Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3337 mails)

[Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 08:34 -0600, Cody Nelson wrote:
> I could use help in picking out hardware for a personal low power
> server I want to set up.  The server will be a printer, http, file,
> ftp, and X11(maybe) servers. currently using a celeron 433(dell
> optiplex GX100) but I want something lower power, maybe a little more
> power (for the X11), and to put in a rackmount case that I recently
> acquired. the dell mobo is made for the case it is in.
[snip]

> I also want to use my existing sdram (100-133mhz) so low cost is
> important. (doing this move to save money remember?)

You'll have to choose between saving money and saving power.  Although
you could argue that the money you spend on low power hardware will be
made up by your electricity bill.

For a real low power machine with some oomph, I would use the VIA
boards.  You get them up to a 1GHz, and they're plenty quick for a home
server.  Most of them have either one IDE port and two SATA ports, or
two IDE ports, and most have only one PCI (although they all have sound
and USB onboard, and two onboard network controllers aren't uncommon).
So with this in mind, I'll add a 3ware IDE raid controller and hook up a
couple of notebook drives onto it.  This will use by far the least
power, and be the quietest.  You could find both the 3ware card and I'm
pretty sure the notebook drives on ebay.  Most of the VIA boards use DDR
though, but DDR these days isn't expensive, and exactly how much memory
do you need for the tasks you mention?

If the notebook drives are not an option, using desktop drives will push
up your power usage so much that adding a proper desktop board +
entrylevel CPU won't make that much difference.  I would use an AMD
Sempron 2600+ (1.6GHz).  It's performs very well and is a bout the best
performance per watt you're going to get in desktop class hardware.

Hans