10w processor + 2 PCI-e?

Mercutio · 12 Sep 2013 at 15:14

There's a fair amount of the atom processors around at 10w TDP. Is anyone aware of a chip+board combo in the range that will yield 2x pcie slots?

Alternatively, anything else at this sort of power level with 2xpcie slots (they need to be at least 4x each)

Mercutio · 13 Sep 2013 at 23:33

Tis basically for something to leave on for homebrew NAS work. Need basically the lowest power setup possible that can handle 2 PCIe cards at 4x or above (raid 5 card and 10GBe NIC - I know these will add a bit to total W draw at the wall - guessing around 10w per card) 4x WD reds which are around 7w per drive while sleeping and about 15w each during operations.

Aiming to come in under 100w (drives asleep) if possible.

If the chip and board as suggested are 10w idle/40w load I should be well "under budget".

Mercutio · 14 Sep 2013 at 03:37

Ye, the 10GBe is so I can map the drives with a few additional tricks and make windows on my main box think the raid I'll be plugging into this is a local drive

Got the network side of it about covered. The raid card can do around 400MB/sec in raid 5 with the right amount of drives, I'm rather used to the speed and wanted to move all my storage to one box in the house, backups etc are then easier too.

All eggs in one basket etc I know but raid 5 + backups means I can keep the data safe, the box will be built with some thought towards making sure power + cooling needs are covered and short of dodgy hardware I doubt I'll have much issue, not had any kit fail me in a significant amount of time. The raid controller is battery backed too so there's no issues on power cut etc even with higher performance options set.

Cost of hardware wise I'll need to buy something regardless and the shopping list looks pretty cheap as things sit.

Edit: checking the celeron processors at the moment (admittedly its G550) it lists it as a 65w part. Checked the listing for the G530 and it's listed as 65w too. We sure on the readings from the setup you had decto?

Mercutio · 14 Sep 2013 at 21:40

Seems there's a few mATX options with 2+ PCIe and uber basic chipset so that and a celeron will be pretty damned cheap. Will see how far I get, holidays coming so will be a few weeks before I take the plunge

The celeron only needs to keep oversight on the PCIe bus, all the raid 5 calculations etc are done in hardware on the card (for a £60 card they are excellent, you can get 1000MB+ out of it in raid 10, around 400MB in raid 5, will need to find the sweet spot for throughput from more drives vs calculating each drives share of the data) so there's no real issue with lack of grunt. The 10gbe nic will be fully hardware too.