What to do with D510MO?

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ilovejedd
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What to do with D510MO?

Post by ilovejedd » Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:07 pm

I was browsing Newegg as I always do and I got a bit trigger happy and purchased an Intel D510MO motherboard among other things. Any advice on what the heck I should do with it?

Here are some I'm currently considering:
*Windows 7 DVR box
*Kubuntu test platform
*Windows Home Server test platform
*Hackint0sh
*emulator box for old school consoles (NES, SNES, PSX, etc)

Any other ideas?

HFat
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by HFat » Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:08 am

It would be a bit of a waste to use a physical machine for most types of tests now that it's become so easy to use virtual ones.
If you're not going to connect it to a display, best use it for stuff that needs to run 24/7 (a more powerful computer would waste too much electricity) or for stuff that would be risky or burdensome to have on anything else than a dedicated box.

There's not much that it can't do (web kiosk, office computer, web server and so on) but since you seem to like storage...
remote backup server for your family or friends (in the hope that they will return the favor which would give you a lot more capacity than Dropbox)
public mirror or seedbox
Wuala node (sort of like a peer to peer Dropbox)
freenet node

If you don't have a router/VPN gateway/web cache/web filtering proxy/antispam email gateway/whatever, it could easily do the job. Among other things, you could use it to wake up your big storage server (I hope it's not always-on!) remotely and/or download stuff from it.

ilovejedd
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by ilovejedd » Wed Oct 20, 2010 5:45 am

My big storage server is always on. However, power consumption at idle is just around 80W (not bad for a 12TB box). The software I'm using (unRAID) spins down drives when they're not in use.

Wuala sounds interesting but since my bandwidth is capped by my ISP, I'm gonna have to give it a pass. I've considered the remote backup thing but my family's on the other side of the world where internet is even much slower than it is in the US. Besides, they're unlikely to keep the PC on 24/7.

Using it as a VPN/anti-virus gateway seems like a good idea. I've been toying with the idea of using Untangle. Hopefully, the Atom D510 will be enough to handle my home network (~10 PCs).

fwki
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by fwki » Wed Oct 20, 2010 6:13 am

I used a D510 in a touchscreen jukebox. I just added a class D amp and a good internal DAC in a slightly modded Silverstone Grandia case. The power supply was tricky, but the setup powers the MB, DVD, HDD, DAC, amp and an 8" touchscreen. The D510 works great with no audible EMI on the DAC or amp....just plug in the power cord and speaker wires and my ancient Cerwin Vega D4's rattle the windows. At least the PC is silent.

HFat
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by HFat » Wed Oct 20, 2010 6:58 am

80W is pretty good for 12TB but its still a lot of juice. You could save hundereds of kWh a year by shutting it down when you're pretty sure nobody's going to want to use it (depening on sleep/work/whatever schedules). A smaller server could be scheduled to wake it up ahead of the time people get home in the afternoon/evening and so on.
If you're going to have your big server on all the time, you might as well try to run everything on it.
The D510 should be more than enough for playing with a capped link (the amount of clients on the LAN is not the most relevant figure). It's quite the number cruncher but some operations are a bit slow. It might introduce a slight latency sometimes but you can always configure real-time stuff (online games?) to bypass it. It's mostly the rest of the board that could stand to be improved IMO.

@fwki: I hope you've been considerate enough to put a streaming server on your jukebox in case the neighbours want to give a proper listen to what you're rattling your windows with.

EDIT: those of you running an adequately-cooled D510 or similar 24/7, consider running a distributed computing node on it, if only at some times of the day. The CPU themselves are quite efficient even though the system as a whole isn't. I figure crunching numbers should consume about 5W over idle.

ilovejedd
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by ilovejedd » Wed Oct 20, 2010 8:30 am

HFat wrote:80W is pretty good for 12TB but its still a lot of juice. You could save hundereds of kWh a year by shutting it down when you're pretty sure nobody's going to want to use it (depening on sleep/work/whatever schedules). A smaller server could be scheduled to wake it up ahead of the time people get home in the afternoon/evening and so on.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't work for us. There's always someone home so usage is pretty unpredictable. I've considered shutting it down at night but I'm usually the one who stays awake until the wee hours of the morning and I need access to the server. Heck, even when I'm at work, I've found myself FTP-ing to the server to retrieve some files.
HFat wrote:If you're going to have your big server on all the time, you might as well try to run everything on it.
It's a custom Linux distro (Slackware, I think) that's been pretty cut-down and runs from a 1GB USB flash drive. Granted, majority of the data it houses is replaceable but that would take months to do so I'd really rather not mess with it.

Matthew
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by Matthew » Wed Oct 20, 2010 12:53 pm

emulator box for old school consoles (NES, SNES, PSX, etc)
Maybe not for the PSX. I can say from experience that the D510MO gets choppy trying to run ePSXe.

fwki
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Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by fwki » Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:00 pm

In a small case the D510 will overheat without airflow. At first I had in in a Coolermaster Elite 100 and it was crash city until added two 40MM fans, UV'd, both intakes. Also the board temp readings in BIOS were incorrect, too high if I remember, known fault in original BIOS.
edit grammar.

addendum:
Don't mess with memory settings in original Bios. I made that mistake (even after reading about it) and no way could I get it to boot afterwards, removed battery, moved jumpers reset CMOS, everything....total DOA. Brought it back to Directron and they couldnt revive it either...but they did RMA for a replacement! :D

HFat
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Location: Switzerland

Re: What to do with D510MO?

Post by HFat » Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:52 am

Yeah, that doesn't look like a case suitable for the D510MO. See Morex's T3410 for what one should look like.

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