seeking advice for mini-itx low power server

jasperok

well to be honest i am not sure that i want a server but as i have cat5e throughout the house i want a machine i can plug into the switch and leave on so i can access all my saved music and video from any point.

low power consumtion is the order of the day and after looking around i am thinking it might be good to go with the following:
biostar 945GC-330 atom board with video/lan

http://www.biostar-europe.com/v3/app/de/mb/content.php?S_ID=409

looks like it will support windows 7 so future proof aswell.

i may well need a sata pci card as i have quite a few drives.

so basicly just wondering if i am going about this the right way? it works out cheaper than a NAS

what i am not sure of is powersupply? i will be plugging a minimum of 4 drives into the sytem thoug i doubt they'll ever be accessed simultaneuosly so what type of low power psu options do i have?

thanks

Solitaire

Depends on how many drives are being used. Using a dedicated nettop for hardcore 3.5" NAS is common practice but its also one of the few applications which force the use of standard-sized cases and PSUs. Cases due to the physical bulk of the ATX PSU and all the drives. And be careful with the PSU, and make sure to use a unirail design (Corsair, most Seasonics etc.).

The logic takes feck-all power to run but the 3.5" drives are another matter - the motors require a few watts each running, but need a big gulp of juice to get going in the first place. 2.5" HDDs aren't anywhere near as bad, but 3.5" units old or new can chug huge amounts of juice for the split second they take to spin up all platters, and a software-based NAS has a "dumb" startup sequence (unlike the staggered system on hardware RAID cards) which will spin up all HDDs simultaneously during OS startup. So the PSU gets nailed with the huge current load of half a dozen (or a dozen, or dozens) 3.5" HDDs platters spinning up. Not usually a problem if you anticipate this and use a suitable PSU, but many people will stick a server/NAS with some old PSU with multiple 12V rails or insufficient peak 12V output period. The problem is that these shunt off the HDDs together on a single weak rail, or even worse a bog-standard one already overextended running half (or more) of the entire PC as well! Half a dozen 3.5" HDDs will certainly rule out an mITX DC power brick!

For a medium NAS or small home server with less than a dozen 3.5" HDDs even a Corsair CX400 will do (single 12V rail with 30A capacity ) but the average 945GC Atom power brick thingie only has 5-9A of 12V output!

darcy.jonny

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jasperok

Ok -
I have a spare 450watt psu i can use -

I will be using 5 hdds and probably leave an optical drive connected just in case.

Does a psu only consume what the system draws from it or does it havr considerable usag itself?

thanks

Effluo

jasperok wrote: »

Ok -
I have a spare 450watt psu i can use -

I will be using 5 hdds and probably leave an optical drive connected just in case.

Does a psu only consume what the system draws from it or does it havr considerable usag itself?

thanks

The stated wattage of a psu is an indication to the max amount of watts it can give out.
How many watts the psu actually uses is to do with the psu efficiency, how accurate the indication of how many watts the psu can give out depends on the build quality.

It might be worth knowing what brand your psu is, as a poor psu might not even be able to give out half of it's indicated rating(am i right?) and even then not be at all efficient.

If low power is the aim of it all then you should find out the make of that psu