[Prof Yaffle]

Hi, all - time to pick the brains of the XBMC Massive. Can I ask for some opinions here, please...?

I've convinced myself that I'm finally going to have to take the plunge and build my own server - my Synology box doesn't hack it any more, and I can't find what I need off the shelf. I want x86 because of flexibility (I thought about ARM and PPC in various guises, and dismissed them).

Given the price of electricity, power consumption is important, since this is a 24x7 NAS, proxy/filter, tvheadend server, maybe some more. From what I can work out, while the Atom looks low-power, and is in use, it doesn't have any idle states, so isn't so great in the background. Any Ivy Bridge i3/5/7 will actually idle at lower power, and then have more oomph when (if) needed. I could also go down the Celeron route if that makes sense - I don't *have* to do any transcoding or anything CPU-intensive, not really.

I'm thinking of a 5 x WD Red RAID5 setup with separate (maybe 2.5", because I have them spare) boot drive, using rsync to back up to my now-repurposed Synology.

PicoPSU if I can make it work, since the efficiency appeals - 160W should drive the whole system if I get it all right.

Probably ECC RAM (software RAID, I'm expecting), single stick to save the power.

Unlikely that I'll get many PCIe slots so I'll keep my tuners on USB. SATA-3 or SATA-6, doesn't matter in practice, but I clearly need half-a-dozen of them.

But the motherboard... it seems that a mobo can take anywhere from 7W to 50W on its own, and that's a big chunk when you've got maybe a 35W or 45W TDP CPU, plus the motherboard doesn't idle at all. Then you're into bigger fans to keep it cool, and I'd like it to be quiet and unobtrusive (I was considering the Fractal Design R4 case, since it'd live in my office at home).

Thoughts? Am I on the right track with the broad components, and what are the thoughts on CPU/mobo given the "low power" brief?

Supermicro do a decent Atom board, but everyone does a socket 1155 board, so it's really hard to make sense of what's out there...

Thanks for any opinions/experience/guidance.

[flabbamann]

Hi,

i built my NAS with similar thoughts in mind here is where it went:

• ASUS AT5IONT-I Atom D525 Mini-ITX Board (completely passive!)
  
• Fractal Design Array R2 Mini-ITX Case supporting up to 6x 3.5" and one 2.5" drives (there are not many Mini-ITX Cases out there supporting more than 2-4 drives, but this seems to be discontinued now...)
  
• 1x 250GB Drive for the OS (huge overkill, but I had it around...)
  
• 1x 2TB Drive for Data (will be upgraded to RAID-5 one day...)
  
• 1x LSI 8308elp RAID-Controller as the Mainboard only has two internal S-ATA ports
  

Power consumption is around 30-40Watts. I think thats a good value, as most people burn more energy lighting their bedroom

The main Problems I encountered:
My RAID-Controller does NOT support drive spindown, so the drives run 24/7. This is not the best thing if you want to keep the power consumption low, and it may shorten the drives lifetime... Maybe this would work better if I used those "green" drives, as (I think) they do the spindown on their own, not caring for the controller (does this even make sense in a RAID?).

I have Openfiler running on the machine, which i do not recommend! You won't get updates anymore, some things just don't work so you need to edit the configfiles manually, and they become overwritten next time you use the web-frontend .
And the underlying rPath linux is a hugh pain in the %$#&^...
I think Openmediavault is a better solution, but i didnt try it yet (never touch a running system )

[Prof Yaffle]

Thanks, flabbamann. I'd decided to stay clear of all of the NAS-alike OSes - for better or worse, I'm sticking with Ubuntu and I'll bludgeon RAID into life from there. ZFS seems to be the way to go from what I can see; all software and fakeraid configurations are at the whim of memory errors, though, which is why I was looking for ECC RAM, but that seems to be non-existent on a consumer mobo, and I don't need the hassle/size of going down the Xeon route (there is some rumour that the i3 et al do support ECC despite what Intel says, but it's not worth the grief). I'll make sure I have good backups :-)

Hopefully ZFS would better support spindown. You raise a good point with the green drives, I'll need to look into that - otherwise you're burning another 20W constantly and probalby wearing them out in the process. Your RAID card isn't a cheap option even if hardware RAID is preferable.

Case... yeah, it's the R2 or possibly the Bitfenix Prodigy at that size, or you go up a notch to a bigger case than you need. Maybe that helps with airflow, though, even if it's not as neat.

Asus does a mini-ITX 1155 H77 board with five or six SATA connections, so that's my current favourite. From your experience above, it doesn't look like your Asus ATOM board is really a significant overhead on the processor - maybe 10W, 15W or so, depending on what your RAID controller pulls.

Thanks for the thoughts, gives me some more to chew on. I'll post here as anything else crops up in my journey (and what the end result is, whenever I actually get there!).

[GortWillSaveUs]

Is unRaid an option for you? You can set the spin-down time for the HDDs.
Also,...I've never heard of someone using a PicoPSU on a server (more than 4-5 HDDs).
Not saying it's not possible,.....but I'm just not sure that's an avenue to go cheap on. (I understand you're doing it for low power and not price)

Raid5 is not something I'd recommend for a typical home user,...UNLESS you plan on backing up your server data off-line and on a regular schedule.
Why: If you lose 2 drives,...you're data is gone. Not so with unRaid,..where you can read data directly off of each surviving drive.

[noggin]

Yep - I second unRAID as an option very much worth considering. Drives can spindown when not in use (and if you set your subdivision levels correctly you can ensure that DVD/Blu-ray folders stay on a single drive even if you mount them using user shares.) and all of your drives are readable standalone should you have a failure of more than one drive (unlike many RAID systems where the drives are only readable when part of an array)

[flabbamann]

hum, that unRAID thing sounds really great. maybe i will give it a try when i upgrade for more disks.
this is a complete linux distribution, right?

[GortWillSaveUs]

hum, that unRAID thing sounds really great. maybe i will give it a try when i upgrade for more disks.
this is a complete linux distribution, right?

Essentially yes,...but it's pretty much all behind the scenes stuff (Meaning no command line configuration).
All configuration is preformed via internal web page.
unRaid is loaded on a USB stick (or button) and boots from that device.

[Prof Yaffle]

My struggle is just trying to do too much, I think - hence the PicoPSU on top of everything else. I'd go unRAID except I don't believe you can add more packages (e.g. tvheadend), so I'd be back to a standalone NAS. I have an offsite mirror of the data, so I've more protection than most.

Maybe need to think again about having more than one box, perhaps.

[GortWillSaveUs]

Actually unRaid does allow for some add-ons to work side-by-side.
Check out Lime Technology's web-site and forums.
Good luck!

[Dougie Fresh]

The ASUS P8H77-I with a Celeron G530 would work very well. I think it's probably the best balance of power and consumption if you plan to do more than just serve files.

Also, the ASUS C60M1-I has 6 x SATA ports and is very low power.

I have the ASUS E35M1-I in my server. It's in a Lian-Li PC-Q08 case with 5 x various HDDs and a 64GB SSD running WHS2011. I used to have it running off a picoPSU but felt better about having it run off a FSP Group FSP300-60GHS-R 300W SFX power supply.

[PobjoySpecial]

...

[aptalca]

My struggle is just trying to do too much, I think - hence the PicoPSU on top of everything else. I'd go unRAID except I don't believe you can add more packages (e.g. tvheadend), so I'd be back to a standalone NAS. I have an offsite mirror of the data, so I've more protection than most.

Maybe need to think again about having more than one box, perhaps.

Unraid has plenty of addons/plugins

On my unraid server I am running sabnzbd/couchpotato/sickbeard, mysql (for xbmc and digikam), plex media server (for remote streaming), virtualbox (WinXP client to run my security cam software), apcupsd (for clean powerdown on power outage), and I used to run crashplan for backups

and btw, here's the tvheadend plugin for unraid: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...ic=20782.0

[Prof Yaffle]

The ASUS P8H77-I with a Celeron G530 would work very well. I think it's probably the best balance of power and consumption if you plan to do more than just serve files.

Also, the ASUS C60M1-I has 6 x SATA ports and is very low power.

I have the ASUS E35M1-I in my server. It's in a Lian-Li PC-Q08 case with 5 x various HDDs and a 64GB SSD running WHS2011. I used to have it running off a picoPSU but felt better about having it run off a FSP Group FSP300-60GHS-R 300W SFX power supply.

I'd found the P8H77-I - that seems like the best Socket 1155 board for this job. I know little about AMD, so hadn't seen the C60M1-I - thanks for that steer, I'll have a look. The PicoPSU may be a false hope, I think I'm banking on getting far more out of it than is actually realistic, it's just that I've read that the efficiency of ordinary PSUs is awful at < 10% load, and getting a 200W 80+ Gold presents a real challenge.

and btw, here's the tvheadend plugin for unraid: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...ic=20782.0

Yes, I found that after this thread started bubbling. That's really put the metaphorical cat amongst my equally metaphorical pigeons. Indeed, since I have an off-site mirror that updates twice a day (and could easily be more), I'm starting to question whether RAID is actually worth anything beyond the convenience of rebuilding the machine relatively quickly if I were to lose a drive. I could always just use one of the drives and take a second in-machine backup (selective RAID 1, if you like, albeit with a delay) for the more precious items like photos, since I can always re-rip the CDs and DVDs if catastrophe struck.

All good thoughts, guys, and much appreciated.

Does anyone have any real-world experience of the power drain on an i3 or higher? Are they genuinely as low-power as is rumoured?

All I want is an overclocked i7 with a few terabytes of rock-solid storage space that backs up in seconds, re-encodes in minutes and only consumes a couple of watts at peak times. I mean, how hard can it be? ;-)

[GortWillSaveUs]

All I want is an overclocked i7 with a few terabytes of rock-solid storage space that backs up in seconds, re-encodes in minutes and only consumes a couple of watts at peak times. I mean, how hard can it be? ;-)

You Brits,.....you're so funny! Next you'll be asking when Amazon has their 100% off sale.

[Fry7]

Does anyone have any real-world experience of the power drain on an i3 or higher? Are they genuinely as low-power as is rumoured?

I'm running a
Core i3 3220T IvyBridge 35W on an
Intel DH77DF with
2x 8GB low power 1333MHz DDR3,
1x 128GB mSATA,
1x 750GB 2,5" and
3x 2TB WD (1x Green, 2x Red) inside a
Lian Li PC-Q25B powered by an
Enermax Triathlor ETA385AWT (80+ bronze).

Host OS is Win7x64, running two Virtual Boxes (1x WinServer11 for WSUS and DNS, 1x Sophos UTM as Firewall, VPN etc.).

Powerconsumption while idle is about ~30W, max power if encoding 1080p material never goes higher than ~55W, the box stays cool and quite quiet (?!).