DIY file server - small, quiet & efficient like a ready-made NAS?

hymerman · 16 Feb 2009 at 15:12

Hi,

I've currently got a PC set up as a server with 4x500GB drives in RAID5, running Ubuntu server. It's just my old desktop PC though, so it's got the hot components from yesteryear with some big noisy fans, and it probably consumes a fair bit of power so it's not suitable for 24/7 use. It's being used as a file server, SVN repository, build server (intermittently), local web server, bitTorrent client and general linux experimentation box.

I'd now like to move these drives to another system - something very quiet, efficient, and if possible small (though I appreciate this will be difficult with 4 drives). A ready-made NAS box seems ideal for this, but I don't know if I could ever convince myself that £300-400 is a good price for a slow and inflexible computer. As such I think that building one myself will be a good idea. It doesn't need to be powerful so I can use energy-efficient parts, integrated graphics, and hopefully lots of passive cooling.

My question is: will it be possible to build a computer that's comparable in energy efficiency and noise to these ready-made NAS boxes for that kind of money? If so, what kinds of parts would you recommend? I'd need a full system, minus the drives (and case).

Thanks in advance chaps!

Audigex · 16 Feb 2009 at 17:52

To your question: yes

With budget parts you can buy a computer for 200-300 (so if anything, cheaper than the NAS)

What connection are the hard drives? They're where your money will vanish if you need to replace them.

asm495 · 16 Feb 2009 at 20:49

Not quite as efficient as dedicated NAS devices but look into an Atom CPU based motherboard. Can connect up to 4 HDs on the SATA controllers and it is a very low power system. I can't really post links unfortunately but Googling should give you a good idea.

decto · 17 Feb 2009 at 00:20

I favour a basic AM2 for such installations, especially the the 4850E which is a 2.5Ghz 45W chip

The Atom is ok but intel really need a decent chipset to pair it with and the dual core versions are best for multitasking seeing as it's quite a low power processor.

My server has an OS drive and 3 x 1GB RE2's, system drive 160gb onboard vga S939 opty 165 and consumes about 55W at the wall idle, 110W at load. The 4850E would drop the load consumption a fair bit.

Works great as a server and it powerful enough to dump encoding tasks to overnight etc so my main PC can be used for other tasks.

1W of electricity consumed 24 / 7 / 365 costs around £1 per year so I reckon a little over £1 per week to run.

You can get the AM2 CPU's dirt cheap, add in some cheap DDR2 and a cheap Matx board with multiple Sata's or just use a raid card.

A Matx case won't be the smallest you can get but you can get a number of SATA ports and have slots if you want to upgrade later.

Only connect a CD drive for installs as they can consume up to 10W just being connected. I just pull the power plug and the SATA when not needed.

Or you could consider something like this, would only hold 5 drives, 2 with 5.25 to 3.5converters but is otherwise a good base just needing CPU and memory

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-060-AS&groupid=701&catid=110&subcat=508

They are a bit smaller than they look in the picture. Not sure about linux support but it's not exactly new tech

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hymerman · 17 Feb 2009 at 14:25

Thanks guys, that's all really useful stuff. I didn't even know the Atom was out now (haven't been paying attention to hardware news for the past year or two), I'll look into it. From initial googlings it doesn't seem quite worth it due to the chipset, as you said decto. Also I couldn't immediately find anything supporting more than 2 SATA drives. Speaking of which: Audigex, my drives are all SATA

Now that I think about it I actually have 5 (4 plus OS), I'm only using 4 currently since my motherboard only has 4 SATA connectors.

A low-powered AM2 processor is sounding most likely. If I can achieve power consumption similar to you decto, I'll be happy. Is your server quiet? That's the other important consideration. I figure heat/efficiency/noise all go hand in hand though!