Ever use a laptop for a home server? And question on low powered home server...

[spotdog14]

First off how much power does a typical laptop consume with a P-M 1.5ghz processor?

Anyways in my quest for a low powered home server I have been debating between a Via C3 and an Intel Atom system, then it dawned on me that a laptop does not draw that much power either and that would not require me purchasing more equipment.

The systems I am looking at are:

Home built C3 system:
2 gigs of DDR 533 ram
1TB HDD (desktop HDD)
no optical

Intel Atom system:
Asus Eee Box
1gb RAM DD2
160 gig HDD (laptop HDD)
no optical

HP Pavilion DV1040 Laptop:
1 gig DDR RAM
160 gig HDD (obviously laptop hard drive)
Intel Pentium-M 1.6ghz
DVD/CD-RW drive

What would be my best option for a LOW POWER home media server? My main concern is power consumption because this thing is going to be on 24/7 and I am not a fan of paying more to the electric company than I have to, and the cost of energy is just going to keep going up.

Anyways what do you think? Ill be running Ubuntu on which ever system I decide on, so any advice would be great! Thanks!

 

[Shockey]

Your biggest downfall for a laptop media server is your limitation to expand your storage.

You can build a low power server box fairly cheaply plus have to expandability later on.

My advice is to just use one of those systems above. When the time comes to upgrade build a system that doesn't use much power. Also would recommend using some kind of spin down for hard drives so they don't consume as much power when they are not access. (Might notice a performance difference. doubtful)

 

[Jay_2]

if you want low power on a 24/7 box get an SSD boot drive