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Supermicro Duel: MBD-X8SIL-F-O vs. MBD-X7SPA-HF-O (Power Draw?)


JackBauer

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Hey guys.

 

I'm trying to decide between these two MB's.

 

MBD-X7SPA-HF-O  would get me up to 14 HD's, in a mid tower case, for up to 26TB of data, assuming that someday when 3 or 4 TB drives are supported, that it would not be an easy migration to them.  (If it were, I'd probably go with this MB)

 

MBD-X8SIL-F-O  would get me up to 20 HD's - at least in the type of cases I'm interested in.  (The Norco is too frickin big for my tastes)  That would get me up to 38TB of data.

 

I plan to do everything within reason to keep the power and noise down, especially since I foresee the server being on 24x7 because of WOL challenges.

 

I don't mind spending a little extra more in things like the case, in order to future proof myself better...  Although there are probably diminishing returns - by the time I fill up 26TB of disc space, there may very well be 10TB drives available....  It then would be kinda silly me having thirteen 2TB discs when I can have three 10's.

 

Anyway while I don't mind future proofing, I do have concerns about the power draw of the two MB's.  I know the i3 and the Atom draw have similar TDP's.  However the MB's I'm not so sure about.  The i3/xenon one is a lot bigger, and has a lot more on it.  I thought I saw the power draw somewhere on here for the MBD-X7SPA-HF-O  board, full powered, bootup, and all drives spun down.  (I don't know where, but my search could bring it up again).  However I cannot seem to find the same for the MBD-X8SIL-F-O.

 

Does anyone have that type of information?  I really am interested in minimizing that power draw.

 

(Oh and feel free to provide any other comments on these boards...  I'll listen :)  )

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I too am interested to see the results of this, however I don't think you will get any meaningful responses. The only way to test one against the other is to use an identical setup to test against. Since power supplies vary in their efficiency at these low output levels, the only way to get real numbers is to test with the same power supply. The number and type of disk installed will affect the numbers as well, because not all disks draw the same power when spun down. Based on the sizes of the heat sinks on the two boards, I think they would be very similar. I would expect the power draw for the two boards to be within a few watts of each other.

 

Have you seen these figures for the X8SIL

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5133.msg84806#msg84806

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I don't have either board, but I have had both an Atom and i3 Unraid and can say for certain the power draw is very similar (my i3 idled at 45 and the Atom at 43) with the same power supply and number of drives. With everything spun up and running parity the i3 was at 70 while the Atom was at 66. However the i3 was much faster.

 

I would vote the i3 if you plan to do anything other then basic unraid use.

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Thanks guys.

 

Somehow while I think I read through that thread - I missed the details in the content of the last post there.

 

Very helpful.

 

Overall - going with an i3 over the Atom will cost me about $20/year in electricity costs.

 

It's probably a worthy expense - considering I might be streaming a movie to my media player, while writing from another pc...  Probably is helpful to have at least some power in the box.

 

(It will only be a NAS though, no ripping/recoding, etc...)

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It's probably a worthy expense - considering I might be streaming a movie to my media player, while writing from another pc...  Probably is helpful to have at least some power in the box.

 

(It will only be a NAS though, no ripping/recoding, etc...)

You can do all that with a Sempron.  The CPU has almost nothing to do with true NAS functions like streaming and writing.  Those are functions of your NIC, your hard drive speed, and your controller throughput.  The purpose of having more CPU horsepower is to handle ancillary things like torrents, virtual box, and eventually q-parity.  But you're right in that $20/year is next to nothing, and if the X8SIL had been out when I bought my X7SPA earlier this year, I probably would have gone with the X8SIL.  But as far as streaming to multiple clients goes, the Atom never gets above 2 - 5% load.

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Yeah, but you can buy a standard 24 pin extender for like $10.  And for bottom mount PSU cases, it works perfectly.  Is it really that bad?

 

Yeah I was thinking that.  NewEgg has such a thing for like $15. 

 

I'm not sure if in the end it will be needed though so I might just try to wing it and hope it reaches.

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