Help with Server hardware

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Dik1985
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Location: UK

Help with Server hardware

Post by Dik1985 » Thu Oct 09, 2008 3:04 am

Hi, Just wanted some help form all the knowledgeable people here. Ive tried searching around the forums and the net but its a difficult thing to find.

I currently have a server that I use mainly as a file store. jpg's, mp3's, avi's and HD mkv's which i run to 4 VMC's. I also run MyMovies SQL on it and download using uTorrent.

My current server is a beast: Q6600 G0, Asus P5K Dual gigabit, 2GB RAM etc etc. I have a 160GB system drive, 2x400GB, 2x500GB, 2x750GB & 2x1TB drives. 3 of those are external with 6 active in the Sever. OS is currently XP Pro but considering WHS.

My dilemma is this, I want to improve the power consumption, cos im guessing that its pretty high. considering its on 24/7 now (wasnt before) I want to change the MoBo and CPU to something more conservative, but its proving difficult to find.

Ideally, I'd like an atom CPU and a Mobo with at least 6 Sata ports (or a nice solution to add them) and at least 1xGigabit LAN port. Can anyone help with a suggestion for hardware and how i should go about it? Is this a suitable hardware config for what I want to use it for?

Please Help.

Thanks

Dik1985
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Location: UK

Post by Dik1985 » Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:53 am

No Suggestions?

kevral
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Post by kevral » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:25 am

I was looking for something similar; I wanted to build a mini-ITX WHS server for 24/7 operation.

At the time the Atom motherboard didn't come with GLAN and VIA's motherboards were fairly pricey. So I ended up going full-ATX with an AMD solution quite similar to my HTPC: a 780g motherboard and an Energy Efficient Athlon processor. Coupled with an Antec "80+" 380W PSU it draws about 40W with 1 drive.

Now the dual-core Atom motherboards are coming, and they have GLAN. They only have 2 SATA ports so will need an additional controller card, but I figure they'll make good servers. The additional SATA ports will cost you, however, and the Atom's current chipset is fairly hungry. I'm not so sure the dual-core Atom + SATA card will draw much less power than my 780g (with 6 native SATA ports) + 4850e.

Also, your current setup might not draw all that much wattage if it's idling most of the time. I think my gaming rig draws about 200W at idle, and it's similar to your server but with an 8800GTS graphics card that I believe is pretty hungry. So I'd recommend getting a watt-meter and testing your current power consumption before you upgrade. Might be you can get pretty far by just changing your CPU?

__Miguel_
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Post by __Miguel_ » Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:58 pm

Dik1985 wrote:No Suggestions?
Try taking a look at a review over at Tom's Hardware a couple of days ago, on the VRM11.1-compliant G31 boards.

In a nutshell, G31 (VRM11.1)+E7200+1 3.5'' 7200rpm drive stayed well under 60W max power consumption. And that's without voltage optimizations...

My guess is you could probably lower those figures to ~20W idle (down fom 31W) with some tweaking, and probably by using an E5200 (not sure on this one, though).

On the AMD field, 780G + low-power X2 (2000 or 4x50e) is the way to go.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

Miguel

born2code
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Post by born2code » Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:39 am

For 24/7 you want ECC. The only cheap way to do this is AMD.

Get an ASUS board. They seem to support ECC (but check the specs before you buy).

Dik1985
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Location: UK

Post by Dik1985 » Tue Oct 14, 2008 1:58 am

born2code, it sounds like you have yourself a server? What are the specs?

I plugged my Server into a power meter last night:

It runs at 120-130W when idle and goes up 2 140-150W when I run file transfers from all HDDs.

If I change to an AMD 4850e and a 780G board, would I see a decrease in your opinions.

P.S. My current build Motherboard has no Onboard Graphics so i've got an Asus 7300LE, would that be a power draw?

born2code
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Post by born2code » Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:50 pm

I ran a server in the past, but it wasn't anywhere near efficient. The high to run was one reason I shut it down.

jessekopelman
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Location: USA

Post by jessekopelman » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:56 am

born2code wrote:For 24/7 you want ECC.
For a home media server? Certainly ECC won't hurt, but it doesn't seem worth going out of the way for in this application.

ACook
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Location: In the Palace

Post by ACook » Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:43 am

if you can wait a week, i'll have some numbers for you

Seasonic S12II-380,380Watt
Asus M3A-H/HDMI
AMD Athlon 64 X2,Boxed, 4850E, Socket AM2
Asus EAH3450/HTP/512M,512MB, DDR2, PCI Express x16
2x Samsung Spinpoint F1,7200RPM, SATA II, 32MB, 1000GB
Sony-NEC AD-7200S Black
Scythe Floppy - Card Reader Combo

i'll test with and without the gfx card.

chose the asus over the spcr reviewed gigabyte cause it's got 6 sata ports and 3 pci, so I can put 2 dvb-s cards in with a ci-module as well.

BillyBuerger
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Post by BillyBuerger » Sat Oct 18, 2008 7:33 am

I have a 4050e with a Gigabyte 780g motherboard and it uses around 35W idle with a decent PSU. I don't know much about the Q6600 but would assume it would idle a little higher. Plus at least 10W for 7300LE and your current setup is probably around 50-60W idle. 6 internal drives probably use around 60W idle which gives you your 120W. So you may be able to cut out 10-15W idle. A 740G motherboard may be able to cut a couple watts off as well. It will still have 6 onboard sata ports but only two memory slots.

I don't know anything about MyMovies SQL, but my home server is running on an old 600MHz celeron, 384MB memory and 3 hard drives (10, 300 and 500GB) while using around 50-60W. Needed to add an extra card for SATA support though. It's able to serve up my files just fine plus some MySQL databases and apache/php running on ubuntu server. Probably wouldn't do so well with WHS.

erkan
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Post by erkan » Sat Oct 18, 2008 1:49 pm

My server consumes 42-44 watt idle with a 5 year old PSU. It is built with Gigabyte 780G motherboard and Sempron 1250 CPU. Plus it got 2.5" sys HD running 24/7 and 4 IDE HD:s which spins down after 1 minute connected to a IDE card.

With every HD spinning I think it runs on ~70 watt.

Running LAMP, Samba, FTPd and VLC-server on it. Runs quiet, I would prefer to have it down to 30 watt idle but thats no going to happen.

Q6600 is a great desktop CPU (have one myself) but slightly overkill in a causal home server environment. It consumes lots of power, even my undervolted Q6600 with 3 GB and 1x3.5" and IGP runs on 80 watt idle without Aero in Vista (consumes more with Aero on!).

Dik1985
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Location: UK

Post by Dik1985 » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:29 am

Thanks all for the help.

Im thinking of buying an E5200 and just replacing the CPU. Would this bring my power down or is it more worth my while to replace the board and CPU.

As the E5200 runs at 65W and the Q6600 at 95W is that all the difference i'll get?

Does anyone know if the P5K runs without a graphics card? or does anyone know if buying a REALLY low power graphics card will help?

cd8uk
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Post by cd8uk » Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:28 am

I've got almost exactly the same setup with my server and was also trying to figure a way to get the running costs down.
Currently I've got a Q6600 @ stock speed @ 1.1v, on an Asus P5B-E together with 1 80GB 2.5" system drive, 9 data drives, DVD, RAM, sata RAID card etc. powered by an Enermax 475 PSU.
Total power draw is ~145w idle (or ~190w at load) when all the drives are, eventually, idle.

I've considered swapping out the Q6600 for an E7200 but apart from wondering whether I'd actually see that miuch of a drop in idle watts, I'm a bit concerned about updating the bios (normally I would not care about a bios update, but as it's my server with my data on and it ain't broken I'm a bit worried about trying to 'fix' it).

The only really useful bit of info I can add is that my P5B-E runs quite happily without either onboard IGP or discrete PCI-E VGA card. I can remote desktop to the machine (running Vista Business) and adding a 7300LE only serves to add 10w to the idle draw and nothing else.

The only tactic I've come up with so far for reducing the running costs is to simply not turn the machine on so often and get it to turn itself off overnight if/when it does get used during the day. Not ideal but a start I suppose.

erkan
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Post by erkan » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:32 am

Off course you should nut run another graphics board if you have IGP, turn off sound in BIOS to, (saves you 1 watt).

Wow.. ~140 watt idle, and I thought my ~42 watt with all my data drives sleeping was bad :)

cd8uk
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Post by cd8uk » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:58 am

The P5B-E doesn't have an IGP so just wanted to point out that a server can run happily with no VGA of any type.

I've turned most BIOS stuff off (parallel, serial ports etc.), but yeah ~145w at idle is painful. I know I could buy new 1+TB drives and consolidate from 9 to 4 data drives but the cost, even with existing drive resale, would be exorbitant...

erkan
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Post by erkan » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:53 pm

If those drives stay spinned down mostly it is no problem IMHO.

On my Ubuntu server my sleeping hard drives sleeps until I access them unlike Windows where the drives start up frequently.

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