Intel i5-2500T - Great performance and low power consumption

[walnuthead]

I found I was doing a lot more on my unRAID server than I thought I would be, so I decided to upgrade.  I wanted low power consumption with good performance for encoding/transcoding video, and hardware that was supported by ESXi incase I decided to use it.  The only other requirement I had was hardware remote management so I could easily manage the server without the need for a monitor or keyboard.

 

I decided I wanted the Intel i5-2500T CPU but was unable to find it available for sale anywhere.  After searching for what seemed like forever I finally located the processor available from A-Tech Fabrication in California.  The Intel DQ67OWB3 motherboard was selected mainly for it's 6 SATA ports, remote management, and it'll work well for ESXi.

 

I've been running the system for about 2 months now and I'm very happy with the build so far, it runs very quiet and cool.

 

Boot (peak): 138W

Idle (avg): 38W

Active (avg): 76W

Light use (avg): 63W

 

OS at time of building: 5.0b14

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500T

Motherboard: Intel BOXDQ67OWB3

RAM: Kingston KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G

Case: AZZA Helios 910

Drive Cage(s): 2xKingWin KF-4001-BK

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-430CXV2

 

USB Cable: 2xStarTech USB A to USB Motherboard 4-Pin Header

Fans: 2xSilverStone SC00L121 Suscool Ultra Quiet to replace drive cage fans

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master RR-910-HTX3-G1 with fan removed

 

Parity Drive: 2TB WD20EARX

Data Drives: 2TB WD20EARX, 2TB Hitachi 5K3000, 2TB Seagate ST32000542AS

Cache Drive: 2TB Seagate ST2000DL003

Total Drive Capacity: 6TB

 

Likes:

• Intel i5-2500T - performance when I need it, low power consumption when idle
  
• Intel AMT for out-of-band KVM
  
• KingWin drive cages - good airflow, reliable, cheap, hot swap
  

 

Dislikes:

• AZZA Helios 910 Airflow - too many fans and case openings provide very poor airflow, I fixed it by covering all the openings.
  
• KingWin cage fans - very LOUD, I replaced them with the Suscool 121
  

 

My original build was an AMD Sempron 145 and it worked very well but I was thinking about using ESXi and wanted video transcoding on-the-fly if necessary for the playback device.  I REALLY wanted a completely headless server so I would not need to plug in a monitor to access the bios, etc.

 

The Intel AMT out-of-band remote access is awesome and works with most any VNC client, including access to the bois from the VNC client.  This is really nice because there are VNC viewers available for nearly all platforms and most all of them are free.  Now I can manage everything remotely with full KVM support, it's really nice, and using a native OS X client to do it is also nice.

 

I did install and run unRAID under ESXi and installed Slackware and CentOS virtual machines and everything worked great in this setup.  I still haven't decided if I really need the CentOS and slackware servers and right now the system is booting to unRAID and not the ESXi install.  To switch back to ESXi I just need to boot to the ESXi flash drive.  I need to decide if I want to run everything on the unRAID machine, or leave it as just a file server and run all the other stuff on a separate virtualized machine.  I like the idea of keeping the unRAID install "clean" so I know the only thing it is doing is unRAID stuff and if there is a problem I don't have to worry about what else could be causing problems.  If I run it clean under ESXi, I can put all the other stuff on a separate virtual machine and if necessary, just boot directly to the unRAID flash drive to remove ESXi and the other virtual machine.

 

The longer I have the unRAID server the more uses I find for it and I'll likely be upgrading and changing the setup again.

 

 

 

 

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[Rajahal]

Thanks for sharing! An interesting 'budget' ESXi build!