# Ultra low-power consumption home server



## hammong

Get a quality 80 Plus Gold rated PSU, mini ITX motherboard, i3-3220, two low voltage (1.35v) DIMMS, and some WD Green or Red HDD. Idle power consumption with power management enabled should be minimal -- my media center PC draws less than 30 watts while idle with the drives spinning. Power consumption goes up a bit when under load, but that's to be expected.

OS can be Windows 2012 Server, Windows 2008 R2, or a Linux derivative. Pretty much any up-to-date OS with power management capabilities should do the job.

Greg


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## Dyson Poindexter

Get yourself an old Atom netbook and an external hard drive, power consumption would be in the 10 watt range and you have a UPS built into it. Mine can sustain 50 or so Mbps across the network, which is about 10 times what is needed for streaming video.


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## Bl00dyMurd3r

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> Get a quality 80 Plus Gold rated PSU, mini ITX motherboard, i3-3220, two low voltage (1.35v) DIMMS, and some WD Green or Red HDD. Idle power consumption with power management enabled should be minimal -- my media center PC draws less than 30 watts while idle with the drives spinning. Power consumption goes up a bit when under load, but that's to be expected.
> 
> OS can be Windows 2012 Server, Windows 2008 R2, or a Linux derivative. Pretty much any up-to-date OS with power management capabilities should do the job.
> 
> Greg


This, i3's are extremely power efficient and deliver a lot of bang for your buck.


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## Jwilliams01207

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Bl00dyMurd3r*
> 
> This, i3's are extremely power efficient and deliver a lot of bang for your buck.


I agree with an i3 being a great choice for a small home server like the Op is wanting.
I built one using an i3-3225 and a Gigabyte Ga-H77n-Wifi and couldn't be happier with it.

Edit:
I only chose the H77n-Wifi because it was originally built to be a budget friendly Hackintosh, but I needed a home server more than I ended up using the Hackintosh.
It did however, turn out to be a great motherboard and I couldn't be happier with it.
There are cheaper ones that would perform as well for what you're wanting.


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## kyle5281

See http://www.overclock.net/t/1428346/home-nas-first-time/0_60#post_20848527 for some low power builds I put together. Just pick a PSU that is Gold/Plat rated and you are good to go.


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## meangreenbean

Thanks for the replies, guys. Keep 'em coming!


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## meangreenbean

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kyle5281*
> 
> See http://www.overclock.net/t/1428346/home-nas-first-time/0_60#post_20848527 for some low power builds I put together. Just pick a PSU that is Gold/Plat rated and you are good to go.


Low power indeed, but not inexpensive


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## kyle5281

Low power/SFF and Inexpensive do not mix. You can either have one or the other for cheap, but not both. Keep in mind a big part of that build was high end HDDs. Take off the 4-6 HDDs and you are looking at around 4-500 for base system that is expandable.


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## meangreenbean

Very true, but I believe that a grand or more falls considerably far away from inexpensive


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## Dyson Poindexter

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *meangreenbean*
> 
> Very true, but I believe that a grand or more falls considerably far away from inexpensive


I still say get a netbook and external hard drive. Plan for 150 for the netbook, and another 150 for a 4TB drive.


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## meangreenbean

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Dyson Poindexter*
> 
> I still say get a netbook and external hard drive. Plan for 150 for the netbook, and another 150 for a 4TB drive.


I bought a netbook years ago with an atom and a 16GB ssd running Windows xp, with 2GB ram. Stuttered all the time. Gave me a sour taste in my mouth. Have they fixed these issues?


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## Dyson Poindexter

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *meangreenbean*
> 
> I bought a netbook years ago with an atom and a 16GB ssd running Windows xp, with 2GB ram. Stuttered all the time. Gave me a sour taste in my mouth. Have they fixed these issues?


Nope, but the usage case is entirely different.

I've got an N450, single core 1.66 GHz with 2GB of RAM and magnetic storage. It's a file server, FTP server, Litecoin wallet, and SMTP relay among other things. The only time the CPU is really stressed is during big FTP transfers (It's using TLS with a 4096-bit key) and even then it maxes out my internet line.


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## meangreenbean

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Dyson Poindexter*
> 
> Nope, but the usage case is entirely different.
> 
> I've got an N450, single core 1.66 GHz with 2GB of RAM and magnetic storage. It's a file server, FTP server, Litecoin wallet, and SMTP relay among other things. The only time the CPU is really stressed is during big FTP transfers (It's using TLS with a 4096-bit key) and even then it maxes out my internet line.


How will a higher end netbook handle 720p or 1080p mkv transcoding to my 360?


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## Dyson Poindexter

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *meangreenbean*
> 
> How will a higher end netbook handle 720p or 1080p mkv transcoding to my 360?


I installed mediacoder to mine and I'm getting about 3 FPS on transcodes from AVC to mp4. A dual core atom would do better, but certainly not real-time. I've been wanting to set up mine to transcode WTV files overnight but haven't messed with it.


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## meangreenbean

Hmm. Well I need on-the-fly mkv to mp4 streaming to the 360. What do I need for that?


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## Dyson Poindexter

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *meangreenbean*
> 
> Hmm. Well I need on-the-fly mkv to mp4 streaming to the 360. What do I need for that?


I'd guess a quad core CPU or a decent gpgpu video card. But neither will be low power consumption. A haswell would be nice I guess.


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## kyle5281

Modern Quad cores are pretty power efficient. You could probably get away with a Dual Core if you are not simultaneously transcoding on more than 2 different devices.


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## cones

I remember reading somewhere that an i3 was good enough for about two video streams at a time. I would assume it'd be fine for one stream. Correct me if I'm wrong.


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## beers

What is your budget and/or power envelope you're looking for, anyway?
Granted you could build an ITX Haswell machine without blowing up a moderate budget, it'd be more helpful to have specifics.

Also, the quad core parts also have a pretty reasonable power savings as well.
4770K + 7x HDD set not to spin down, for reference.
Quote:


> [[email protected] ~]$ ups | grep Load
> Load......................... 54 Watt(6 %)


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## meangreenbean

Well, cheap is good. I actually have some parts already that could be used. If I came close to needing 1TB, I would be surprised. I don't hold on to media for very long. I really just want something to do on-the-fly transcode, as I mentioned, and stream music from while on the road.

I have quite a few parts already.
1045T
M5A97LE R2.0 OR a M4A78LT(from my old Asus Essentio. Flashed from the stock CG1330 BIOS to the retail BIOS)
2x4GB DDR3
550w psu
Corsair h80

I suppose I could run off of this stuff. It's still power efficient until under load, which is fine with me.

So I guess lets do a little derailment. Smallest case possible, OS and storage hdd, and optical drive, and HSF, or use the H80. What about OS and software? Will I need a strong GPGPU to do what I want, or will the 1045T handle it?

Edit: I should mention, this is nothing mission critical. It's simply a media server with a weekly backup for generally useless files. Basically, I'm building this because I want to spend money and enjoy building.


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## cones

Most of the programs I know rely on the CPU for decoding. Personally I would use Linux as the os. Look into Plex for video streaming, for music I use subsonic but they recently moved to a subscipsion but I love it for music streaming. Curious what do you want a CD drive for?

I'd just use those parts you already have an get anything else you may need, you should be able to disable some of those cores on the CPU if you end up not needing them all to save power.


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## meangreenbean

Well, really want a Blu-Ray drive for ripping my collection. That, and DL BR disks are nice for magnetic storage backup, just in case.


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## cones

Blu-ray makes sense I was just curious, I still wajt to get one but they are more expensive then I want to pay for one.


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## meangreenbean

I think the price on them is pretty good these days


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## ndoggfromhell

I went with a HP microserver. To be honest, it's build quality is better than anything I could put together in the short term. It doesn't draw much power (my electric bill increase wasn't even very noticable) and I run it 24/7/365. I have 1 SSD for boot, (4) 3 terabyte drives for storage. Running WHS2k11, it spins down the drives not in use... so that helps the electric bill as well. Solid build, designed to work headless. You can run a ton of different OS's on it... even virtualize and run many different OSs on it. (a relative has one with a quad nic card in the expansion slot... it's his firewall/content filter and his file server all in one.

I got mine used for under $200 and even new on the egg they aren't too expensive. HP just came out with a new model too and it's priced decently.


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