so Im looking to build a bigger low power nas


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so Im looking to build a bigger low power nas

so Im looking to build a bigger low

power nas

The nas only gets used for streaming local movies to tablets and to back up some files not much,

I use docker for pi-hole all so on it.

I work at a non-profit computer refube shop

Most of the system that comes in is dell & hp oem 4-5 gen intel and older stuff

There are 100s of computer there on average 10-15 pallets worth.

right now im useing a lenovo mahobay really just a laptop board with 8 gigs of sodium ddr 3 and a Intel® Core™ i3-3220T Processor (cpu is 35 wats)

I have a 500 gig ssd drive in it now.

the thing is only 65 watts total its great

I can only use one 2.5 drive.

I have not really see any thing better for a low power NAS

I would like at least 4 sata slots and run some 3.5 HDD

I dont mind doing a new build or using some stuff from the place I work at.

Thanks

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Hi,

 

Anything from Intel second gen has decent performace and low idle power consumption so 4th and 5th gen gives you plenty of options.

 

A good few years ago I imported a reasonably priced 25W 1.6Ghz dual core Athlon II 250u and was happy with the idle power consumption. Later this was replaced with a 95W 3.0Ghz quad core Athlon 640 X4 in exactly the same system and the idle power consumption actually dropped a few watts!

 

Low wattage CPU's are mostly just capped in the clocks they can boost to so stay at full boost for much longer to get a task done before dropping back to idle, overall power consumption is not that different. Unless you have specific ongoing workloads, your unraid nas will be near idle most of the time so idle consuption is the focus. Even if you are transcoding, you can usually pass that off to the iGPU so the CPU doesn't have a lot to do.

 

My current Dell T20 E3-1225V3 is a 4th Gen haswell, with 8 x 3.5" drives spun down, 4 x SSD active, two 8 port LSI raid cards and an external SAS 4 bay enclosure with independant power supply on the same UPS I'm at around 65W idle. WIth everything spinning closer to 90W. Before I added all the raid cards, extra drives etc. Annual electricity cost £90 ~ $110. For info, the Dell idled around 40W with a couple of drives.

 

If you can find something with iGPU, I3 2C4T or I5 4C4T and the most SATA ports you won't go far wrong to get set up. The issue you may have is proprietry PSU's, motherboards, cases etc which could limit expansion but if you get any server hardware in, picking a tower with a reasonable number of drive bays and a CPU comparable to desktop such as the E3 series should net you a reasonablly efficient system.

 

One thing to avoid is filling it with lots of small repurposed HDD's... this will soon add up as power consuption. Less is more when it comes to spindles, and if you can strech to a reasonable SSD for the cache drive, the array can sleep most of the time with the SSD only pulling a couple of watts.

 

 

 

 

 

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so it was my understanding if I have a 500 watt psu with a 65 watt cpu my draw is still  going to be at least 100 watts at idle. are you saying thats not true?

I have access to any hardware you can think of  from  xeon work station to a lot of rackmout servers.  

Most are dell and hp after market  oem stuff. 

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21 hours ago, raven.warsong said:

so it was my understanding if I have a 500 watt psu with a 65 watt cpu my draw is still  going to be at least 100 watts at idle. are you saying thats not true?

Not true.  Or at least, certainly not always the case.  My main server system (see my sig) has a CPU with a maximum dissipation capability (what the manufacturers call TDP) of 95 watts.  I also have 12 drives, 3 fans for drives, one on the CPU, one on the rear of the cabinet and one added for the Dell H310 host adaptor for the disks.  This system sits at 54 watts with all drives spun down.   It will hit 300 watts and up when all the drives spin up at the same time and when the CPU is busy, hence I have a 520 watt supply installed. 

 

If I had a more modern CPU and motherboard, with fewer, larger disks, etc, I could expect an idle power consumption of maybe around 40 watts or lower.

Edited by S80_UK
Typo corrected
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As S80 says, the processor uses a lot less power at idle, power consumption scales with voltage and frequency. As a rule, you typically need more voltage to run at a higher frequency.

 

At full load a 65W CPU may be running at 4Ghz and 1.3V while at idle it can drop to 800Mhz and 0.8V so may only need 5-10W.

 

Sounds like you have a lot of hardware choices. If power consumption is a signifcant factor, I'd stick to something relatively simple, a big dual core server with onboard raid controllers and noisy fans could easily idle at 100W+ and be overkill for personal use. (though whoever said they have too much capacity)

 

Unraid is system agnostic so will boot in almost anything. You can move the USB stick and drives to a totally different system and it should still boot. Take a USB stick with trial Unraid installed and a killawatt meter to work and test a few systems you like the look of. Drive power consuption relates to the number and types of drive so taking a base line of a driveless system is a good comparison point.

 

One other thing to note, Hard drive power consumtion is mostly linked to the number of drives so filling your server full of repurposed low capacity drives would need a lot more power and a bigger PSU to deal with start up surge (2A per drive) than a few high capacity drives.

 

 

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5 hours ago, suender said:

I have exchanged my Ryzen 1700 (over 70 Watt, no bios modifications) into this system since yesterday: J5005. (4 Cores)

 

I have with 2x10TB HDD and 1X500GB SSD only 24 Watt (IDLE). Maximal Performance I get 32 Watt.

 

Those processors offer amazing performance per watt, actual perfomance almost on a par with the old 65W TDP I5 2500s I have in a H61 mITX board but at a fraction of the power usage under load.  The only issue for me is the platform has such limited upgrade options so you have to be confident you won't outgrow the system.

 

If I was spending my own cash on a new budget build, I'd mostly likely go for  Pentium G5400 in a uATX B360 motherboard. 6 sata, 4 standard dimms, PCI-E x16, x1, x1. CPU is faster in single thread and mulithread while peaking at 25W underload. You'll have to add in some platform and system losses which will bump it up a bit, but still I'd take the flexibility over a few extra watts.

 

 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13660/amd-athlon-200ge-vs-intel-pentium-gold-g5400-review/20

 

Just goes to show, how low we can go.

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