Low Watt AM3 not AM3+ for NAS

U

unholythree

Limp Gawd
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Sep 23, 2011
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What was the lowest watt tri/quad core AM3 (not AM3+) CPU? I'm looking to upgrade my NAS.

I originally planned on building a new NAS from scratch: Opteron 3350 HE on an ASUS mATX board (for ECC support); however the 3350 HE is hard to find, and all the mATX AM3+ motherboards I've seen seem inferior to the mATX 880G in my desktop.

So new plan: upgrade my desktop to a full ATX AM3+ board and move the mATX 880G to my NAS, but I need a older AM3 CPU.

My NAS is headless, always on: serving files and running Transmission, and I would like a little headroom to run some non NAS services in a freeBSD jail or maybe a small VM.

Any suggestions?
 
Look at the 45W:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors

Good luck in finding one now.In my country they are nowhere to be found. Luckily i had bought a 605e when time was right.

If you can't find one, go for an Athlon 640/645 95W, if the board can afford it and undervolt it. It should go to about 80W. These are still easy to find. Another option is to get a 65W Athlon X2 and undervolt it. But you get 2 cores. But they are still easy to find too and some have high clocks.
 
Uhh, there'd be no reason for a NAS to have >2 cores anyway... Too many people on this site expect more cores than they need for so little reason... I run my NAS setup in an ESXi environment on a C2D E8400 which is dual-core and it works perfectly. Got a couple other VMs on there too. No need for quad core here.
 
dandragonrage said:
Uhh, there'd be no reason for a NAS to have >2 cores anyway... Too many people on this site expect more cores than they need for so little reason... I run my NAS setup in an ESXi environment on a C2D E8400 which is dual-core and it works perfectly. Got a couple other VMs on there too. No need for quad core here.
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I suppose you're right. In a past life this NAS had a Celeron 3200 and currently it's a C2D E6400 and neither broke a sweat. I guess I want to equal or surpass their processing power and maybe lose a few watts. With the E6400 and 4 HDDs my Kill-a-Watt gives 60-80 watts from the wall peaking at ~100 when first booting.
 
You'll never recoup the cost of upgrading the machine solely to lose 5-10 watts unless you score some used parts for $10 or $20 or something really cheap. Just hang onto it for now if it suits your needs.
 
The E6400 is on cheap mobo with only 2 DDR2 dimms and 4 SATA II ports. My objective really is to find a low power processor to use on a far nicer AM3 board currently in my desktop.
 
You can always underclock and undervolt the thing.

Alternatively just get a used HP microserver of fleabay, they work great for must usage scenarios.
 
Face2Face said:
+1 620e is a great low wattage quad. I had one then went to a 95w X6
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Still a waste for this purpose. Like I said before, a lot of you are irrational with your love of more cores. 4 and 6 core CPUs have a purpose. This is not one of them. Even if you counter with "the chip only costs a little more and the extra power usage is negligible," I counter that with "yet the benefits won't be even slightly noticeable."
 
dandragonrage said:
Uhh, there'd be no reason for a NAS to have >2 cores anyway... Too many people on this site expect more cores than they need for so little reason... I run my NAS setup in an ESXi environment on a C2D E8400 which is dual-core and it works perfectly. Got a couple other VMs on there too. No need for quad core here.
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I humbly disagree.

What if you're using the NAS as a remote media center storage drive and you edit those video files to remove commercials or something. :p
 
Robstar said:
Adding +50% power TDP for some L3 cache doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for a fileserver...
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TDP doesn't mean it sits there and sucks 65W continuously, NAS is probably idle most of the time ... just sayin'
 
xorbe said:
TDP doesn't mean it sits there and sucks 65W continuously, NAS is probably idle most of the time ... just sayin'
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It doesn't matter, because the NAS won't need the extra speed. At ALL. Not even 0.000000000000001%. You cannot come up with an argument that trumps that. I suggest you take your useless overkill suggestions elsewhere.

Would you use a sledgehammer on finishing nails? No (well, maybe YOU would). Use the right tool for the job.
 
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dandragonrage said:
It doesn't matter, because the NAS won't need the extra speed. At ALL. Not even 0.000000000000001%. You cannot come up with an argument that trumps that. Take your useless overkill suggestions elsewhere.
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Whoa whoa whoa, I was just commenting on the TDP thing -- not suggesting a processor choice.
 
xorbe said:
Whoa whoa whoa, I was just commenting on the TDP thing -- not suggesting a processor choice.
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Nothing personal, but people on this site typically suck at recommendations because they have this ridiculous notion that overkill is "[H]ard" instead of the waste that it is. I'll call anyone out for doing such a thing. For those who want to waste money on overkill, whatever, but NEVER try to convince anyone else to do the same.
 
I ended up going with the Athlon 270U: low watt and I suspect enough performance for my needs. It's just for FreeNAS, and maybe some other light server duties.

Now I can move my M4A88TD-M/USB3 to my NAS and benefit from more and better ram, the additional sata ports, and a better chipset. I just need a new board for the 1090T in my desktop. I think I'll get a M5A99FX PRO R2.0 and see if I can't learn a bit about IOMMU/passthough with Proxmox or Xen.
 
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