NAS or a home server?

The N280 is on the original Atom Chipset IIRC. The CPU is great, power wise, but the chipset is supposedly horrendous.

Also the original chipset is SATA1 only, the reduced maximum throughput may not matter to you.

I know Intel were working on an improved chipset but haven't heard much on it lately.
 
but while the server is on, it would surely be better to have the cpu use as little power as possible
Click to expand...

An Intel Atom 330 uses (up to) 8w full load...

The extra power that the Asus may use is not going to be anything I'll notice (and WHS will be running with LightOut), it is just not a priority for me, SATA ports, decent performance and (future) expandibility are...


Can't you install a RAID controller card?
Click to expand...

Yes, but that is more money and seemingly restricted to PCI which is pretty naff performance...
 
Last edited:
I think the zotac has pci-e.

Edit: Scratch that. It doesn't. Some of the older 230 boards do have PCI-e, though.
 
Last edited:
Bonjour said:
You'd be able to pick up a PCI RAID controller for about a tenner at auction. It wouldn't use up much power. It's all the hard drives you attach to it that would use the power.
Click to expand...

So, then providing we can pick up the raid card for around £10, we would have achieved the goal of being able to use an ultra low power cpu, with reasonable cost and with the ability of having 4+ sata drives.

The real deal breaker will be the cost of the Intel Atom platform. It will definitely be more expensive than going the Asus V2-P5G45, however, if we can limit the expense to a reasonable level, it may actually be a viable option.

Consider that Hard drives typically use around 7W of power - 4 of them, along with a low power cpu and gpu, the Intel Atom might be the better option.
 
sunama said:
So, then providing we can pick up the raid card for around £10, we would have achieved the goal of being able to use an ultra low power cpu, with reasonable cost and with the ability of having 4+ sata drives.

The real deal breaker will be the cost of the Intel Atom platform. It will definitely be more expensive than going the Asus V2-P5G45, however, if we can limit the expense to a reasonable level, it may actually be a viable option.

Consider that Hard drives typically use around 7W of power - 4 of them, along with a low power cpu and gpu, the Intel Atom might be the better option.
Click to expand...

Not really, because no one has answered my earlier post as to whether the Atom is up to the job for anything more than the very basic file serving. For me that would limit the usefulness of a WHS.

Edit: There's also talk that WHS2 will support 64bit - will the Atom?
 
Last edited:
Atom... Is pretty rubbish honestly. It's pretty much a dual core low-end celeron. Make of that what you will.

The 200 and 300 series of Atom support 64-bit extensions, but I imagine the overheads of x64 would be pretty detrimental to performance.

Also, WHS2 has been batted around since before Power Pack 1. Get WHS now and worry about WHS2 later. :]
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
Atom... Is pretty rubbish honestly. It's pretty much a dual core low-end celeron. Make of that what you will.

The 200 and 300 series of Atom support 64-bit extensions, but I imagine the overheads of x64 would be pretty detrimental to performance.

Also, WHS2 has been batted around since before Power Pack 1. Get WHS now and worry about WHS2 later. :]
Click to expand...

Yep that's my concern too, having used Atom's on netbooks.

I get the impression they're on with WHS2 now, whether it surfaces or not I don't know, but I'm 64bit ready if it does :)
 
Do you have any real life examples?

I've seen what demigrator.exe does on my P4 WHS, albeit with 1gb RAM. And I'm not convinced Atom would cope any better - or perhaps worse.
 
Is your P4 HT enabled?

Perhaps with a dual core atom it could offload demigrator to one core, freeing up the other core for other tasks.

If I was looking to run a WHS, I would probably look for something a little more meaty than an Atom tbh. For a simple file server, though, Atom would most certainly be the way forward.
 
Yep Bonjour, that's why I'm interested to see if anyone has used a dual core Atom. It might be enough given it's a more modern architecture - most of the stuff I run on the WHS is not CPU intensive - but demigrator which manages the basic balancing is the big hitter - which is why it's important even for basic file serving if you got the WHS route. The HT is enabled by the way.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Do you have any real life examples?

I've seen what demigrator.exe does on my P4 WHS, albeit with 1gb RAM. And I'm not convinced Atom would cope any better - or perhaps worse.
Click to expand...

There appears to be a serious bug in demigrator. I've read the following threads and there are many people having serious problems. I'm not sure that Windows Home Server is the right way to go.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index....__st__20__s__dd7221fbb884967ccb46d31f11e92a5a

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/aca341bc-a063-42f1-bdda-4ba39d7b0dce
 
I'm not sure it's a bug. Well not anymore.

The second thread linked was started in 2007 during the beta. It was much improved after that - can't remember the precise timescales, but probably as part of PP1. I remember the MS Search 4 update reducing the demigrator usage significantly.

The first thread, well it's difficult to tell, as there's not much in the way of specs. If they are running around the minimum it does not surprise me. Also how much change is happening on the shares, how many users at once etc will all play a part.

Personally I've never had any streaming problems since beta, even when it is running at high CPU utilisation, but I know that it can use a fair bit of CPU hence my questions around the Atom.

I just know it hits my P4 HT relatively hard, but no issues with streaming and on my E5200 machines they don't break into a sweat.

Maybe that means the WHS software is a bit of a hog and the minimum specs should be higher if you want to duplicate and stream at the same time, which might put some people off and prefer to go with a different OS.
 
ChileanLlama said:
The first thread, well it's difficult to tell, as there's not much in the way of specs. If they are running around the minimum it does not surprise me. Also how much change is happening on the shares, how many users at once etc will all play a part.
Click to expand...

If you noticed, the probems seemed to occur when streaming HD material. This is exactly what I intend to do, thus my serious concern surrounding Windows Home Server.

Right now, I run my main PC as a server, client, gaming PC, main PC, HTPC - everything. The PC in bedroom streams video, data and anything you care to mention. The problem is that the main PC has very high power usage.

The impression I get is that regardless of the speed of the CPU you use, WHS (or rather demigrator), absolutely cripples the server. This worries me. Furthermoe, it can't be healthy for a CPU to be running flat out, at close to 100% for days on end (which is what some people stated in those threads I posted).

I'm thinking that maybe I could run Windows XP or Vista and pair it with the Intel Atom with 1 or 2 GB of RAM. This server would run 24/7 (no lights out or similar program), but due to the low power requirements, it wouldnt be too bad. This removes the "demigrator problem".

Remember, as this is a home server, serving only 1 other PC, I don't require complex load balancing that WHS could bring to the table.
 
THFC said:
idle 20w

Full load 50w

That's what i read in the 1st link
Click to expand...

The figure of 19.2w is for "CPU Power Consumption @ 100% load" (as illustrated in diagram) NOT for total system consumptation, under full load (which you point out), which they say would be 50w which would be achievable "when paired with mainboards based on chipsets with integrated graphics core."

However, the 19.2 watts of the Celeron E3200 (100% load) is what I was highlighting in comparison to the 8w for the Intel Atom 330...
 
Last edited:
Just to clarfiy: are you suggesting that the entire system, when on full load, with an E3200, would use 50W of power?
 
That's the thing I stream HD material to between up to 3 clients at the same time. I do not have this issue.

The demigrator does not cripple my CPUs, it sometimes puts a P4 under high load, and next to nothing on E5200 boxes - even then it is not at 100% for days on end, it is when I would expect it to run, when it is balancing storage.

I think you don't understand what balancing in WHS context gives you. This feature allows WHS to keep multiple copies of files on separate physical HDs, to do this it moves files from a landing zone to the appropriate HDs. It can be far more efficient than RAID if you don't need all your data duplicating, i.e. you can be selective.

If you are copying lots of data or continually moving it around, demigrator will take longer to run. If you have a slow system it will take longer to run. If you keep stopping and starting it, thinking there is a problem it will take longer to run. If your drives or full or your system at minimum spec it will take longer to run.

I think what is disappointing from those threads is that in the first one there are various similar, but perhaps unrelated issues - and no follow up as to what happened after suggestions were made. In the other thread there is suggestion that the machines are close to or at minimum spec.

It is ultimately your choice as to what you think is best, but I think you are reading too much into a few problems. I would recommend you try the 120day trial of WHS so you can draw your own conclusions from hands-on experience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom