Low power WHS box - recommendations for mobo needed
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 3:20 am
Noob post.....
My current Windows Home Server box is way too thirsty - 200W on boot, 140W full load, idle 100W. It has 8 drives in it, which don't help.
I think part of the cause is the CPU - a 64-bit Athlon 64 3000+. Whilst I have downclocked it to a 1.5Ghz and a minimum of 800Mhz when idle, with undervolting, I don't think this goes far enough (I am using RMClock).
I originally built it as a cheap box to test WHS. WHS works well for me, so as a result, I am considering building something more properly engineered towards being economical.
The motherboard is a cheap old ESC7610 job. This originally only had two SATA-I ports, so I added some PCI-SATA adapter cards to give me the extra ports - by dumping these I hope some power might be saved albeit a small amount.
I use the WHS box for backup and file serving media to various machines around the house. It only boots and comes online when the appropriate machine/s in the house boot.
I prefer to use AMD. I was thinking of one of the new dual/triple/quad core 45WTDP Athlons (the current cpu is 89W TDP), 2GB of RAM (it never exceeds 1GB in use) and a mATX motherboard.
Does anyone have mobo recommendations that can be undervolted easily and have 5-6 SATA-II connections with integrated graphics and a gigabit LAN?
The drives are:
2 x WD500 IDE
2 x 250GB IDE Hitachi
4x 1.5TB SATA-II Samsung green.
The Hitachis will go and will be replaced by a single green Samsung 1.5TB SATA-II drive. The WD's will stay for now.
Assuming all drives use about 10W on load and 3-5W idle I am probably looking at 80W load and 30-40W idle from them alone. My aim is to get idle power down to about 70-80W.
Comments?
TIA.
My current Windows Home Server box is way too thirsty - 200W on boot, 140W full load, idle 100W. It has 8 drives in it, which don't help.
I think part of the cause is the CPU - a 64-bit Athlon 64 3000+. Whilst I have downclocked it to a 1.5Ghz and a minimum of 800Mhz when idle, with undervolting, I don't think this goes far enough (I am using RMClock).
I originally built it as a cheap box to test WHS. WHS works well for me, so as a result, I am considering building something more properly engineered towards being economical.
The motherboard is a cheap old ESC7610 job. This originally only had two SATA-I ports, so I added some PCI-SATA adapter cards to give me the extra ports - by dumping these I hope some power might be saved albeit a small amount.
I use the WHS box for backup and file serving media to various machines around the house. It only boots and comes online when the appropriate machine/s in the house boot.
I prefer to use AMD. I was thinking of one of the new dual/triple/quad core 45WTDP Athlons (the current cpu is 89W TDP), 2GB of RAM (it never exceeds 1GB in use) and a mATX motherboard.
Does anyone have mobo recommendations that can be undervolted easily and have 5-6 SATA-II connections with integrated graphics and a gigabit LAN?
The drives are:
2 x WD500 IDE
2 x 250GB IDE Hitachi
4x 1.5TB SATA-II Samsung green.
The Hitachis will go and will be replaced by a single green Samsung 1.5TB SATA-II drive. The WD's will stay for now.
Assuming all drives use about 10W on load and 3-5W idle I am probably looking at 80W load and 30-40W idle from them alone. My aim is to get idle power down to about 70-80W.
Comments?
TIA.