Recommendation needed: Low power motherboard for 20 drive build

[nemloc]

I'm looking to build a 20 (or so) drive server and could use some help with regards the motherboard choice.  This server will have ample downtime where is it not serving any data and one of the key things is to optimize power usage.  I think key requirements are 2 x4 or higher slots for the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards, 4+ sata connectors on board, with a preference for video on board although if the motherboard can boot without video, I'm ok using a PCI video card for setup only.  It should not have the Realtec 8111E nic chip and I also would like to have a USB3 plug available for faster data movement to/from an external drive.  Right now the motherboard that seems to fit the bill is ASUS M4A89GTD PRO which I was thinking about coupling with a Sempron 140 or 145.

 

Some questions:

1. What's a realistic idle power consumption for this size of a machine?  (sleep I assume is around 2-5w)

2. Where can I find motherboard power consumption comparisons?

3. Is there another motherboard that you would recomment?

 

Thanks.

[Rajahal]

If it is within your budget and available in your area, I think the Supermicro X7SLA-H-O is perfectly suited to your needs.  Superbiiz currently has it for $130, Newegg is $160.  Considering it includes a CPU, I think $130 is a very reasonable price.

 

I run one of my test servers on this board.  The first one I had I purchased off eBay for $100, so its origins were a bit dubious.  I had some problems with it randomly restarting.  I RMA'd it with Supermicro and the replacement I received has been completely reliable for several months now.  The Supermicro RMA process was easy and painless.  I had to pay for initial shipping, which was less than $10.  Supermicro took care of the rest.

 

Note that since it is an older board, it takes older, slower RAM (max capacity is 2 GB).  You have to be very careful with Supermicro boards to choose RAM that is tested and approved for that board.  This is the RAM that I use with this board:

 

Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR533D2N4K2/2G

 

The board supports dual Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards for up to 20 drive support.  You could add another one or two drives on the PCI bus as well if you really need them, but anything more than a single drive will introduce a bottleneck into your system.  If you put a single data drive and your cache drive on the PCI bus then you should be OK, there wouldn't be a significant bottleneck.

 

I don't have any exact power consumption figures for you, but an Atom CPU is about as low as you can go.  Pair it with green drives and you'll have a neat little power sipping server with a massive capacity.

[joshpond]

I have the Asus board that you mention with onboard video. I believe it has a realtek NIC which is troublesome. Some people have reported no errors with it but I had a few with mine. I just put an Intel PCI nic in which was easy enough.

 

Will also run 2 supermicro cards, I think the newer firmware and bios work together but I haven't tried it.

 

Honestly it is stable as but if money and availability is not an issue I'd try the supermicro stuff. It was just too difficult and too expensive to get here.

 

Josh

[nemloc]

If it is within your budget and available in your area, I think the Supermicro X7SLA-H-O is perfectly suited to your needs. 

 

Thanks for the details.  Will this proc be able to run transmission and also serve up two HD movies to various front end?  No transcoding, just acting as the remote SMB file share for MCE Extenders.

 

Also, is there a list of idle power consumption for the various Supermicro server boards?  Folks seem to favor them here and I'd love to understand the power differences between the various X9s, X8s, and this X7.

 

Thanks again.

[Rajahal]

If it is within your budget and available in your area, I think the Supermicro X7SLA-H-O is perfectly suited to your needs. 

 

Thanks for the details.  Will this proc be able to run transmission and also serve up two HD movies to various front end?  No transcoding, just acting as the remote SMB file share for MCE Extenders.

 

Also, is there a list of idle power consumption for the various Supermicro server boards?  Folks seem to favor them here and I'd love to understand the power differences between the various X9s, X8s, and this X7.

 

Thanks again.

 

Streaming movies, no problem, the Atom will do fine.  As for transmission, I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it will also do fine.  The issue you are likely to run into is that running hundreds of torrents requires quite a bit of RAM, and this board maxes out at 2GB of RAM.  Many people who run lots of torrents use 4 or even 8 GB of RAM.  If you only want to run a few torrents at a time it will be fine.

 

I don't know of any list of idle power consumption, sorry.  I can run some tests on the board I have, but I won't have any data from other boards to compare it to.

[hanabi]

Rajahal, will the Supermicro X7SLA-H-O recognise the full capacity of the new 3TB hard drives? I'm also looking for a new low power MB, for use with 3GB drives.

[JackBauer]

I LOVE my X8SIL-F-O.

 

I could not imagine buying anything for this type of application without IPMI.  So unbelievably convenient when diagnosing a problem.  (Like I just had today...  Wasn't a HW issue, a "user error", and IPMI made it painless for me to figure out the problem...  E.g, I didn't have to move the server or a kb/monitor to it)

[Rajahal]

Rajahal, will the Supermicro X7SLA-H-O recognise the full capacity of the new 3TB hard drives? I'm also looking for a new low power MB, for use with 3GB drives.

 

It is compatible with 3 TB drives in unRAID.  You can see my test results here.

[nemloc]

I don't know of any list of idle power consumption, sorry.  I can run some tests on the board I have, but I won't have any data from other boards to compare it to.

 

Did you end up getting a chance to check out the idle wattage for the X7SLA-H-O?

 

Thanks.

[Rajahal]

I don't know of any list of idle power consumption, sorry.  I can run some tests on the board I have, but I won't have any data from other boards to compare it to.

 

Did you end up getting a chance to check out the idle wattage for the X7SLA-H-O?

 

Thanks.

 

Sorry, I forgot.  I'll do it today.  If you don't hear back from me, PM me.

[Wizardtm]

I'm also looking for a low power board because I think my problema are because of a faulty mb.

 

Could the x7sla also run sabnzb properly ? Or will the low amount of ram and the "slow" processor be a bottle neck ?

[Rajahal]

I don't know of any list of idle power consumption, sorry.  I can run some tests on the board I have, but I won't have any data from other boards to compare it to.

 

Did you end up getting a chance to check out the idle wattage for the X7SLA-H-O?

 

Thanks.

 

Here it is:

 

Book (peak): 40W

Idle (avg): 36W

 

This is an X7SLA-H-O with no drives installed, but a SIL3132 card plugged into one of the PCIe slots.  The SIL3132 card probably pulls 2-3W by itself, so the motherboard alone may use up even less energy than what I wrote above.

 

Wizardtm: I do believe the X7SLA-H-O is a poor choice for anything besides basic NAS use.  As you said, the slow CPU and limited RAM will severely limit your choices when using add-ons.  I don't know much about sabnzb specifically, but my general advice is to go for an i3 build if you want low power and the ability to run any add-on you want.

[technojunkie]

 

Wizardtm: I do believe the X7SLA-H-O is a poor choice for anything besides basic NAS use. 

 

I have to agree with this statement. I've had poor luck trying to run much else on my X7SLA-H. Problem is, that what I want to run is mySQL, subsonic, and crashplan. All of them are memory hogs.

[nemloc]

so I just got this motherboard and hooked it up.  One thing I tried was putting more ram in it.  Haven't tested it fully yet, but sticking 2 2g sticks in there showed up in the BIOS as 4g detected 3.5g  useable.  Putting two 1g in made it read 2g installed and 2g useable.  Anyone ever try to run it with the increased ram setup?

 

so far I'm loving the super low power usage (31w when idle right now)

[Rajahal]

so I just got this motherboard and hooked it up.  One thing I tried was putting more ram in it.  Haven't tested it fully yet, but sticking 2 2g sticks in there showed up in the BIOS as 4g detected 3.5g  useable.  Putting two 1g in made it read 2g installed and 2g useable.  Anyone ever try to run it with the increased ram setup?

 

so far I'm loving the super low power usage (31w when idle right now)

 

Huh, interesting.  I've never tried it since Supermicro claimed it wouldn't work.  Sounds like you took a gamble and it may have paid off.  What RAM are you using?

[nemloc]

so I just got this motherboard and hooked it up.  One thing I tried was putting more ram in it.  Haven't tested it fully yet, but sticking 2 2g sticks in there showed up in the BIOS as 4g detected 3.5g  useable.  Putting two 1g in made it read 2g installed and 2g useable.  Anyone ever try to run it with the increased ram setup?

 

so far I'm loving the super low power usage (31w when idle right now)

 

Huh, interesting.  I've never tried it since Supermicro claimed it wouldn't work.  Sounds like you took a gamble and it may have paid off.  What RAM are you using?

 

I'll double check tonight/tomorrow when my current preclears finish.  I tried 2g and 1g modules from Kingston (Value) and Nanya which I had laying around or in other machines.  I tried two sets of 1g and two sets of 2g just to see if there was any difference and there wasn't. 

 

From memory (will update with model numbers later): One set was 2g 667 ECC x2, one set was 2g 533 x2, and two different sets of 1g 533 x2.

 

Any ideas why it would recognize the 4g and only report 3.5g?  sounds like a 32bit vs. 64bit addressing issue.  I can't remember what unraid showed when it booted since that was in the bios.  I was in a hurry to get the preclears started for the night.

[Rajahal]

...sounds like a 32bit vs. 64bit addressing issue...

 

That would be my guess as well, but I really have no idea.