Atom 330 fileserver - power supply ?

[faugusztin]

Hi,

i'm getting rid of my Athlon X4 II 620 + 785G board due relatively high idle power usage of the whole system, plus it is way too powerfull my simple single user fileserver use . The current setup (above + 3GB RAM + HX520 + 3 Noiseblocker fans+Adaptec 1430SA controller for 4 SATA ports) take about 62W in idle (7 of 8 drives in idle mode).

The hard drives are :
2x WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1
4x WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1
1x ST31000520AS
1x SAMSUNG HD154UI

My plan is to get rid of the PSU as well if possible, so i'm thinking about following options :

• AT3IONT-I DELUXE - 4xSATA is OK, PCI-E x16 allows me to use the 1430SA controller. It is powered via external power brick, they say it is rated for 90W. Hard drives could be powered via one molex connector on board. The question is it could power 8 hard drives, and especially if it could power the system durring the boot.
• AT3IONT-I - same as above, but powered via standard ATX connector. This could also mean i have to use an ATX power supply - either picoPSU (last time i checked the startup current was looking like problem, or probably would swap my little bit noisy HX520 for Seasonic S12II-330 Bronze in case picoPSU is not enough.

Any ideas ?

EDIT: Power consumption of AT3IONT-I DELUXE (probably with 1 WD 640GB Green) :

Stand by 1.85W
No load 22W
720p video playback 24W
1080p movie playback 25-27W
Maximum Load 31W

Question is if the remaining 59-68W will be enough for 7-8 more hard drives , 3 fans (3x2.91 W according to specs) and SATA controller (0.9 amps@+5V).

EDIT: Fixed the link for AT3IONT-I.

[Jay_S]

You'll want to add up the startup power ratings of those drives. You can find peak current draw on each mfg's site, on the datasheet for each model.

But I highly doubt the Pico's or that 90W brick will be sufficient.

Each WD20EARS is rated for 1.75A (21W) peak.
Each WD10EADS is rated at 1.464A (17.6W) peak (same WDC datasheet as above)
The ST31000520AS is rated at 2A (24W).
The HD154UI is also rated at 2A (24W).

That = 160W on the 12V rail per OEM specs. I don't know how well that translates to the real-world.

What PSU are you currently using?

[faugusztin]

HX520 as i said, but i'm moving it to other system. And you confirmed what i thought, i will need a PSU after all .

So the choice is AT3IONT-I (the standard PSU version, without Wifi/BT/remote - none of them matter in my case) + Seasonic S12II-330 Bronze. The price is pretty much same - 168€ for Deluxe version vs 172€ for normal version with the Seasonic PSU. It will be closer to 20% efficiency limit of 80Plus certification too (20% of 330 is 66W, while 20% of 520W is 104W).

[MikeC]

Sounds to me like you're making changes just for change... the power consumption thing seems like an excuse. In reality, it's the HDDs that really dictate how much power the system will use, much more than the CPU/mobo, which could be undervolted and/or features not used just turned off. A simple CPU swap from your 95W TDP Athlon X4 II 620... to any 45W TDP part would help drop the idle power some, along with a more efficient PSU, tho the latter may not get you much benefit unless you go to something way higher in efficiency at the typical idle power of your rig.

[faugusztin]

If it would be only that easy . That board was first used with Sempron 140, which was a 45W part. Undervolted to 1.18V (bellow that it wasn't stable), it used exactly the same amount of power than the Athlon II X4 620 undervolted to 1.11V - it was the same 60-63W power usage for both CPUs, with 1 HDD running and other drives in sleep. With all drives running, the power consumption increases to 78-80W.

[MikeC]

ok...

Odd that your power draw is so high. Have a look at this, my HTPC: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article998-page7.html It idles at about 40W AC. Plays HD video at ~45W. The biggest difference is the HDD -- mine is a notebook drive. Also the mobo is not the same, and the PSU in the Antec 1480 is a plain vanilla 80+ made by Seasonic.

Is there any guarantee that the Asus Ion/atom 330 has lower power draw? Even if lower, how much lower? iirc, the ion is not exactly a miserly chipset... but maybe if you're not using the video out... Anyway, my guess is that you can get a 10W improvement, for sure, maybe 15W. 20W? Not if you have to use a 380W 80+ bronze is my bet.

[faugusztin]

So, after replacing the X4 [email protected] + 785G board + HX520 with the Atom board and Seasonic S12II-330 Bronze the idle power usage (CPU used at 10-20%, one hard drive active, 7 hard drives in standby mode) dropped from 62W to 41W. Considering i sold the AMD stuff for nearly original price the 21W power saving is pretty nice. My only problem now is what the hell should i do with the one DDR3 memory module which cannot be used (because the new board has only 2 memory slots) - i bought a kit of 3 long time ago because it was a cheap offer.

[loimlo]

Well, maybe it's too late, but you could drop the core voltage of X4 620 to 0.80V or even lower to reduce power consumption. Based on my experience, the difference between stock CnQ(1.1V) and 0.8V is 8~10W which is very significant given the same components in use.

[faugusztin]

It is late, but it was not possible to drop level. 1.1V was the minimum (board didn't allow less with any CPU - Sempron 140 or Athlon X4 II 620), plus i wasn't able to lower it to even less (1.12V was the stable minimum, less and it didn't boot).

[loimlo]

You can always use K10stat to work around motherboard bios's voltage limit. And I found AMD's CPU idle power consumption is very close under identical frequency/voltage situation, regardless of dual/triple/quad cores. That said, ATOM is still better in terms of absolutely lowest power consumption, but the gap between optimized Intel/AMD desktop CPU at idle isn't so huge.