Beat my MSI Axis 700 Lite Via C7 based 25W server with what?

cruiserandmax · Post by **cruiserandmax** » Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:20 pm

I've been using an MSI Axis 700 (C7 1ghz CPU) with 1TB storage as my main home file server, plus bit torrent client, and occasional web browsing/python scripting for the past couple of years. The system at peak draws about 25 watts- great! So far it's been fine serving divx and mp4 (h264) video, music library, and running bit torrent and other cgi scripts, all simultaneously without any issues....

However, since I've started using the machine as my storage based for all of my digital photography I've noticed the 100 base T ethernet leaves a "bit" to be desired when reading and writing large files quickly (think saving and loading 20+ MB image files for editing). So I'd like to upgrade to something that will serve files at gigabit speed- and keep using <30W power, with 1 or 2 hard drives. And still have equal or greater processing power to my 1ghz Via CPU. (running ubuntu linux if it matter)..

What are people doing these days to fit this kind of bill?

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 3:56 am

http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page=sh ... t&Itemid=1

I guess any Intel Atom board would get your job done. Atom is faster than VIA C7 and as power-efficient as C7.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 7:30 am

Everex PC3500G.

same thing, VIA PC1 Platform. 2gb of RAM, and a 16gb CF card with a SATA adapter for the hard drive. No filesharing. ~20W. but i stopped using it because i'm looking for lower profile RAM so I can make a very low profile case for it.

but none of these have anything on the Fit PC2.

fpsrandy · Post by **fpsrandy** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:12 am

I use a zotac n330 based atom/ion board at home as a media player and file server. It works great with my bluray drive to play bluray movies, and plays 1080p rips no problem with smplayer.

But, I doubt the network speed is what is bottle necking your file access speed alone. if you check out tomshardware.com and look at the eprformance charts for hard drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1010.html

you will see the average read speeds for most drives are below 100mbits/sec. What you will also want to look at is replacing your hard drives along with the rest of your system if you are unhappy with your network speeds.

my only complaint with the atom base ion boards, is that they only provided 3 internal sata connectors, so I have a 1tb, 500gb, and the bluray drive using all three sata connectors. I could add a 4th sata device, as there is an esata coming out of the IO of the motherboard.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:31 am

fpsrandy wrote: But, I doubt the network speed is what is bottle necking your file access speed alone. if you check out tomshardware.com and look at the eprformance charts for hard drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1010.html

you will see the average read speeds for most drives are below 100mbits/sec.

You are confusing the MegaByte speed rating on most drives with the MegaBit speed rating of Fast Ethernet. You would be hard pressed to find a HDD so slow it could not saturate Fast Ethernet (~10MB/s is all it can support once you consider overhead).