Hi All

 

I'm about to build a new Micro NAS for my home setup. I've always used mini-itx boards as power commission is one of my main design parameters. Up to now I've used a Linux single disc setup with a cloud type offsite backing up critical data but I've been testing unraid and I'm about to pull the trigger and buy a licence (very rare for me   ), what finally swung it for me is the option to use VM's  My kids are at the Minecraft stage and using turnkey's Minecraft ISO I can run a server for them to play on.  So here is my dilemma:

 

My current setup is an AMD A10 5745M with 8GB Ram and 4 x 1tb 2.5 drives. Running 3 video streams and the minecraft server it peaks at about 50watts (previous system ran at 15 watts max) with an average load of 29.5watts.  The system is about 40% CPU and 35% Ram, I'm really impressed with what Unraid can do.

 

What I would like to do is many run a few more VM's ideally I want to use Turnkey's Domain controller iso so I'm been looking at a AsRock C2750D4I which uses the intel Atom C2750 as the heart of the system.

 

On paper the Atom is a slower older chip (2014) and uses slightly more power the board commands quite a high price but they do have more and enough sata ports (as well as an 8 core processor) and using EEC Ram which is cheaper would allow me to max it out at 64GB.

 

Should I stick with the A10 or see if I can get a AsRock board cheap enough? Maybe a third option?

 

Thanks

 

Paul

Edited July 27, 20178 yr by IrishBiker
speeling

The Atom C2750 would be a bit of a step up, 8 cores vs 4 and 3344 Passmarks vs 2768.  That said, I've only seen one or two people trying to run serious VMs on systems this old/small.  Generally people are throwing *a lot* more horsepower at a system for VMs.  I'd try to assess how much processing power your VMs would need.  In theory the Atom could run a couple more of light weight VMs than the A10, but I'm not sure how practical that is.

 

unRAID's requirements are pretty modest, it will run with 2GB of RAM and ~1,000 Passmarks for itself, though 4GB and 2,000 Passmarks is a better idea.  Once you start up the VM manager those numbers all go up, though - there is overhead associated with running virtualization.  Therefore, either of the chips you're looking at require a good chunk of their base capacity to run unRAID.  So the question is, how much "work" do you want your VMs to do, and how performance sensitive is that work?  FYI, the SOC systems you're looking at are pretty low power and low horsepower, but standard mini-ITX motherboards are available for Intel Core/Xeon chips if you want more horsepower for your VMs.

My rig uses less than 20W when the drives are spun down, and with 4 drives spinning and the CPU busy it uses about 60W.  The CPU has 6175 Passmarks, so plenty of oomph for VMs.

 

I have 3x 120mm fans running, and it's currently running off a severely over-specced 750W PSU.

 

 

My HTPC idles at 8W, spec also in my signature. It's running off a 150W PicoPSU.  It's very possible to get very, very low power consumption with a 'real' CPU.

Edited July 28, 20178 yr by HellDiverUK
Typos

Thanks for the notes. I managed to get the atom board at a good price, so I'll play with that one for a while and if it does not work out, back on eBay it goes

 

@HellDiverUK I did look (and am looking) at I3 and i5 cpu's along with the pico power supplies, if the atom does not work out I'll def look at something along your lines.  What drives do you use as the cpu is going to be about 50-60 watts on its own (at full steam).

Drives are listed in my signature, but I run a NVMe M.2 Samsung cache drive, and 3x6TB Seagate Ironwolf data drives, and a 8TB Seagate Archive for parity.

 

50-60W for the CPU is unlikely - my overclocked Ryzen barely uses 60W, there's no way in this world a stock i3 or i5 is going to use anywhere neat 60W unless you're running Prime95 or some nonsense.