Hardware for home server low electricity consumption

Maybe you can get some things out of this:

A recommendation is hardly possible without knowing the exact requirements / usage. However, I am sure that such a box will have to meet new requirements later on, which you are not aware of today. For this such a server may have some reserves.

…in the end the game is: Which power consumption to which computing power? Which level makes sense? And on a home servers also: noise levels. Everything without a fan tends to consume less.

My own server may be just over 3 years old now… this is it:
  • ITX board with Intel J3160 (4x 1,6 GHz / 6 W TDP, 2x SATA)
  • 4 GB memory
  • notebook power supply
  • small SSD for OS
  • big HDD for data (Seagate ST8000NE0004)
  • noise isolation of the HDD with Sharkoon "HDD Vibe Fixer 3,5"
  • case Sharkoon "CA-I black" (to big for that, but it's also great to have room)
  • case fan Noctua "NF-S12B redux 700"
Runs 24/7. The server provides a remote desktop via VNC, is the first backup line of all devices, has three users, works as a media server (audio, video and photos), SVN server, is used for data exchange, and is also still the VM host for Windows 7 (days are counted). Sufficiently fast, but meanwhile I catch myself thinking: Could be a bit faster. (But maybe it's because I allowed myself something really fast for the desktop…) Data upload works with almost 100 MB/s, and the transfer rate doesn't break down even after terabytes.

And very important: You don't hear anything! And I really don't need additional heating in a loft at the moment…

What would I do differently today? No SSD for the OS. Instead I would rather have one SATA port free, because the time will come the HDD has to be replaced; And currently there is no free SATA port. The rest is great, and has proven itself. Never again a ready-made NAS for these purposes.

A small ARM (Raspi, also your Pine64) sounds nice to me too, but an SD card for the OS and HDD via USB sounds like tinkering to me, not long-term use. Therefore I would choose an ITX board again. Flexibility is also important.
 
jmos said:
A small ARM (Raspi, also your Pine64) sounds nice to me too, but an SD card for the OS and HDD via USB sounds like tinkering to me, not long-term use. Therefore I would choose an ITX board again. Flexibility is also important.
Click to expand...
Just a note: RK3399 SoCs have 4 PCIe lanes which can be used for NVMe or SATA addon card. Some of SBCs can have eMMC which should be faster and more reliable than SD card. (Currently I don't have personal experience with it, my board gut stuck somewhere in between China and my country)
 
pcengines APU was my solution. I use it primarily for video streaming/recording and storage. Attached is a 4x USB-3.0 hdd enclosure where I can quickly switch the hdds (i have several 4-disk-zraid1-bundles ... for each purpose one: backup of important files/code/configs/jails/VMs/mails - business related, pictures, videos) ... external hdds are fast enough for my purpose (4k video streaming is ok, I don't mind if a backup takes a few hours). The APU is one of the most stable systems I have ever used.
 
I have to second the PCengines APU2 recommendation. They make a great mini-server. Ships with opensource coreboot/seaBIOS.

JohnnySorocil said:
Just a note: RK3399 SoCs have 4 PCIe lanes which can be used for NVMe or SATA
Click to expand...
Please note that the RK3399 only has a PCIe-2 bus while NVMe are all PCIe-3 bus.
Thus you will only see 1000 Megabytes/sec on PCIe-2 versus 2500 Megabytes/sec on PCIe-3 bus with an NVMe.
I thought this was worth mentioning. It can take a NVMe but won't run it at full speed.

Not trying to badmouth the platform but enlighten future consumers.
I like the NanoPC-T4 board. Good price point. I do wonder if the Wifi onboard is supported by FreeBSD?

jmos said:
but an SD card for the OS and HDD via USB sounds like tinkering to me,
Click to expand...
There are some RK3399 boards with built in 16GB eMMC flash drives. This is the trend in embedded platforms.
 
Thx 4 all your answers!
I'll have a closer look on these APU, APU2 & NanoPC, maybe I can find some in the bay. These mini Intel NUC came into my mind, too, but they have no IPMI (consumer grade hardware). I'd say this: if x86, then please I want IPMI (or any other OOB management). If I'm going to experiment, then I can take a bigger step and try ARM.

The specs of Pine64's ROCKPro64 concerning the topics discussed above: 1 PCIe x4 open ended slot, 128Mb SPI boot Flash. There is also an optional eMMC module (up to 128GB) and microSD slot for booting.

I have no clue about the efficiency of the 12V/5A power supply. Maybe a "real" (ATX-style) one w/ some logic built in is more efficient, and an ATX-PSU + fanless x86-based mini ITX (w/ on-board SATA) draws less power than a ROCKPro64 SBC + cheap PSU + SATA controller. Noise is a primary concern for home use. The mini NAS will be placed in my wardrobe, and above that is my bed... The NAS box will be switched off at night, but not always. I guess there will be times when it runs a few days, e.g. for a lengthy build job. This thing has 6 cores, two would be perfectly enough to serve files (light home usage), so I'll use it as a build host as well.
 
Thx a lot! I'll see what is on the refurbished market and compare to the estimated performance of a Pine64 ROCKPro64.
The Pine thingy has the extra adventure factor ;), the PCEngine comes w/ Open Source BIOS, very sympathic.
 
mjollnir said:
Hi all,

I'm going to hijack this thread since I now have the same question and two years have passed.
  • I'm tempted to give the RockPro64 ARM-based SoC from Pine64 (4GB RAM) a try. With all necessary parts (SoC, case,...), a complete new low-power SOHO NAS is ~180$ w/o disks. That's about the same price as for used/refurbished x86 systems, which I usually prefer due to the price/performance ratio. I'm aware to expect some pitfalls & hurdles to get FreeBSD up & running on that, that's ok.
  • The alternative is to look for a good small case & mITX SuperMicro x64 board (used/refurbished), which for shure will save me some headache and more or less should work out of the box. The guys @ XigmaNAS recommend this brand (server boards in general) - among other reasons - for these have IPMI.
Any new suggestions/comments/recommendations?

Thx in advance.
Click to expand...
Depends.

Does RockPro64 has ECC RAM? If not do not compare it to quite pricey Supermicro boards.

You can get Mini ITX board with J3160 offering up to 16 GB RAM and 4 cores at 6W TDP used for about $40. 4 GB RAM will add $10-12 to that price.

The REALAN H80 (or H60) Mini ITX cases are very cheap (~$40) and very nice. Check here: http://www.minicase.net/product_E-H80.html

With x86 you will have EVERYTHING working out of the box without the need to run 13-CURRENT waiting for that needed driver to never appear on RockPro64.

After years of using FreeBSD this is probably the most important thing I have learned - do not wait for drivers/support that is not yet there - it may NEVER appear. I once got ASUS P5B-VM motherboard with G965 and Intel X3000 graphics. FreeBSD supported GMA 3000 and GMA 950 but not GMA X3000. I waited more then a year using Ubuntu on that motherboard and support still DID NOT CAME.

Also the ECC RAM is overrated. I keep about ~3 TB of data since years on ZFS without ECC and I have zero problems.

The IPMI is nice if you have that system far away from you, but if its room away, then its not worth the extra $$$.

Hope that helps.
 
mjollnir said:
Hi all,

I'm going to hijack this thread since I now have the same question and two years have passed.
  • I'm tempted to give the RockPro64 ARM-based SoC from Pine64 (4GB RAM) a try. With all necessary parts (SoC, case,...), a complete new low-power SOHO NAS is ~180$ w/o disks. That's about the same price as for used/refurbished x86 systems, which I usually prefer due to the price/performance ratio. I'm aware to expect some pitfalls & hurdles to get FreeBSD up & running on that, that's ok.
  • The alternative is to look for a good small case & mITX SuperMicro x64 board (used/refurbished), which for shure will save me some headache and more or less should work out of the box. The guys @ XigmaNAS recommend this brand (server boards in general) - among other reasons - for these have IPMI.
Any new suggestions/comments/recommendations?

Thx in advance.
Click to expand...

https://kobol.io/ looks pretty nice however I wouldn't hold my breath for FreeBSD support especially initially.

While IPMI is nice for home usage it also adds substantional amount of the cost for a motherboard/server and it's honestly not the end of the world if you don't have it.
All APU etc PCs have very dated hardware by todays standards so I'd recommend you to avoid such options unless they're dirt cheap.
I would be a bit hesitant to buy something like J3160 as it lacks AVX instructions and does suffer from quite a few vulnerabilities, some can be mitigated but at the price of performance and since Intel is very soon discontinuing newer models I'm not even sure if its still "supported". However, if you're just using at home it might not be much of an issue as far as the vulnerabilities goes.

Transient execution CPU vulnerability - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

While I guess Supermicro motherboards are "nice" I don't see them as any better than your avg server board in a Dell, Fujitsu box etc and it's most likely going to be a more expensive route in the end.
 
Some user posted about his success to set up a desktop on a RockChip RK3399 (embedded sub-forum). Thus, basic hurdles should be fixed, but yes, for shure there are issues like no support for ARM's virtualization instructions, and numerous small other issues add up to make such a project fail. I'll stick to a x86 system w/ low TDP for now, and keep a Pine64 RockPro64 on my list to buy for a nerd/hobbyist's "recreational exercises". I'll try to make my women to present me one as a christmas gift ;)
EDIT: Once I find s/th (board or case) that fit my needs, 15 minutes later I find a better one... and then w/ refurbished hardware it's always the equation: How much power does a newer generation save to justify a higher price. I want an AI to help me solving this puzzle!
 
mjollnir That's the problem with everything and I struggle the same way. I want to find the best product but can't find an authoritative source to help me decide. For other products, Consumer Reports used to be the best source but I don't feel I can rely on them anymore. Wirecutter started off good--until the NY Times bought them--but now they're almost worthless. I just want to find the best set up but often wind up getting something just to get it done and worry about the regrets later. Often there aren't any or many regrets.

Occasionally I like to walk through Best Buy to see if there's anything new to discover. I'm turning my wife's office into a family room and am planning the TV cabling, networking and electrical. I like Roku but read about the nVidia Shield and thought it would be perfect for what I wanted. The good thing about Best Buy is the sales clerks sometimes pretty geeky and I nabbed one of them who, in appropriately autistic manner, questioned my sanity about wanting to get the Shield. I thought it would help in my quest to display home videos, photos, movies, etc. that I have stored on a hard drive and Google Drive.

"You can buy four Rokus for the price of one Shield," he said. "Then just get a wireless hard drive and attach it to your home network so you can access that from anywhere in the world from any computer or your phone!"

"Say what?", I asked. "Wifi hard drive?! What sorcery is this?!!" And I ran out the door screaming "Witch!!"
 
mjollnir
Power consumption is negligible if you look at the same specs but different generation, and pretty much everything at least Intel-wise supports power saving mode. Easy solution would be getting a Dell T40 (about the same price as T30 refurb in US) or similar and call it a day.
Not sure where you live (Germany?) but Dell recently had a pretty good deal on a T40 @ 349 USD

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If you're in Germany you might want to keep an eye on the hardwareluxx forum...
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/dell-emc-poweredge-t40.1247593/post-27513032 (for example)
 
Yes, Berlin. That PowerEdge is a tower case, too large for my wardrobe. 2nd, it has a large power supply (340W) and the CPU isn't fanless. These PSU draw much power even when idle, and ideally I want a big quite whisper-fan in the case only, and a fanless CPU. Guideline is a limit for
  • TDP of 25W
  • PSU ~60-80W for (2-4)x(4-8)W spinning HDD.
Found a QNAP TS-453mini () and noname 4-drive NAS box with an Athlon 5350 (4 cores), 20W idle (too much?). Older AMD CPUs are not so good when it comes to power savings? I'll stop posting now, it's not interesting anymore for others.
 
Eh, I'm still interested. I bought something, anything recently to replace my aging firewall box, and now I have regrets unlike Drhowarddrfine.

I'm really regretting not looking a Pcengines, though it looks like 1U cases for their products are hard to find.
 
Jose said:
I'm really regretting not looking a Pcengines, though it looks like 1U cases for their products are hard to find.
Click to expand...
With the chassis costing only $10 from PCEngines I think mounting them on a 1U rack shelf would be ideal.
Problem is most shelves are 17.5" max width but 3 APU cases wide would not fit as the PCEngines chassis is 6.5" wide.
You could probably fit 4 chassis in a 2X2 arrangment depending on shelf depth.

Having access to a machine shop is invaluable for an exercise like this.
I do see a supplier offering wall mount brackets for the enclosure. That would make a nice mount method for a rack shelf.

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FWIMC, here's a status report. 1 st, some thoughts on power consumption:
  • for 24x7 use-case, we have (year 2020)
    10W x 24h x 30d/month x 12month/year x 33¢/kWh / 50% avg. effiency of PSU = 60 €/year for 10W electrical power
  • power savings relate aprox. 1:1 with lithographic shrink (manufacturing process of logic die)
  • and integration of functionality from add-on cards/controllers to motherboard, and from MB to SoC.
  • For SOHO, IMHO (in most cases) an external UPS is not justified because it uses much power itself; instead, a small battery shoud be integrated into a NAS box, just large enough to allow for proper shutdown.
Thus, for 24x7, the costs of electricity justify to go with newer hardware ASAP. For home use, this can mean to go w/ refurbished (professional) HW and exchange every 3-7 years. Reasons see below.
Rule of thumb:
  • [24x7] You can spend ~300 €/$/£ to save 10W if the HW runs 5 years; 180 €/$/£ if it runs 3 years.
    Obviously, for UK-£ the numbers are slightly lower: ~250/150 £
For non-24x7, IMHO mother earth and the folks living & working in slavery-like conditions, digging for rare earth elements in Africa, and those in E-Asia to assemble the HW we consume like eating popcorn, deserve to use computer HW as long as reasonable. Remember computer waste makes up for a huge amount of environmental pollution, and often can not be recycled easily. Add to that the unbeaten price/performance ratio of used & refurbished HW.
  • What is considered to match SOHO use-case differs MUCH: 18 month ago, another user here mentioned to invest ~4k $ for a new system w/ professional-grade hardware & 10x1TB disks... ;)
    I say I can nearly meet the same requirements and spend ~500 $/€ incl. 2x8TB HDD (new) for refurbished HW; ok I do not count an old SSD that I plan to use for ZFS ZIL & cache.
  • Found only 2 vendors that have integrated an UPS into their SOHO NAS boxes: Buffalo & Kobol/Helios64; I'd buy a used Buffalo NAS box just for the case, but I read they do not use standard (nano-ITX: 120x120mm) bore positions...
  • A spinning disk can saturate a SATA-1 port, but not SATA-2. Thus, unless we have a very high cache hit ratio (HDD cache), a refurbished mini- or nano-ITX board w/o SATA-3 is ok
  • Idle power consumption is the same on ARM-based & X86-based solutions, since it's dominated by the HDDs.
  • x86 are more or less guaranteed to work out of the box; their theoretical cycles/Watt performance ratio might be slightly lower than ARM.
  • To serve basic functionality - serving files - a 800MHz dual core system is enough... (6W TDP)
Since I'd like to use that box not only as file/media server, I'll go with x86, try to shoot a Buffalo case and tinker into it a refurbished nano-ITX board. I found many things I do not like:
  • HP micro server have iLO add on PCIe card instead on MB (see above: higher power consumption).
  • Same vendor: near-ideal small case for 4x3.5" HDDs, and they have a 5 1/4" DVD instead of a laptop-style one...
  • Some cases have the fan at the bottom, blowing in. IMHO, ideally it belongs at the top or any side, sucking air out. Sooner or later, some paper/handbook will be placed on top of the box, so a fan at the top is theoretically ideal but not practical.
  • Some otherwise very good SOHO NAS boxes come w/ oversized PSU (180W for 4 HDD's ???)
  • Horizontal placement of HDD, since the upper ones will get much hotter. Vertical placement allows better heat dissipation - the natural flow of hot air is up.
  • Only one fan. Yes, a larger fan allows for slower revolutions (quiter), but two add redundancy.
 
mjollnir said:
Some otherwise very good SOHO NAS boxes come w/ oversized PSU (180W for 4 HDD's ???)
Click to expand...
Just because they peak at 180W doesn't mean they draw 180W. Switching power supplies only provide the wattage they need.
So your 180W power supply has reserve power while normally it may only use 40W peak.
 
Phishfry said:
Just because they peak at 180W doesn't mean they draw 180W. Switching power supplies only provide the wattage they need.
So your 180W power supply has reserve power while normally it may only use 40W peak.
Click to expand...
At what % of effiency? This is s/th I still have to research. Some small SOHO NAS boxes come w/ a laptop-style external PSU, about 60-90W. Are these less efficient? Do you know of existing UPS (battery+minimal logic) small enough to be built into a case? Or PSU w/ integrated UPS?
 
mjollnir said:
For non-24x7, IMHO mother earth and the folks living & working in slavery-like conditions, digging for rare earth elements in Africa, and those in E-Asia to assemble the HW we consume like eating popcorn, deserve to use computer HW as long as reasonable. Remember computer waste makes up for a huge amount of environmental pollution, and often can not be recycled easily. Add to that the unbeaten price/performance ratio of used & refurbished HW.
Click to expand...

I am absolutely pedantic when it comes to the environmental aspect of ... well, anything. TBH, some would probably consider me to be obsessed to live a minimal live with an ecological footprint as small as possible. I have done quite some research, also at university, when it comes to that part in our lives. The point you mention (thanks!) is a very valid point that should really be emphasized, in many considerations. It is better in many aspects to avoid trash and use 3 old computers drawing more power and having a solar energy supplier than buying new "green" hardware. People unfortunately always tend to buy the new energy-saving hardware and completely ignore that the old trash still has value. Same goes for cars ... one can drive an old car for many years with many kilometers/year until buying a new Tesla (with ecological/production aspects that are still questionable) would have paid off, and then there is still the question where the energy from the next charging station comes from.
 
Standard (conventional) batteries can easily be recycled (more or less). Lithium batteries need to have some logic to govern the charging, built in for every 2V cell. Thus, recycling these is nearly impossible... And they get worn out after aprox. 6-18 years. Depends on usage scenario.
EDIT Another factor is: compare the energy used to produce the old & new stuff vs. what the new saves (theoretically). Studies have shown: all attempts for green-hardware have resulted in more energy beeing used ;)
 
I bought a bunch of reasonably price mini-ups and I like them.
IEI AUPS
I have purchased A10, A20, B10.
They have a web interface and are really nifty for DC powered devices.
The battery inside is a standard laptop battery and can be replaced.
www.ieiworld.com

Power Supply :: Product overview :: IEI

IEI Integration Corp. is a global supplier of industrial computer products and AIoT solutions, including embedded system, panel PC, embedded computer, single board computer, network appliance and fanless embedded box PC, etc. IEI provides ODM services and industrial computer integration...
www.ieiworld.com www.ieiworld.com
They also work with NUT.
 
ralphbsz said:
[...] My regular home server (now about 5 years old) is a MicroATX motherboard with a 1.8 GHz 32-bit Atom on it, [...] It also does all the other server functions (firewall, router, DNS, DHCP, NTP, NFS, Apache, ...).
Click to expand...
For shure you know that the packet filter firewall must be a physically separate system from the host(s) supplying other services. Not in a VM, even worse on the same host. Even for home usage, nerds like us can set up e.g. a refurbished PCEngine (~20 $/€/£, 5-10W) or an old ThinClient w/ additional PCI NIC (same price, slightly higher power usage for the NIC).
 
There are some quirks with the IEI AUPS that I refenced above.
#1 The network interface is not enabled by default. You must use their Windows Management software to enable network status.
I use a seperate Windows XP box with their software to turn on network managment.
#2 NUT works with it but it is not a supported device so you must manually make a profile and it is very limited status versus supported devices.
 
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