Cheap Mobo for WHS

Llew21

Llew21

Llew21

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Joined
26 Mar 2009
Posts
9
I would welcome recommendations for a mobo for a Windows Home Server I intend to build. I have already built one with an Asus M2 series board which has been successful. OCUK don't list it anymore. So what I want is a board that has low power consumption and this probably means that I would use AMD processors, Gigabit lan and on board video. I would prefer to choose something out of the Gigabyte or Asus stable and to be available from OCUK.

The m2 series system I built has am idle power consumption at the plug of about 55W. I would like to match this or better it. I beleive some of the comercial boxes get down to 30-45W. Options to include the possibility of running a few addons that may be processor hungry.
 
The VIA mini-ITX systems are still very hard to beat when it comes to PC compatible low power systems. Intel Atom is let down by the chip set while AMD have a low power chip set but lose out on the cpu power consumption. Certainly my 'box that sits in the corner waiting for me to connect' draws 15 to 20 watts + whatever hard drives are active at the time.

The psu is another area worth investigation, I use the high efficiency picoPSU + a power brick this alone is probably good for a saving of 5 watts or so.
 
Thanks ecat.
I was aware of the VIA solution when I built my first WHS. ISTR that I felt that they did not have the processing power should it be needed so I went for the AMD processor. I suppose underclocking would be an alternative. It seems that OCUK don't do them either:(

The case I got for WHS1 was an Antec that came with an Earth Watts 380 PSU which I beleive are quite good in the efficiency stakes.
 
I understand your concern. My VIA C7 is just able to play back SD DVD material and while mp3 poses no problem don't expect it to produce 3D visualisations at the same time. But it's a server not a HTPC and it does a fine job dishing out the bytes over 100BaseT - I've not tried gigabit :O

PSU: I'm sure things have moved on the past 3 years (lol). I've not looked for a long time but I'm unsure if even today's high efficiency psu's can match 85% efficiency at 40 watts, exactly where you need it for a low power system. It used to be the case that most manufacturers didn't start measuring until somewhere in the 70 to 80 watt range.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page4.html
 
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