Low power performance fileserver

[svn]

Hi

I'm planning on building a new system to replace my old and noisy Infrant ReadyNAS NV. I also want the new system to handle bittorrent, iTunes server and some more stuff.
The ReadyNAS consumes about 60W idle and about 70W on load. I use 4x400GB Spinpoint drives.
My goals are more performance while consuming less power and I need some advice from you guys. Price doesn't really matter.

- PSU
Will the picoPSU 90 handle the load of 5 WD Greenpower harddrives on the 5V line?

- Mainboard
I wanna go with a LGA775 CPU and so far, my favourite mainboard is the Intel DQ35JO. It's microATX, has onbaord RAID5, onboard Gbit LAN and is very stable. The downside is the BIOS. It doesn't allow for undervolting/underclocking.
So how much power does it really consume? Is underclocking really necessary? Are there better options?

- CPU
Whats the better choice? The C2D E5000 45nm series that will (hopefully) soon come out or a Pentium DualCore E2000? The Pentium DualCore offers plenty of performance, but i read they aren't that big power savers after all...


Thanks for your time and help! Greetings from Switzerland,
Sven

PS: Does someone know if there will be a new version of the Greenpower drives with the 320GB platters?

[PASware]

Hello SVN

- PSU - Will the picoPSU 90 handle the load of 5 WD Greenpower harddrives on the 5V line?

Honestly I dont know. The PicoPSU delivers about 6A on the 5v line, so thats 30watts. One 1TB Caviar GP drive will consume about 0,7A on the 5v, so that makes 3,5A with 5 drives. 2.5A will be left for the rest of the components, I dont know if that will be enough.

Mainbord and CPU

I think it is a better idea to buy a AMD systeem. Why? Less power consumption and cheaper (and still stable!). You could achieve a <30watts idle computer with 1 drive and with about 5 drives that would be between 50 and 60watts. You could only reach that with an undervolted CPU and a power efficient motherboard.
My recommendations:

AMD X2 BE-2300 1.9ghz
Asrock NF7G-HD720P

The Be-2300 could run with 1.1v (or maybe lower, see the forum) on 1,9ghz and could do 0,8v with a clockspeed of 1000mhz.

The Asrock board is very energy efficiënt (I've seen people reaching <20watts idle with a laptopdrive), I think its even the most efficient AM2 motherboard.

[svn]

Thanks for your answer. I'll check it out.
I don't know much about AMD systems, kind of lost interest since the C2Ds came out ;)

[PASware]

Thanks for your answer. I'll check it out.
I don't know much about AMD systems, kind of lost interest since the C2Ds came out

C2D's have better performance and overclock better, but you dont need such a fast cpu for your NAS, the relativily simpel (and cheap!) X2 BE-2300 will do the job just perfect.

But you really have to undervolt a CPU if you want to run 5 GP's on a 90w picopsu.

[that Linux guy]

If money isn't a major issue, then why not skip uATX and go Mini ITX? VIA has some great boards w/ C7 and CoreFusion CPUs, ranging from 1GHz to 2GHz. If you dont like their price point still or dont trust VIA cause they're chipsets showup on some shitty mainboards, etc, then Intel has some Celeron based boards known as "Little Valley". It's 1.2GHz Celeron w/ 2 SATA II ports, 1 PCI slot, 1Gb RAM, etc. It's low power, and fairly cheap with a board/CPU setting you back about $80. I'm rebuilding an old Emachines-turned-server/firewall with one. I haven't seen any Mini ITX cases that are made to become NAS devices, except <a href="http://www.logicsupply.com/products/es34069">this from Chenbro</a>. It's nice, but expensive for a case. Anywho, just a suggestion. A file server doesn't have to be extravagant. I'd buy a cheap barebones kit, a Gb or two of RAM for speedyness, Base-1000T compatable NIC, and a SATA Hotswap backplane. The backplanes are usually loud to us Quiet PC guys, but a fanswap and careful selection of drives should prove fine.

[Lawrence Lee]

For reference, this is my file server:

X2 4000+ @ 1.0Ghz/0.800V
ECS RS485M-M (ATI chipset)
1GB DDR2-667
3 x 500GB (2 Hitachi, 1 Maxtor)
Seasonic SS-400HT
Intel GBLAN PCI card

40W idle with 1 drive, 50W idle with 3.

[PASware]

For reference, this is my file server:

X2 4000+ @ 1.0Ghz/0.800V
ECS RS485M-M (ATI chipset)
1GB DDR2-667
3 x 500GB (2 Hitachi, 1 Maxtor)
Seasonic SS-400HT
Intel GBLAN PCI card

40W idle with 1 drive, 50W idle with 3.

Nice.

A picopsu is more efficient then a SS-400HT, so that would lower the powerconsumption a little bit. If the motherboard has a gbit NIC a GBLAN pci card wouldnt be needen, so that would lower it even more.
3 drives 50 -> 45w, and with some 500GB GP's it could be something between 40 and 45watts

[svn]

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

I already own a miniITX board from VIA. OK, it's not the newest model (800 MHz, 512MB RAM), but performace is really shitty. I'm planning a RAID5 array with 4 to 5 drives and want decent network througput. Also, I really want everything onboard, like a RAID controller and at least 4 SATA ports.

The ECS boards look interesting, but they don't support RAID5 :/


Yeah, I think the AMD system offers enough performace and so far it's the best option. I'm still wondering about the power consumption of the new C2D E5000 series and when they will be available. It's the equivalent of the current E4000 series but with 45nm engraving. The 45nm E8000 really is superior to the E6000.

I will definitely undervolt/underclock the CPU. If it's possible, I will do the same with the integrated graphics.

I think I'll take this case: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/pr ... s_index=63 (I'm a Lian-Li fanboy hehe)

I'll wait for a week or two before purchasing the parts. Perhaps The C2D E5000 or newer WD GP drives will be released til then ;)
I'll keep you updated when I'm building it.

Sven

[svn]

Hi again!

First, let me say that you gave some great advice, thank you! I got all of the parts except for the HDs and I did some testing.
One question: What exactly is the Enhanced Halt State? Power consumption dropped significantly when I disabled it.

The setup:
Board: ASRock AliveNF7GHD720p Revision 5
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 BE 2300+ with stock AMD cooler (Fan disconnected)
RAM: OCZ PC6400 1x 1GB
Harddrive: Old Toshiba 2,5" 20GB
Optical drive: None
PSU: picoPSU-120W
Fans: 1x Scythe Slipstream 1200RPM
NIC: Cable was connected at 1Gbit/s

The results:
CPU speed: 1GHz
Core voltage: 0.875V
GPU speed: 70Mhz Core / 40MHz RAM
RAM speed: 200MHz
RAM voltage: 1,85V
Bus speed: 200MHz
HT speed: 1GHz

Power consumption:
- idle ~18.4W
- load ~28.5W (2x CPU Burn)


Further plans:
Although it's not really necessary, I'll replace the CPU cooler with a Scythe Shuriken and use some "real" thermal compund for the CPU and the NB cooler. This should keep things even cooler.
Tomorrow I'll buy 4x WD GP drives. I'm not sure wich size yet.

Pictures:





More updates soon.
Have a nice time!



edit:
Power consumption will drop to 14,6W when i disconnect the Ethernet cable and wait until the screen and the HD powers down. I understand it's not really usable without HD and LAN, but i just wanted to see how low it will go ;)
What i forgot to mention was that we have 230V power here in Switzerland.

[loimlo]

Wow, it's really fantastic power draw figures compared to my file server. I think I need to get a Pico to substitute my PSU.

[svn]

I compared the picoPSU with an Antec Phantom 300 passive PSU when i first plugged everything in. With the Antec, the system drew about 44W, with the picoPSU about 22W. It's a fantastic product for low power systems.

I could also reduce the core voltage to 0.85V and the GPU frequency to 40MHz / 40MHz.

Greetings
Sven

[loimlo]

My system specs

CPU: Athlon64 3000+ 1G @ 0.85V
MB: Abit NF-M2S Geforce6100
RAM: 1GB DDR2 667x1, 512MB DDR2 667x1 @ 1.9V
HD: WD 2500KS
Optical: BenQ DW800A burner
Fan: 80mm with 5V trick x1
PSU: Seasonic 300SFD

I got 43 watts at idle, which was measured by Seasonic PowerAngel. I guess I will get a Pico sooner or later.

[victorhortalives]

If you want to sell the old Ready NAS box, let me know.

[svn]

I already got a buyer ;) Sorry dude