Low power MythTV backend and File Server advice

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:13 am

Iâ€™m looking to replace my current MythTV/File server machine with a modern low power box that hopefully will serve a number of purposes and was hoping for sme advice. Here are my requirements:

1) Low power requirements, especially at idle (<40W) as the system will be permanently on.
2) Must have a DVI port and possibly the ability to output dual VGA
3) Must be capable of virtualisation in hardware as I want to run Linux as the host OS and Windows as a client.
4) Must have gigabit Ethernet as the box will be a file server.
5) The box will act as a MythTV backend (only occasional frontend use), mail server, file server and print server therefore a dual core cpu may make sense.
6) As Linux will be the host OS, Linux support should be good
7) Capability to undervolt the CPU, chipset etc to reduce power requirements further

eSATA would be useful but not essential (can this be added with just a bracket?.
9) Firewire support may be useful for my HD video camera although not essential as my Macbook can serve this purpose.
10) Iâ€™d like a PCI X bus to allow replacing my Nova T TV card with dual tuner or digital satellite for HD.

My options for this seem to fit with a HTPC motherboard with a low power Athlon 64 (BE series?). Iâ€™ve searched extensively on the Gigabyte MA69GM-SH2 and this seems to be a good, low power board although this has HDMI which Iâ€™ll probably never use (and may well add to power consumption). The M2A-VM HDMI Asus board seems better as the HDMI option is on a separate card which I could choose not to use and reduce power draw? Also, these boards seem to be on the AMD validated list, one requirement of which is support for virtualisation. I donâ€™t have much info about the power consumption of this board however but I guess itâ€™ll be around the same as the Gigabyte?

Just for info, my current box is an old P3 733 I salvaged from the skip from my workplace. Iâ€™ve been using it for almost 2 years but itâ€™s starting to show its limitations. Power draw is around 40W at idle which is great and probably due in part to the custom 120W PSU

Also, is a power draw of 40W or less feasible? I intend to use a Pico120 PSU with an external brick to maximise efficiency at the low loads I want to achieve. How far can I expect to undervolt? Does undervolting make much difference? Finally, how well do the latest AMD-ATI Linux drivers work with the 690G integrated graphics?

Any advice, comments or recommendations for this would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:45 am

The Biostar TA690G board and the Gigabyte board you mentioned both allow you to do pretty much everything you wanted except eSATA which strictly speaking isn't a mobo feature.

The Biostar runs at a few watts lower in power consumption (~31W idle with 4000+ @ 1Gz @.87v; 3.5" drive) when compared to the Gigabyte. But the Gigabyte gives you firewire. Both boards can be powered by picoPSU120 if you don't overload it with drives.

The Biostar has voltage control in the BIOS which might be important to you since you will be running Linux as your host OS. The official Gigabyte BIOS does not support voltage control but you might be able to find one they sent to a review site that does.

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 10:56 am

Many thanks for your reply. The Biostar looks pretty good - does it support AMD virtualisation? Also, do you have any experience with the linux drivers on this board?

thanks again

drees · Post by **drees** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:19 pm

Linux support of the Biostar TA690G should be good as long as you use a recent distribution.

I would be slightly worried about support for the ATI video, last time I tried ATI video drivers they weren't nearly as usable as a Nvidia drivers.

Cerb · Post by **Cerb** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:04 pm

2. I think this will require a card, for the time being.
3. I can't find any conclusive info on this. Gigabyte seems to turn it off (linkimajig). But, I can't find much that is positive for some other boards.
8. At under $30 for a controller card with eSATA ports, decide if this is a must by what else you want to install, since you're going to have a uATX board. A bracket should do it, but won't guarantee compatibility. Having it on the back or trying a bracket, will save precious slots. OTOH, you will probably only need any of them for a tuner, and maybe a firewire card.
10. If you mean PCI-e, no problem. If you mean PCI-X, forget about it.

As others, as soon as I got done with your list, AM2 Biostar boards (both the 690G and GF 70xx) came to mind, with a 35w X2. As a server, I wouldn't worry about the video drivers. The open source driver will do the trick.

As long as you get a tuner with hardware encoding, you should be good for all cases. If not, you may need to tweak things to make sure Myth is never without resources (if any problems occur, going to a RT kernel could help, without any other fixes). It could work just fine, mind you--my experience is with up to a Barton, with HDD and tuner cards sharing PCI bandwidth, with bottlenecks effectively removed with newer hardware.

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:23 pm

I believe virtualization is a feature of the CPU and not of the mobo (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this). I am running a virtual machine on the Biostar (using freebie VMWare Server). The performance is pretty good. If that's any indication of virtualization support that I'd say "yes".

BTW isn't eSATA just some mechanical specs for a more rugged connector? In other words, aren't the signals simply being passed through from your SATA port on the mobo to the drive?

drees · Post by **drees** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:48 pm

Cerb wrote:As a server, I wouldn't worry about the video drivers. The open source driver will do the trick.

He mentioned that he would occasionally use it as a frontend and possibly support dual-head. You need 3rd party drivers for that type of support whether using ATI or Nvidia at this point in time.

Hezu · Post by **Hezu** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:06 pm

Cerb wrote:As long as you get a tuner with hardware encoding, you should be good for all cases.

From the list existing hardware in the original message, I noticed "Hauppauge Nova T" -card, which most likely means that the broadcast system used is DVB-T and in practice that means there is no cards with hardware video decoder (hardware encoding is not neeeded as the video stream what is coming from the antenna is already in digital format) as the only "full-featured" DVB-T card, TechnoTrend TT-DVB-T 1200 is no longer made. And if the original poster meant PCI-e with PCI-X, in conjuction of DVB technologies and GNU/Linux that bus appears still be useless as currently there is no supported PCI-e DVB devices.

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:19 pm

Many thanks for the resposes.

Cerb, Yes - my mistake - I meant PCI-e. I'd like to continue using the Nova T card for now and as Hezu mentions, it is a low spec card with no decoding capability. My remote frontends seem to deal with that fine.

Frank2003, I too thought that eSata was just a mechanical connection difference. I mention it only as a way of connecting extenal disks via a fast interface for ocasional backup which can then be removed to conserve power. I emailed Gigabyte about the virtualisation and it does indeed have to be enabled in the bios and the option is there. I can't find any info on the Biostar for this however but the Asus board also supports it.

Cerb, I can do without dual head for now given the way the machine will be used. It will likely display Windows most of the time for my wife. I rarely need to fire up the Linux desktop - it should just sit there doing it's stuff in the background.

Finally, I'd like to clarify the problem with the ATI drivers. Are the Linux chipset drivers OK ie sata disk controller, audio etc? Are the problems with video acceleration? Would I possibly be better off with a G33 or G35 board with an Intel chip. Trouble wth this option is that virtualisation support starts at the E4nnn chips which cost well over GBP100. I suspect the power draw will be higher too.

Thanks very much for taking the time to post on this.

drees · Post by **drees** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:24 pm

Ketan wrote:Finally, I'd like to clarify the problem with the ATI drivers. Are the Linux chipset drivers OK ie sata disk controller, audio etc? Are the problems with video acceleration?

The chipset drivers should be fine as long as you are using a recent distro/kernel.

The last time I tried an ATI card in my MythTV system about 6 months ago (admittedly a very long time in terms of Linux development), I had issues with video quality and stability. I first tried with the supplied X driver and later with the ATI binary drivers.

The situation may very well have changed by now, and I know it will vary depending on the exact ATI chip is in your video card. You would do best to search/ask MythTV related forums/mailing lists for a better/up-to-date answer to this question.

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:32 am

Will do dress. Many thanks for your advice and all those that posted.

It's likely I'll go for the Biostar given is low power draw - just as long as I can verify it supports virtualisation.

Thanks again

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:01 am

I can't take down my system right now to check the BIOS, but I found this description under BIOS>CPU Features in the Biostar TA690G manual:

Virtualization
The item allows you control the Virtualization function.
The Choices: Enabled (default), Disabled

arckuk · Post by **arckuk** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:14 am

I have a broadly similar setup to the one you are considering:
Antec Sonata
Seasonic 330 W PSU
Asus M2A-VM HDMI
Athlon BE-2350
2 x 512 MB ram
160GB seagate 3.5 hard drive (system)
500GB seagate 3.5 hard drive (media)
Compro DVB-T card

Ubuntu 7.10, running MythTV / web server / torrents / general browsing. The system serves media to two X boxes running XBox media centre, which is a fantastic piece of software.

This runs at under 50 W at idle with both disks active, I have the 500 GB set to spin down after 15 mins of inactivity, which takes it to around 40 W. At some point, I 'll probably replace the system disk with a scrounged 2.5" device to knock another 5 W off the power draw.

I haven't tried any OS virtualisation, but it is something I'm thinking of playing with at some point - I've certainly seen an option in the BIOS to enable this.

Ubuntu works fine with the hardware above - all the onboard components (SATA, audio) work, although the (AMD proprietary) linux drivers for the X1250 graphics on the 690 chipset are still not great. AMD seems to be making progress with this, albeit slowly. It seems to be possible to drive dual outputs using the latest AMD control panel, although I haven't tried doing so. For the moment, Ubuntu desktop effects are not possible with this board, due to the lack of a composite layer (whatever that implies).

This system is pretty quiet, when the 500GB disk is spun down (I replaced the stock CPU cooler with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64). Having been happy with previous Seagate HDs, the 7200.10 was disappointingly noisy, particularly when seeking - I wish I'd looked at other alternatives before buying it!

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:54 am

In lieu of eSATA you may want to consider using a disk drawer/caddy system like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817998007

I have been using the IDE version for years and have been happy with it. It is very compact and does not require external power. I think with the SATA version you can even add/remove the drive without shutting down the system.

Cerb · Post by **Cerb** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:48 am

Hezu wrote:
Cerb wrote:As long as you get a tuner with hardware encoding, you should be good for all cases.
From the list existing hardware in the original message, I noticed "Hauppauge Nova T" -card, which most likely means that the broadcast system used is DVB-T and in practice that means there is no cards with hardware video decoder (hardware encoding is not neeeded as the video stream what is coming from the antenna is already in digital format) as the only "full-featured" DVB-T card, TechnoTrend TT-DVB-T 1200 is no longer made.

*Looking it up now* I didn't realize that MPEG 2 was used for satellite/boxes, which yes, removes any need for encoding--just needs re-wrapping. Must have been proposed by silly Europeans.

And if the original poster meant PCI-e with PCI-X, in conjuction of DVB technologies and GNU/Linux that bus appears still be useless as currently there is no supported PCI-e DVB devices.

Since PCI-e 'normal' tuners are already popping up, it's only a matter of time, there. New R&D will definitely be done towards PCI-e.

On dual display: I've gotten it working just for Myth, and then just to play with my monitor, but...meh. In a year or two, we should have some awesome AMD drivers, but not yet (and when it comes to configuring stuff, nVidia's isn't exactly friendly).

Current ATi drivers may still crash, offer up artifacts, etc.. The move to open it all up will solve this issue, but I'm sure the lawyers would have had a fit if they opened up the binary drivers, so a nice fully featured driver that is also stable and easy to configure is a matter of waiting. It will exist.

Now, go ahead and try them. It won't hurt, and you could be one of the lucky ones that has no problems. If it screws up, all you have to do is change one line in Xorg.conf to go to a different driver.

I've tried with...
Ubuntu 7.04: NF2+9600XT, NF2+FX 5900XT, SiS746FX+GF4, SiS746FX+FX 5200
Ubuntu 7.10: KT600+FX 5900XT, KT600+9600XT, KT600+7000 AIW, P35+7300GT

nVidia's works better for me, but I went back to just using nv. Full res, no fuss, no extras.

Other drivers: I'm pretty sure support is solid for everything. The sound, SATA, ethernet, etc. are not new, and I know the older such chipsets have great support. Worst case, update the kernel, if it's not too new, so those modules can properly configure the hardware (likely not a problem with Ubuntu or Mythdora).

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 5:33 pm

Thanks for the great info.

Linux support on the 690G boards does worry me a great deal. I searched extensively on the Phorinix forums about Linux drivers and pretty much most people were frustrated with the state of them.

I need the Linux setup to be stable since this will be the host OS. This got me looking at Nvidia IGPs such as the Ait AN-M2HD based on the 7050 chipset. This seems to have what I need except again, I'm unable to confirm it supports virtualisation in hardware. I've emailed Abit but I don't expect a quick answer.

Any comments on this will once again be most gratefully received.

Thanks again.

butters · Post by **butters** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 7:21 pm

My advice is to wait a few weeks for the Intel G35 boards to come out and pair it with a Core 2 Duo E4500 (Allendale). That's probably the lowest power setup that has dual HDMI/DVI/VGA outputs and the VT/SVM extensions. Intel's Linux/Xorg open-source graphics driver is great.

Check out Mythbuntu. The control center in the Gutsy version is quite impressive, definitely by far and away the slickest MythTV distribution I've ever seen.

Ketan · Post by **Ketan** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:23 am

butters, I did consider this too as my current setup is Intel based and works amazingly well given how old it is.

I've been trying to find some reviews of G35 boards with some assessment of power consumption but have failed to find any info. Many reviews still don't measurepower draw. Also, I thought only the E6xxx cpus supported Intel VT? May be wrong about that. These chips cost around Â£100 which increases the cost quiet a bit, especially when the E2xxx chips have more than enough power for what I need.

I will probably look to buy all the components in January and hopefully there will be more G35 boards around then to be able judge whether it's worth going with Intel.