Low power customizable NAS?

Wed Oct 6 11:54:43 MST 2010

The power supply can make a big difference. If you run an Atom 230, or 
whatever on a 500 watt power supply then there will be more wasted power 
than if you used a 80+ efficiency 100 watt power supply. Power supplies 
generally get their highest efficiency near 50% of the rated watts output.
They may have used one power supply, large enough for all systems 
tested, so that there would be less variance between systems (caused by 
different power supply), however, that power supply would have been big 
enough for those more power hungry systems.

Kurt Granroth wrote:
> That's an interesting way to think about power consumption -- power 
> per "job", essentially, rather than just power over time.  I think 
> that if I was creating a media server that would do live transcoding, 
> then something like a Core i3 would definitely be the better choice.
>
> In my case, though, I just want a static server and so pretty much 
> none of the tasks will take appreciable amount of computing.  This 
> means that the idle and low-peak levels matter a lot more.
>
> On that note, I'm not sure how much I believe some of their power 
> consumption results.  They have an Atom 230 based system idling at 33 
> watts.  I've seen *multiple* results of an Atom N270 based system 
> idling at 10 watts (SSD) to 14 watts (2.5" drive).  Now the 230 is a 
> slightly different class of Atom and also has a more power hungry 
> chipset... but TWICE the power?  I'm dubious.
>
> That does make me want to track down some more power consumption 
> figures for the Athlon, though.
>
> On 10/5/10 2:29 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> This is something to consider also the Athlon 2000+ beat the atom
>> overall in power consumption, and the i3 did amazingly well in power
>> efficiency
>>
>> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,1997-5.html
>> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/d510mo-intel-atom,2616.html
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Kurt Granroth
>> <kurt+plug-discuss at granroth.com>  wrote:
>>> Thanks for the pointers.  Those definitely look more "industrial" than
>>> I'd prefer.  If I did roll my own, I'd certainly want to use commodity
>>> boards.  "Call for pricing" translates in my mind to "if you have to
>>> ask, you can't afford it" :-)
>>>
>>> The more I researched this, the more I realized that there are an
>>> embarrassment of choices!  The last I looked (5 or 6 years ago), it was
>>> relatively difficult to construct a silent and low power system with
>>> massive compromises.  Not so anymore.
>>>
>>> Now the question is at what level to settle on.  There's the SheevaPlug
>>> (and similar) that use up about 10 watts but need more storage and 
>>> can't
>>> really handle any notable processing.  Moving up a notch, you can get a
>>> N270 Atom mini-itx system that also hovers between 10-15 watts but is a
>>> bit faster and will typically have a much larger (up to 1 TB) hard
>>> drive.  Then you can move up to an NVIDIA ION system with a dual-core
>>> Atom and now we're maybe in the 30 watt range but this can handle HD
>>> output, if necessary.
>>>
>>> Decisions, decisions.  That's why I was kind of hoping that some local
>>> folks would have used some of these systems and could comment on how
>>> well they work for them.
>>>
>>> On 10/04/2010 01:42 PM, Kevin Fries wrote:
>>>> We used to use these great mobos from a company called CongaTec
>>>>
>>>> http://www.congatec.us/qa6.html
>>>> http://www.congatec.us/qcarrier.html
>>>>
>>>> This 95x140 motherboard and QSeven module can handle 2 Data drives.
>>>>
>>>> I know you said you would prefer not to roll your own, but if you do,
>>>> this is an awesome setup.
>>>>
>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>>> On Oct 4, 2010 2:27 PM, "Kurt Granroth"
>>>>> <kurt+plug-discuss at granroth.com
>>>>> <mailto:kurt%2Bplug-discuss at granroth.com>>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm looking for a NAS that looks roughly like so:
>>>>>
>>>>> o Very low power usage (~10 watts or less, ideally)
>>>>> o Can run squid or similar proxy
>>>>> o Can serve up files like you'd expect as NAS to do
>>>>> o Can stream media
>>>>> o Can run Linux or, at least, is customizable
>>>>>
>>>>> Anybody using anything like this already?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not opposed to rolling my own with mini-itx or the like but I'd
>>>>> prefer not to.  I do wonder if the proxy requirement is more of a
>>>>> deal-breaker since most NAS units try to stay strictly in the storage
>>>>> realm.
>>>>>
>>>>> One thought is adapting a Pogoplug or Seagate Dockstar or the 
>>>>> like.  I'm
>>>>> not yet sure if that'll do all I want, though.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any thoughts?
>>>>> Kurt
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>>
>>
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