Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

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Vicotnik
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Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Vicotnik » Mon Nov 22, 2010 6:30 am

Been using a cheap NAS for a while (740G + Sempron) and it does the job well. But I would really like something a little bit smaller and a little bit more power efficient. I'm a bit obsessed with low power consumption and I will probably be able to sell of the parts of my old NAS pretty quickly. So mini-ITX it is.

I have a hard time deciding between something like the Asus AT3IonT-I or DH57JG with an i3-540. The latter is a little bit more expensive (about 2100 vs 1200 SEK for the Atom) but it's so much more faster. And more fun. :)
Other parts of the system would be a PicoPSU 120W, 2GB DDR3 and four Samsung 2TB drives (one spinning, three sleeping). How much would the idle power consumption differ?

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by MikeC » Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:18 am

Not sure why you need an ION chipset -- it draws more power than the Intel chipsets for Atom but does not give you any real benefit in a NAS. Ah... but it is much easier to find an ION board with 4 SATA ports than an Intel Atom board.

But this one is available at newegg for only $100 --
GIGABYTE GA-D525TUD (Intel Atom D525@ 1.8GHz 1M L2 cache BGA559 Intel NM10)

Looks like great value... and it will surely draw less power than an Intel DH57JG with i3-540. Only downside is dealing with the little heatsink/fan.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Vicotnik » Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:17 am

I thought that ION would make it work as a base for a HTPC later on, but I'm probably better off not thinking like that and instead go with the cheapest and the lowest power right now. From the comments on the Gigabyte board on Newegg: "It would be nice if it didn't have two different SATA controllers. It's not a huge deal since I'm not doing raid. But it would still be nice." Not ideal but perhaps it shouldn't present any real problems with just four drives and no RAID?

The board is just 800 SEK, I might go with this one. Thanks Mike! :)

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:57 am

Vicotnik wrote:How much would the idle power consumption differ?

An Atom based nettop should idle at least just under 30W, and about 20W for the most efficient NM10.
This happens because unfortunately desktop Atoms are far less efficient than mobile ones (which idles around 10W including the TFT screen).

The Intel mITX H57 with an i5-661 on the contrary should idle at a mere 17W. A Xeon L3406 should do even better.

Of course, a Clarkdale costs more than any dual core Atom, sometimes a lot more. You may do the math by yourself, I guess.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:02 am

MikeC wrote:it will surely draw less power than an Intel DH57JG with i3-540

Are you really sure, Mike? Some numbers seem to say not so definitely.

Maybe a more sure reason is that it's pointless having so much horsepower (and so many bucks spent) just to spin a bunch of drives.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by MikeC » Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:30 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
MikeC wrote:it will surely draw less power than an Intel DH57JG with i3-540

Are you really sure, Mike? Some numbers seem to say not so definitely.

Maybe a more sure reason is that it's pointless having so much horsepower (and so many bucks spent) just to spin a bunch of drives.
At idle, many of these CPUs are quite similar, with ll the energy saving features Intel builds into them these days. But at load, no contest... tho it's questionable whether an i3-540 would ever see full load in a NAS setup. The price difference is pretty compelling, tho.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by HFat » Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:40 pm

Efficiency of power supplies matter a great deal when comparing idle power comsumptions which are only a few W apart. At a given price point, the Atom solution will generally consume substantially less energy (at the cost of lower performance). Be careful not to compare apples and organges.

I understand D525 is an overclocked D510 and consumes more power. You may want to avoid it if you want low power.
Mobile Atom boards are available but more expensive. Server Atom boards with many SATA ports are also available but they're expensive as well and tend not to be very efficient.

If I was living in Sweden (which has fairly green electricity), I would not be replacing a 740G file server right now. Buying new electronics has a cost in terms of energy, pollution and resource depletion.
I am hopeful that better low-power products will be available next year.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Lawrence Lee » Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:59 pm

quest_for_silence wrote: Are you really sure, Mike? Some numbers seem to say not so definitely.
You're comparing AC measurements of Atom boards to DC measurements of H55 boards. The DH57JG pulled close to 30W AC though the PSU used with the D510 was probably more efficient.

On a personal note, I wouldn't bother making any physical changes to my existing 24-7 server unless I could save at least 20W. If I actually had to buy new gear to do it, I would bump that number up to 50W. Most of the time it's just not worth it IMO but then again an extra 10W running 24-7 only costs me about $6 in electricty.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:04 am

Lawrence Lee wrote:You're comparing AC measurements of Atom boards to DC measurements of H55 boards. The DH57JG pulled close to 30W AC though the PSU used with the D510 was probably more efficient.

Holy crap (© by El~Jefe, I guess)! Very luckily I wrote: «seem to say "not so definitely"»!
Well, taking into account an estimated (by SPCR) efficiency of 82%, the Atom 2.0 platform should have an idle DC consumption ~15W (so the H57 with the i5-661 idles 2W more, instead than 1W less than it), while the first Atom iterations should go for ~21-22W. I've stood corrected.
Lawrence Lee wrote:On a personal note, I wouldn't bother making any physical changes to my existing 24-7 server unless I could save at least 20W. If I actually had to buy new gear to do it, I would bump that number up to 50W. Most of the time it's just not worth it IMO but then again an extra 10W running 24-7 only costs me about $6 in electricty.

Yes, I agree: while, from a quietness perspective, probably it's more straightforward to "silence" a somewhat standard platform in some mITX cube, than most of those costly fanned net-top platforms (and even if mobile Atom platforms idles well below those above quoted values, I mean ~9-11W: on the other end TDP shouln't lie, >30W for most common N330 platform, ~5W for a "Z" one).

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Vicotnik » Tue Nov 23, 2010 6:56 am

Thanks for all the replies guys. I'm still undecided, maybe I'll just wait for a while before upgrading.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by ilovejedd » Tue Nov 23, 2010 8:29 am

Vicotnik wrote:Thanks for all the replies guys. I'm still undecided, maybe I'll just wait for a while before upgrading.
That's probably the best option. I think a Celeron Sandy Bridge should work well. Let's just hope the H61 chipset has enough SATA ports (4~6 would be good for a mini-NAS). H61+Celery Sandy should make for a nice low-power, inexpensive NAS. If not, then Llano's supposed to be rolling out around the same time and we should see a lot of Zacate/Ontario options by then. :P

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by MikeC » Tue Nov 23, 2010 8:50 am

Asus has a new mini-ITX board for Sandy Bridge, model P8P67-I w/ every feature under the sun that's coming soon for ~$150. No pics were allowed at the Asus Tech Event, unfortunately.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:59 am

Vicotnik wrote:maybe I'll just wait for a while before upgrading.

If you'd go for an Atom, maybe this one will be less noisy and more capable than the Gigabyte (for some bucks more):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500048

Another pathway pass through a low cost mITX AM2 (and undervolting your Sempron):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500045

but just to shrink the overall dimensions: while, if you want a more efficient one, you may go through some of the few AM3 mITX boards (Sapphire, Jetway, ASUS), for the same cost of the above quoted Atom 2.0 solution.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by MikeC » Tue Nov 23, 2010 11:17 am

quest_for_silence wrote:If you'd go for an Atom, maybe this one will be less noisy and more capable than the Gigabyte (for some bucks more):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500048
Hey that's a mini-DTX board! One slot wider than min-ITX, form facvtor introduced by AMD a couple yrs back. Interesting... Newegg's 6 SATA port spec contradicts Zotac site, which says 4 SATA + 1 eSATA. But pics of the board show 4 black and 2 orange ports. I wonder if it's using 2 different controllers for the SATA ports -- whether the Intel chipset supports 4 SATA or not? Maybe only 2 -- all the Intel Atom boards only have 2 SATA. 6 USB on back + onboard pins for 4 more. As usual Zotac is going for the whole kit kaboodle.
Another pathway pass through a low cost mITX AM2 (and undervolting your Sempron):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500045
Tough to beat that $40 price! But probably can't idle as low as an Atom board... w/o a lot of tweaking.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by washu » Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:57 pm

MikeC wrote: Hey that's a mini-DTX board! One slot wider than min-ITX, form facvtor introduced by AMD a couple yrs back. Interesting... Newegg's 6 SATA port spec contradicts Zotac site, which says 4 SATA + 1 eSATA. But pics of the board show 4 black and 2 orange ports. I wonder if it's using 2 different controllers for the SATA ports -- whether the Intel chipset supports 4 SATA or not? Maybe only 2 -- all the Intel Atom boards only have 2 SATA. 6 USB on back + onboard pins for 4 more. As usual Zotac is going for the whole kit kaboodle.
That board is using two controllers, it has to. The NM10 only has two SATA ports. The way that particular board works is there are 4 ports total, two on the NM10 (the orange ports) and two on a JMicron controller. One of the JMicron ports is the eSATA while the other is fed to a port multiplier giving the additional 4 black ports. The port multiplier apparently causes some issues, but I've never tried the board myself. I wouldn't expect that running 4/5 drives through a single PCIe lane would work very well.

If you want good disk performance and 6 ports then get a board that supports them all naively in the chipset.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by ilovejedd » Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:59 pm

MikeC wrote:
quest_for_silence wrote:Another pathway pass through a low cost mITX AM2 (and undervolting your Sempron):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500045
Tough to beat that $40 price! But probably can't idle as low as an Atom board... w/o a lot of tweaking.
I'd be very wary of this board. I've had 3 Zotac boards crap out (ION or GF9300) and there have been several reports of these models dying. While failed components is bothersome in a regular PC, they're ultimately fixable. For a file server though, I'd want to have utmost reliability.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Tephras » Tue Nov 23, 2010 5:44 pm

MikeC wrote:Asus has a new mini-ITX board for Sandy Bridge, model P8P67-I w/ every feature under the sun that's coming soon for ~$150. No pics were allowed at the Asus Tech Event, unfortunately.
There's a photo of it here.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by Vicotnik » Sun Nov 28, 2010 4:29 am

How about Intel D945GSEJT? Mobile Atom and chipset, internal power supply and DVI. But only two SATA ports. I could add a PCI SATA controller I already have. Do they draw a lot of power? I also have a 512MB DDR2 SO-DIMM and a Broadcom PCIe mini card. Would be fun to find a use for that stuff.

But would a single core 32bit Atom N270 with 512MB RAM be enough for a server? In addition to being a file server I will also use it for stuff like a Mumble-server, Urban Terror-server and similar.

The board is fairly cheap though (just under 900 SEK), and with that DVI output it could be used as a small emulator box or something in the future. Could even be wireless.

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Re: Atom or DH57JG with an i3 for NAS?

Post by washu » Sun Nov 28, 2010 6:25 am

The D945GSEJT is very low power. There is a review of it on SPR. It is a fair bit slower than the Pineview Atom boards, less than half the speed. Not only is it single core, but it is also 32 bit only, so no 64 bit OS. Also, the Pineview boards with extra HD controllers like the Gigabyte one have them internally on PCIe. So more of your HDs could run off PCIe controllers instead of PCI. Basically it's a trade-off between lower power and speed.

That board with 512 MB should be fine for just a file server and a few other lightweight tasks. I've never used Mumble or Urban Terror servers so I can't say that it would be enough.

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