my lowpower mini-itx system

[BRiT]

I thought I'd share my current build system information. It may be useful for those looking to build a low-power system while having good performance.

 

CASE: Chenbro ES34069

PSU: 180 watt option

MB: Jetway NF93 mini-itx (14.5 watt)

CPU: Intel P8600 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo mobile (25 watt)

RAM: 4Gig - 2 DDR2 800 SO-DIMMS

USB: SanDisk U3 Titanium 8Gig

DVD: slimline ide dvd burner

HDD: 1TB WD FALS 7200rpm boot/system/noncache drive

HDD: 3 2TB WD GreenPower parity/data/data drives

 

Here's the power draw numbers as measured at the wall with a P3 kill-a-watt meter.

 

---

[glow=orange,2,300]Watts[/glow][glow=orange,2,300]Activity[/glow]

92BIOS cold boot/post activities

53unRaid booted after 1 minute

74unRaid forced all drives spin-up process

49-53unRaid after all drives spin-up

61-62unRaid parity check

37unRaid drive spin-down idle

---

 

The majority of the time the system when not in use sits at the spindown idle state 37watts and while streaming data at the spinup state 49-53 watts.

 

The initial numbers on a drive parity check are 97,949 ~ 101,234 KB/sec with final numbers from syslog being 75,253 KB/sec. Network writes on Gigabit to the parity protected user-shares are 13-14 MB/sec.

 

Overall I'm fairly pleased with the results.

 

I have plenty of space available but do have a plan for data storage expansion baring larger drives being available. I plan on using a 4 port PCI sata card that supports port-multipliers. The initial connections will be direct to drives in external mini-enclosure. Should I need more than 4 additional drives I'll use the port-multiplier capability run to external port-multiplier 5 drive mini-enclosure(s). I'll keep the most frequently used data on the internal drives and move the less frequently used data to the slower external connections.

 

[RobJ]

Would you mind telling us what those parts cost you?  And many of us would appreciate those figures in US dollars, if you don't mind!   

 

Very interesting system by the way, performance-wise and power-wise.

[BRiT]

Despite the nickname, I'm an American citizen living in the NorthEast Ohio region.

 

Oh, I paid a pretty penny for the system, much more than most would consider. Here's the prices today from where I ordered at not including shipping charges. I built this system two months ago, so some prices were more but others were less, but overall it's about the same costs.

 

$190 - Chenbro mini-itx case with 180watt psu EWiz

$219 - Jetway nf93 Intel G45 mini-itx motherboard LogicSupply

$190 - Intel P8600 mobile Core 2 Duo EWiz

$26 - 2 * 2Gig SODIMM DDR2 800 EWiz

 

The other bits are any slimline optical drive, the usb flash drive, and then the cost for your hard-drives.

 

The other Socket P mini-itx board I considered was the Gigabyte GA-6KIEH-RH, but newer graphics and higher fsb support won out.

 

I considered using the normal Intel LGA775 platform (Intel DG45FC $115@NewEgg) with newer 45nm cpu in mini-itx but some posted they were running close to 120watts (Comments). It wasn't until later I found the 180watt psu option was actually available somewhere.  I considered the Intel Atom platform but that didn't seem as interesting of a choice and a bit of a hassle as none of the available boards had 4 sata ports.

 

[Note to Moderators: Apologies if linking to external vendors isn't permitted, feel free to remove them]

 

 

 

 

[c234rmf]

 

I considered the Intel Atom platform but that didn't seem as interesting of a choice and a bit of a hassle as none of the available boards had 4 sata ports.

 

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9832

 

1.6 GHz dual core Intel Atom 330 processor with fan. Features 6 RS-232 COM support, 4 SATA (3 Gb/sec.) connectors, VGA, dual Gb LAN, and wireless connectivity. Economical, reliable mainboard ideal for a wide range of applications.

 

"Only" 6 rs232 ports though!

[BRiT]

Yes, that's a decent Atom board.  At the time I ordered the equipment it wasn't in stock or carried and I was already leaning heavily on something higher up the performance chain. If I didn't have plans to also do some development work (mySql/php/apache/vBulletin) on it, the Intel Atom would have been my choice. I had my system built in June. I was researching the choices since December but didn't pull the trigger til later. There always seemed to be something being released "real soon now" / "in a week or two" that I kept waiting on and then one part or the other would be out of stock.