Low-power router/file server. Need advice.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:57 am

Heh, those are my claims.

All numbers were derived from the "standard" CPU power usage calculation* based on AMD's TDP figure of 25w for fastest known processor of the MT line, the MT-40 clocked at 2.2GHz.

Please keep in mind, though, that you won't be able to mimic Turion64 power consumption with a 90nm desktop Athlon64, or even a 90nm mobile A64 for that matter. According to AMD, Turion64 uses transistors that have been designed for low-power opteration.

I intend to confirm this soon. I have a 3700+ Athlon64 mobile (basically a San Diego dressed in drag as a S754) and a Turion64 MT-34. I have rigged up a power meter and plan to test power consumption of the system using both processors from the wall at the same clock speed and voltage. Even at the same settings, Turion64 should consume less power, because of its transistor optimizations.

I will then test both processors at undervolted settings and compare the differences in power consumption.

All I'm waiting for now is my DFI to come back from RMA.

* overclocked wattage = default wattage * ( overclocked frequency / default frequency ) * ( overclocked voltage / default voltage )^2

EDIT: A few things I forgot to mention...

I also intend to test how heat effects power consumption of a processor. For example, an actively-cooled Turion64 running at 40*C should consume less power than a passively-cooled Turion64 running at 60*C.

And another thing about your power consumption figures, keep in mind that the circuits providing power to the computer are not 100% efficient. A safe assumption for the CPU power regulation circuitry is about 80%, so that means that the Turion64 at 20.5w would actually need to draw 24.6w from the power supply to get the 20.5w it requies. Then 70% efficiency could be assumed for an average power supply at minimal load, which puts power consumption from the wall for a 20.5w CPU at 32.0w.

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Sat May 28, 2005 6:04 pm

So this means not even the via are so power effectives, when you got a full system.
Thanks

raz0 · Post by **raz0** » Sun May 29, 2005 2:08 pm

frostedflakes: That will be _very_ interesting to follow. Please post here when you're done testing. I am eager to hear the results.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sun May 29, 2005 4:42 pm

Will do.

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Sun May 29, 2005 5:52 pm

raz0 wrote: flyingsherpa, nick705: A Pentium M is indeed interesting too, however, I can't seem to find the power consumption for the individual processors. The Pentium-M 730 Dothan 1600MHz is quite interesting and reasonably prices as well, but without knowing the power consumption, I am not going to buy it.

i'm not sure how accurate you want to know the power consumption, but SCPR has done a review and measured 40-50W under load for a whole system, and that is even with a separate graphics card. the review also states a 20W max and 7W idle for just the cpu, though i don't know where they get the numbers (though i'm sure they'd tell you if you asked). i still think P-M is your best bet, but others have also thrown out some decent ideas here.

retrofitter · Post by **retrofitter** » Tue May 31, 2005 10:45 pm

I have already done this: specs: p200mmx, 128mb sdram, rt8139 *2 3.2gb fujitsu hdd, 36 watts AC power consumption - http://members.optushome.com.au/funked/server , though you might want to use a cheap compact flash to ide adapter, available on ebay for a few dollars and a compact flash drive.

Make sure you remove all scratch operations from the disk, as the compact flash media can only take about a million rewrites. You need to basically stop cron, and have /var in a memory fs thats read and mounted on startup and saved to another location on shutdown. The constant log rotation will wear out the media as it is reading and writing to the same spot on the compact flash media. I am not sure if there are filesystem drives that can accommodate for this or not. However there is already a CF distro of some sort that supports packet scheduling. Also there is some broadband routers that support this as well, see http://pcrange.biz.

WayneSherman · Post by **WayneSherman** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:16 am

raz0 wrote:I have been wanting to build a router with QOS...My goals are to build a server that consumes maximum 50 watts in idle state...

Although you said VIA EPIA was too slow for you, these new products look promising:

Via C7 Processor runs at 2 GHz. at 20W peak (0.1 watt idle):
http://deviceforge.com/news/NS8589047379.html

And this one I think is the ticket:

VIA VT-310DP - Dual CPU board can run (2) Eden-N CPUs at 1 GHz. and 7W each. (Datasheet claims max 30W for a complete system - diskless). Includes integrated S3 Graphics UniChrome™ Pro AGP Graphics with MPEG-2 decoding & MPEG-4 acceleration. Dual Ethernet includes one gigE (w/ optional third 10/100 NIC). And....passively cooled:
http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia ... oardId=321
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden-n/

Regards,

Wayne Sherman

raz0 · Post by **raz0** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 4:41 am

WayneSherman: I've already read about those two products. It is, however, not possible to buy them anywhere yet, let alone in Denmark. I think it will be *at least* half a year before I will see any of these at Danish vendors.

AMD made a similar spec processor with low power consumption too by the way. No word on when they will be available either though.

retrofitter: Certainly a nice protect, I must say. Unfortunately, it is a tad too slow for my needs. The box will be operating as a file server, so it will feature at least one HDD - maybe two in RAID-1.

flyingsherpa: *Now* we are getting somewhere. Decent speed system with reasonable power consumption. Too bad the power consumption at idle for the entire system isn't mentioned.

lm · Post by lm » Wed Jun 01, 2005 4:57 am

raz0 wrote: retrofitter: Certainly a nice protect, I must say. Unfortunately, it is a tad to slow for my needs. The box will be operating as a file server, so it will feature at least one HDD - maybe two in RAID-1.

If you are using a 100Mbps ethernet, then there's no speed gains whatsoever from having more than 1 drive, as you are limited by the 12MBps speed of the network, which is at least four times slower than a modern hard drive.

raz0 · Post by **raz0** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 5:04 am

lm: That's why I said RAID-1 specifically. RAID-1 is mirroring.

raz0 · Post by **raz0** » Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:05 pm

Can anyone tell me if these numbers are more correct than the other numbers I've received in this thread?

Code: Select all

Mobile A64 2800+ LP
Oakville
D0 (F-1F-0) 08/2004
OEM: AMD2800BKX4LB

800~1800MHz
PowerNow!
1,35V
12,0~35,0W

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:05 am

hi, sorry i didnt spot this post earlier, but its just up my street!

anyway, its not really a file server but its a VERY powerful firewall/router.

I think im gonna blow everyone away when i say that the power consumption of my box is max 5W.

I use an "embedded pc" platform which is basically like a custom built motherboard with embedded cpu, ram, network ports and various other bits and pieces (no graphics card). For its disk, it uses a comact flash card - 128mb which is also minimal power consumption.

Its called "wrap" and you can find it here.. And runs an operating system based on a freebsd kernel found here.

The pcengines wrap platform can be loaded with alot of os's specially built for it, im not 100% sure but i think people have developed file system capabilities on some of the os's out for it. i know there are plenty of accessories for it to plug in various things like wifi cards (to turn it into a wireless access point) and ones that allow you to use an ide hard drive etc... check it out!

Seal · Post by **Seal** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:12 am

t0mb0 wrote:A mac mini may make a great file server, the only problem maybe if you want to run linux on it with airport as airport extreme is unsupported under linux.

However, it's small quiet and, according to this, draws only 20 watts and only 28 whilst playing a dvd!!!

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050 ... er-06.html

thats cool. i have a mac mini and its power brick is rated at max 45w and i guess it'd never use anywhere near that much. 28w whilst playing a dvd sounds great because not only will the dvd drive be using alot of current but the cpu will be under alot of strain too.

Low-power router/file server. Need advice.

Re: Low-power router/file server. Need advice.