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Atom server build

M

mrmylanman

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
1,484
Hey all, I just built a home server based on the Intel "Little Falls 2" platform (essentially an Atom 330 with the old 945 chipset). The Atom surprised me with its speed, although I was going in to it with somewhat low expectations. It does not seem like it is a whole lot slower than my laptop which is running a 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

It is being used as a home server running Ubuntu Server. By the way, running that OS, all hardware is supported out of the box. No configuration necessary, which is nice. I am currently using it as a DNS cache as well as a Samba server. I plan on using it as a torrent box as well in the future (when I get another hard drive).

The gigabit ethernet is a good feature, unfortunately one I am not using though, because my router is only up to 100Mbps, so I will have to replace that eventually. The graphics capabilities don't matter to me any, because it's just running as a headless server now, and I just use SSH to get in to it.

Here are some pics, the case is an MI-008.

Here are the parts laid out
dsc_0243.jpg


Closer look at the board itself
dsc_0244.jpg


Here is the motherboard and hard drives installed
dsc_0250.jpg

dsc_0248.jpg


Here you see how half-height RAM comes in handy...
dsc_0249.jpg


With the power supply installed, things get real cramped
dsc_0254.jpg

dsc_0252.jpg


The only con I can think of so far for what I use it for is the fan on the chipset is loud. Not a hard thing to fix though. I am already getting shorter SATA cables and a different IDE cable so we'll see what I can do. It's a lot quieter than my desktop though (obviously).

Total purchase price: ~$174 after a $25 rebate from Newegg for a previous mis-hap that I had with them.
 
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That's awesome man, I've always wanted to have a little 330 system. I almost ordered one today but ended up going another way. Maybe with the next pay check hmmmmmm.
 
What other way? Building another system instead or did the money find itself elsewhere?
 
mrmylanman said:
What other way? Building another system instead or did the money find itself elsewhere?
Click to expand...

I was gonna use the 330 as my main but I found some nice open box deals on newegg. More bang for the buck as they say.
 
Nice build!

I'm assume you're using the stock MI-008 PSU. How's the fan noise on that thing?

Any chance of getting some kill-a-watt numbers? I'm really curious about the efficiency of the MI-008 PSU below 50 watts.
 
Yeah I have one at home I'll grab some numbers for you tonight when I get home.

There is a high pitched whining sound although I am assuming it is from the 40mm fan on the chipset.

Other than that the computer is very quiet.
 
Hey, nice build (I have the same but with a 12cm fan on the side), you can quiet donw the noise on the 40mm fan using fancontrol on ubuntu, I can post my config if you need it.
 
Alright, for Kill-A-Watt numbers:

It was drawing anywhere from 42-47W at bootup, and once it booted and settled down it now draws 41W steadily.

I decided to run two instances of cpuburn in Linux to see how much power it'd draw under heavy load and it was only 43W.

Specs in the sig so you know what other stuff my computer is powering aside from the board itself (note that it is being used headless).
 
Danny Bui said:
You might want to check out the review of the MI-008 over here about the noise level as well as efficiency of the PSU:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/apex-mi008
Click to expand...

That was extremely helpful. Did anyone else run "back of the hand calculations" to guess the efficiency of the PSU? I came up with 50% efficiency at 25 watts which is exactly what I'd expect from a commodity SFX supply.

mrmylanman said:
Alright, for Kill-A-Watt numbers:

It was drawing anywhere from 42-47W at bootup, and once it booted and settled down it now draws 41W steadily.

I decided to run two instances of cpuburn in Linux to see how much power it'd draw under heavy load and it was only 43W.

Specs in the sig so you know what other stuff my computer is powering aside from the board itself (note that it is being used headless).
Click to expand...

Thanks! :)
 
No problem sir. I'm not so sure how it'll go with a GUI although it responded pretty well to XFCE in Ubuntu. Logging in over SSH takes a while but it's not too bad (about 5-10 seconds for the password prompt to come up). Once logged in it's just fine. Network transfers are really good, I currently have only a 100Mbps router, but transfer speeds are about 12-14MB/s which is right at the 100MB/s mark so that's pretty good. Can't wait to try it out at gigabit speeds.
 
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