NAS Rig Help

[Phrik]

I have the big Lian Li V2000 case with all the normal stuffs... and with 7 HDDs totalling 2TB (80+320+500*2+250+250+160) with NO RAIDS and I'm still planning to get more, because I play my videos and music at home from this PC as well as I use it for storage of backups and projects. It's my small gaming rig... but I wanna disassemble put it in those small Qpacks for my cousin (except the HDDs of course)...

Now I have to turn the big Lian Li with HDDs into a low power consuming NAS... so I need some good specs.

CPU : Something enough for storage as a simple NAS, must be low power consumption
MOBO : Something with more than the standard 4-SATA ports, low power consumption
VGA: Nothing important, must be low power consumption
PSU: Hopefully around 350-to-450W enough to roll a total of 12 HDDs.

Any help and info would great !

Thanks !

 

[Farva]

well, u can play with the numbers with a PSU calculator. i would recommend building an AM2 system since the processors are insanely low for power consumption

 

[unhappy_mage]

CPU: A Celeron D or whatever low-power-draw chip should be plenty.
Mobo: Doesn't really matter - add on Sil3114 cards or Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8s as needed.
VGA: find a board with onboard video.
PSU: This ($97) or this ($120) would be good choices, I think. Once you get everything else figured out, head over to the PSU forum and see what they have to say. You need about 2A on the 12V rail for each drive, while they're spinning up.

 

[Phrik]

Will RAM come to any relevance? Or no importance at all ?

edit: Well I mean... if a certain amount should be necessary, or is 512 just enough ?

Why would you say a CPU level of Celerons is more than enough ? Can you give me a small detail to why a Celeron (Semprons would be the AMD-Intel counterpart right?) would be enough for a NAS rig ?

 

[ilkhan]

if all you are doing is fileserving, a P3 running a cut down W2K server or linux would be fine, a sempron/celeron is still faster than one of those, so one of those would be fine.

RAM isn't really important either. You aren't doing intensive tasks on it, as I understand. a single 512 stick is fine.

Im chopping up my desktop to convert to a server+laptop model. The only reason Im going to be running the CPU I am (3200+, s939) is because I need an x4 slot for the raid card and I already have my old s939/x4 board. Oh, and Im probably gonna throw vista on it and some point, yay $30 6200 series cards! (A8N-E = no onboard, needed a PCI-E card)

 

[drizzt81]

depending on how much money you want to spend, a low-power pentium-M/ celeron-M/ Core-Solo would be an option:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/index_view_core.htm
apparently the Core-Solo ULV versions are about 5.5W, which is pretty low, however the mobo + CPU may set you back a pretty penny

 

[Phrik]

I have undergone 2 weeks of intensive research and here are some of my thoughts...

MOBO: GigaByte M59SLI-S5 (Max.Power: ? Watts; Cost: 165 €) (Soon to market)
CPU: AMD Sempron64 3000+ (SDD3000CNBOX) (Max.Power: 35 Watts; Cost: 63 €)
RAM: Kingston 512 MB DDR2-533 (PC4200) (Max.Power: ? Watts - Cost: 50 €)
VGA: Asus EN6200LE TC256/TD (64MB/GF6200LE) (Max.Power: 10 Watts; Cost: 34 €)
PSU: Aopen Prima Power AO350-12ALN - 350 Watt (Cost: 60 €)

It has to be very low power consumption so I can still go with 350 Watt PSU, and will still be able to handle a max. of 12 HDDs (for the future), but only max. 8 HDDs maybe for the next 6+ months.

If possible low cost as well, but I'm willing to spend without breaks...

I went with that MoBo 'cause it has 8 SATA2 ports and a 2nd PCIe slot where I can then buy a PCIe 4-port SATA2 RAID controller when I reach the point of needing more storage again. Also this MoBo is not on the market yet, so maybe sometime soon there will be something as good enough and cheaper to come out. The 12 HDDs issue won't happen anywhere this year possibly anyway... I'm still using 2x 250s and a 320, which I will just replace with the WD 500s. I understand that the WD5000KS/YS consumes around 10 Watts unlike the Hitachi 500s go around 15 Watts. So, I will be reselling 2 of my Hitachis for the WDs.

I'm very much concerned and particular about the Wattage consumption. Cause this is a machine that is 24/7 powered up. Currently with the 600W PSU, it's eating quite a lot of electricity costs. This Aopen PSU has 2x 12V rails one at 10A and 15A at 350 W, I hope this is enough. If anybody can bring/link me to any information Wattage consumption issues and PSUs, that would be great to know.

Any further thoughts would be highly appreciated !

 

[Phrik]

depending on how much money you want to spend, a low-power pentium-M/ celeron-M/ Core-Solo would be an option:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/index_view_core.htm
apparently the Core-Solo ULV versions are about 5.5W, which is pretty low, however the mobo + CPU may set you back a pretty penny

The thing with Mobile CPUs are, it's just way too hard to find for the right MoBo requirement. But if anyone has an idea where to grab them in Europe I will be very greatful. The Core Solo ULVs would've been nice, but it took me days to search the net for the right MoBo that I require, and none found.

 

[drizzt81]

The thing with Mobile CPUs are, it's just way too hard to find for the right MoBo requirement. But if anyone has an idea where to grab them in Europe I will be very greatful. The Core Solo ULVs would've been nice, but it took me days to search the net for the right MoBo that I require, and none found.

I would suggest to try and ask in the mobile computing/ intel CPU or motherboard subforums. There surely are some people on here that will know what mobo will work. At that poin, www.froogle.(you country TLD) is your friend

 

[Phrik]

I would suggest to try and ask in the mobile computing/ intel CPU or motherboard subforums. There surely are some people on here that will know what mobo will work. At that poing, www.froogle.(you country TLD) is your friend

I will try to run through the Mobile Computing section... maybe there could be more infos ! Thanks !

 

[unhappy_mage]

I'm very much concerned and particular about the Wattage consumption. Cause this is a machine that is 24/7 powered up. Currently with the 600W PSU, it's eating quite a lot of electricity costs.

Power supply ratings are maximum, you don't actually draw that much from the wall all the time. Products like the kill-a-watt (search for it) will show how much a given device is actually using at a given time, or some UPSes have methods of querying how much load there is.

 

[Phrik]

Power supply ratings are maximum, you don't actually draw that much from the wall all the time. Products like the kill-a-watt (search for it) will show how much a given device is actually using at a given time, or some UPSes have methods of querying how much load there is.

Yeah I got a similar thing it does actually eat max approx. 570 Wph

 

[Phrik]

Anybody has any comment on the rig (as posted on post #7) ?

 

[drizzt81]

have you looked at high-efficiency PSUs?
http://www.80plus.org/
the PSU that they certify are rated to be 80% or more efficient at most (all?) loads.

I do not know if their certification is also valid for 220V models.

 

[Phrik]

have you looked at high-efficiency PSUs?
http://www.80plus.org/
the PSU that they certify are rated to be 80% or more efficient at most (all?) loads.

I do not know if their certification is also valid for 220V models.

What does "80% or more efficient" imply ? I see it a lot I don't know what it exactly means or imply "for". A short explanation would be nice to know.

 

[drizzt81]

The current that your PC will draw from the wall is dependent upon 2 things:
1. Power draw of the components: e.g. 12W on the 12V rail -> 1A.
2. The efficiency of the PSU as the current load

Most of the time the components inside a case draw less than the maximum power that a PSU can supply. If your components need 340W and you have a 600W perfectly efficient PSU, you'd only draw 340W from the wall. Since we live in the real-world, there is no perfectly efficient PSU. Even worse, the efficiency often depends on the power drawn from the PSU.

Example:

PSU A is 80% efficient at 90% load and 75% efficient at 60% load. The maximum rating is 500W:

At 60% load (300W) you'd draw 400W from the wall.
At 90% load (450W) you'd draw 562W from the wall.

See the inherent nonlinearity when it comes to the power consumption?

What the 80-plus certification is supposed to do is provide incentives to PSU makers to create PSUs with a large operating range in which the PSU is 80% efficient or better.
The PSU forum would certianly be a better place to get more info on this, but what I am saying is that often times it's not "the size" of the PSU that matters when it comes to power consumption, but rather how it's build.

It may well be that a 500W PSU designed for efficiency will power your load at a lower variable cost than the 350W PSU you selected.