[Berlinois]

Hi,

First, sorry for my bad english, I understand better English than I write it.

I'd like to build my own server and use WHS (I have 4 computers under a Gigabit LAN for my whole little family) with two hard drives from 500 Go.

I intend to use it for my backups, and for serving my PS3 and xbox360 with multimedia files (music, videos (HD), etc..).

But I'm wondering if the Atom 330 has enough power to run WHS ???

I think this processor is the most valuable in term of power consumption and also in terms of warming and its is available on ebay for less than 100 $ (70 €).

Has anyone heard if a server has been build with this processor and how it works ??

TIA for your answers.

[Kyle B]

I think if you search the forums a little more you will find discussions on the Atom vs other processors. Personally I think it is severely underpowered. For the same price or even a little more you can purchase a higher powered processor that produces practically the same amount of heat and will permit expansion when you start playing around with your home server a little more.

The decision is yours, but I would not let a $40 price difference cripple my server in the terms of future expansion.
you can get a cheap dual core for almost one hundred dollars.

[GaMeR (WGS)]

Berlinois, on Oct 6 2008, 03:26 PM, said:

I think this processor is the most valuable in term of power consumption and also in terms of warming and its is available on ebay for less than 100 $ (70 €).

Actually, this is where you're wrong. The processor itself uses very little energy, very true. It's the chipset that's very power hungry.

[Berlinois]

Kyle B, on Oct 6 2008, 04:07 PM, said:

I think if you search the forums a little more you will find discussions on the Atom vs other processors. Personally I think it is severely underpowered. For the same price or even a little more you can purchase a higher powered processor that produces practically the same amount of heat and will permit expansion when you start playing around with your home server a little more.

The decision is yours, but I would not let a $40 price difference cripple my server in the terms of future expansion.
you can get a cheap dual core for almost one hundred dollars.

Thanks for the answer.

I searched the forum, but as far as I have found (or understand), nobody has already tried the NEW atom (double core at 1,6 mhz) and the new platform from Intel the D945GCLF2.

And for what I have read, it's seem that this solution is much powerful that the atom 230.

I don't want a very powerful server, I just want to have a NAS of my own, because I don't think I will have the skills to use all the performance of the NAS from synology or Qnap for example.

And I'm convinced that the WHS is a good choice, but the fact is I'm not sure what hardware (mobo and processor) I must choose.

I search something that is quiet (the server would probably be in my living room as I live in a flat) and most of all that is low on power consumption.

In fact what I search is like trying to square the circle.

I had something like this in mind for my own server ; 2x500 GB (samsung or seagate), 1 GB memory (o more), AMD Sempron Le1250 and Noctua NH-U12P, Gigabyte GZ-X1 (mini tower case with two 12 cm's fan), a 380-400 W PSU 80+ and an µATX mobo with Gigabit LAN.

But the point is that such a configuration is not really cheaper than a dedicated NAS when you add to it WHS OEM. And speaking of power consumption I'm not sure that it will be lower than a NAS or quieter.

[Berlinois]

GaMeR (WGS), on Oct 6 2008, 04:34 PM, said:

Actually, this is where you're wrong. The processor itself uses very little energy, very true. It's the chipset that's very power hungry.

That's what I read, but the power consumption in total is lower that a reguler PC I think.

And I'm quite convinced that it's the contrary in term of noise.

[Kyle B]

Berlinois, on Oct 6 2008, 02:08 PM, said:

That's what I read, but the power consumption in total is lower that a reguler PC I think.

And I'm quite convinced that it's the contrary in term of noise.

Sorry for my misunderstanding, I thought you were talking about the single core atom. I have not heard or read much about the dual core version, but it has to be twice as good as the original right?

[Berlinois]

Kyle B, on Oct 7 2008, 03:49 AM, said:

Sorry for my misunderstanding, I thought you were talking about the single core atom. I have not heard or read much about the dual core version, but it has to be twice as good as the original right?

Well, for the moment I haven't seen a lot of reviews. I found this link, but as I'm at the office, the proxy stops quite everything that is not related to my job when it's related to gaming.

http://www.guru3d.co...-p945gc-review/

And for this solution, the Atom 330 is not really a dual core but a double core (two atom 230), very low consumption for the processor but as said before not for the chipset.

And while the solutions from VIA (the nano) is for now not available, I tought the Atom 330 could be a good solution at a low price http://cgi.ebay.com/...id=p3286.c0.m14

Another way could be the "new" athlon64 2000+, but I don't know when it will available.

So, it's very difficult to choose between a regular NAS and a self made WHS.

[GuustFlater]

Any PC build in the last 5 years will do. This includes the Atom (single/dual core). Only a laptop doesn't.

If you're not sure, maybe you have an old machine hanging around, on which you can run a free trial of WHS. Once you run it, you will forget about NAS.

It really depends on the applicantions you want to additionally run on the WHS, what performance you need.

Check out the WHS 'getting started' guide to find minimum and recommended set-up.

http://download.micr...tingStarted.pdf

[JimmyK]

I have installed WHS on an Intel atom 330 ITX motherboard. I have no experience of any other WHS installation but mine seems to work very well. Disk writes are a little slow but I think that is due to DE as opposed to the RAID5 configuration or atom 330 that I have running. I'm still migrating all my data over but stability is good so far. I have it all running fanless in a Hush ITX case, making for a nice, quite, low power 4Tb RAID5 server.

[shaft0]

I'm running a 4TB WHS on a Dual Core Atom (the same one you had mentioned), and so far I've found it to be pretty good. I've also noticed disk writes are a bit slower than I had hoped, but I'm also coming from using RAID5 with Win2k3.

The onboard fan that comes with the motherboard you're after is looouuud! It "whines", so I swapped it out with a better fan and now it's silent--something you might want to consider if you go down this route.

Temperatures seem a bit high as well, but nothing that I'm extremely worried about.

Overall it has worked out exactly the way I've wanted it to. I wasn't expecting quad-core performance from it, but I don't feel as though it's sluggish, either.

I managed to build an entire WHS setup (sans disks, which I had, and the install media, which I had also bought earlier) for $200, which you really can't complain about.

In total a 4TB server using all brand new parts cost me:
WHS: $200
Case/PSU: $100
Motherboard/CPU: $100
Memory (2gb): $40
Promise SATA Controller Card: $50
4TB Seagate Drives: $550

Total: $1040.00 (Canadian)

Not too shabby if you ask me! Less than a decent spec retail PC, and had the pleasure of doing it myself!

[theredlineboss]

I just got my new home server online on Friday, and it has a D945GCLF motherboard w/ a Atom 230 (single core/HT) processor. So far, the processing power seems to be fine for the system, as startup times are reasonable and data transfer speeds are fine.

-Rob

[JC634 (WGS)]

It all depends on what you are going to use your WHS for. For basic backups and storage, just about any current generation processor will do the job.

Once one starts to make WHS do more: web hosting, uTorrents, encoding, streaming, centralized email, and on and on, a faster processor and more memory will be required. The off-the-shelf solutions are generally low power, minimal memory for 2 reasons. Cost (obviously) and they are adequately powered for the basic WHS usage as a backup server.

Once again, it all depends on what you are going to use your WHS for.

[WhatBackHand]

I've had the dual core Atom Intel MB running for just about a month.

I don't do that much media sharing, my WHS is mostly for file sharing and backups. Having said that I do have music and videos hosted on WHS that I share and I've never had any real issues. It runs Avast, Perfect Disk, uTorrent, Disk Management, Autoexit, LobsterTunes and Whiist plus the daily backups for for 4 PCs. There are 4 disks 2 IDE and 2 SATA in the box. I'd say it runs quicker than the P4 is replaced, definitley quieter and probably uses less power, I'll have to get round to measuring it one day.... I'm also tinkering with Virtual Server 2005 with limited success compared to VMWare at that moment. Running 2 virtual servers (2003) and 1 virtual PC (XP) it hardly breaks a sweat, shame the MB has a 2 GB limit for this use, but for WHS 2 MB seams more than enough!

I have noticed that the Intel MB still seems to be in short supply and the price has already gone up!

[SpankyMo]

I am looking into building a WHS and I am torn between building an Atom 330 based system or something along the lines of a Better Box.
I want to run WHS, VirtualServer (with server 2008 and exchange), about 4 websites, use it as a NAS, and back up 3 PC's.

I am not too sure if the Atom 330 will cut it, I know someone above says it runs fine but does anyone else have an opinion?
I know the better box would be faster but also more expensive, but I dont want to weigh out for the Atom if it wont cut it.

Regards.

[Arcticfreak]

Here is a review that I found on newegg.com in regards to this board.

"Pros: Using for WHS in Thermaltake Lanbox Lite with 4 SATA drives and Earthwatts 400 w PS. Uses a maximum of 80 w during DVD rip. 60 w idle. Runs WHS and My Movies serving SD and HD content. Installation of WHS was easy.

Cons: Northbridge fan noise started in about 48 hours. Removed fan and mounted 80 MM fan on side of case to blow through CPU and NB heatsinks. NB now runs 42° C under load.
Only 2 STATA ports so I needed an $18 SATA PCI card.

Other Thoughts: My previous WHS setup used 180 watts at idle. This little board does everything I need at 1/3 the power use. "

I don't know what other parts make up this guys server but in comparison the box I just built, with a gigabyte board and an Intel E8400, idles at 80 watts. When I run without the video card installed I'm at 60 watts idle. The kicker of it all is that down the road I can still upgrade if I find the need to. I’m not saying that it's not a good choice. It's certainly smaller then my build but don't base it all on the power usage.

AF

[Paul Cahill]

An interesting article on Tom's Hardware

http://www.tomshardw...view-31435.html

It's in addition to power consumption review they did on the G31 + E7200. I ended up getting a shuttle SG31G2. They are so cheap and I had a spare E2xxx cpu. It has onboard graphics, gigabit, three sata connectors and room for 3 drives if you use an external optical drive.

[WhatBackHand]

SpankyMo, on Nov 18 2008, 03:48 PM, said:

I am looking into building a WHS and I am torn between building an Atom 330 based system or something along the lines of a Better Box.
I want to run WHS, VirtualServer (with server 2008 and exchange), about 4 websites, use it as a NAS, and back up 3 PC's.

I am not too sure if the Atom 330 will cut it, I know someone above says it runs fine but does anyone else have an opinion?
I know the better box would be faster but also more expensive, but I dont want to weigh out for the Atom if it wont cut it.

Regards.

SpanyMo,
my experience of running Virtual Machines on the Dual Core Atom is that the host OS copes well, but the 1 XP and 2 2003 Servers I had running were, well, slow. If you were running the virtual servers as file servers then forget it, DNS, DHCP etcwere fine. I was going to try out Exchange but gave up while installing Exchange so I can't say how well Exchange would have run, but AD, DNS and DHCP were "responsive" on the virtual machines. The virtual XP machine was OK to use, better locally then remote (via slow internet connection at remote end) and I found very usefull.

Overall, as far as WHS was concerned you couldn't tell if there were virtual machines running or not for the work I've given them to do which admittedly isn't very much.

Hope that helps?


Chris

[vasr]

Hi,

I built a custom PC using the D945GCLF2 motherboard (Atom 330) and it works very well with Windows Home Server. It backs up 3 PCs, streams video to my PS3 and acts as a place where the family can share pictures with each other via the web interface. I did some tests against the previous Via C7 board I was using and streaming performance was smooth to the PS3 and to two connected PCs. Streaming videos during PC backup causes some hiccups in the video, but that is to be expected. The Fan on the board does need to be replaced by a quieter fan. You can view the article at:

http://terracode.com...V2_Project.html .

Thanks,
VasR

[olejnik_uk]

I have been running my WHS for a few weeks now and it has Intel Atom 330 installed, along with 2 x 1TB Samsung F1 HDD's, 2GB Ram in an Antec chassis using a 350w PSU @ 80% power efficiency.

The machine runs perfectly fine and at speeds that I would expect from a server. I think if your going to run loads of processes etc that would slow the server down, then maybe WHS isn't the right solution. But for normal home use, storage etc, the Intel Atom 330 is ideal and environmentally friendly.

My server sits idle at a temperature of 32 deg C and on full load around 45 deg C. On idle, power consumption is around 38 watts.. on load it is around 50 watts...

The server cost me just short of £400 to build....

After a bit of reconfiguring, my WHS is now a domain controller with DHCP running.

If your after an environmentally friendly server that you can leave on 24/7, then the Intel Atom 330 is ideal... but at the end of the day, I guess if it is up to personal choice and what your going to use the server for.