
Not to start an argument here, but not many people agree with you on that. Have you visited the AMD/ATI Linux driver section in the phoronix forums lately? People have tons of problems with the new driver.

As for the specs, they only cover the basic 2D functionality. The documentation of the 3D engine is to be released, but no timeframe has been given. So, right now Nvidia seems to be a lot better choice. Things may change in a year or two, but then again if you buy a mobo with Nvidia IGP, you can easily toss in a Radeon later if the drivers progress to be a killer graphical platform for Linux.

Ah, I was reporting what I had read thus far on Phoronix, I haven't taken the time to read up on peoples experiences. Personally, I hate the ATI drivers, the latest ones along with all the news doesn't do anything for me since only machine I have with ati graphics is a laptop with a 200m Express, which won't be getting anything new for awhile. I ditched ATI several years ago because of their terrible drivers and have since switched to Nvidia.
But I still think that AMD is making an honest attempt to completely rewrite the drivers for ATI (probably explains while there was a long period of no updates) and embrace the open-source community.

FUBAR · Post by **FUBAR** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 4:08 am

I've never worked with ATI in Linux, I've been an nVidia fanboy for years. I'll probably swap the 690G mainboard for a similar nForce 7050 version.

Too bad there are very few reviews of the nForce 7050 chipset, and the reviewers never seem interested in the power consumption.