# Hardware for home server low electricity consumption



## DadAN (Feb 16, 2018)

Hello,

I am searching for hardware to run small home server, it should be able to serve 3-4 HDD SATA, GEOM mirror and 
running services like Apache, PHP, MariaDB, OpenVPN, music and video streaming over LAN, freeNAS?
what can you suggest nowadays?

thank you


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## robroy (Feb 16, 2018)

DadAN, I see you've mentioned FreeNAS; just FYI, this forum's pretty strict about not discussing FreeBSD derivatives.

'hope you'll forgive me if this is all old news for you Amigo.

I used to be really fascinated with computer power consumption, and aimed for the lowest-power components, every time.  Here's an article I wrote a while back with some of my measurements and findings, if you feel curious to skim through it (the chart near the bottom may be of most interest to you):  _Running FreeBSD on a Supermicro 5017A-EF__._

And I learned something, over the years, running low-power hardware:  the moment you're being paid to do something with it ('seems that in reality, multi-purposing is inevitable, for me at least), and you have to _wait_ for the computer to do stuff, you will sincerely wish you'd spent more on a regular server-class system (Xeon, Opteron, EPYC, whatever).  The regular performance-oriented stuff runs circles around the low-power stuff generally, and really doesn't use _that_ much more power.

What that low-power stuff's good at is sitting and doing nothing performance-sensitive at all.  The moment you feel in a hurry, not only will you wish you'd gone for normal workstation/server components--but you'll actually wind up using more electricity running on the low-power stuff, for the same computation job that would finish much, much faster on the normal-power stuff (what I mean's that the normal stuff's often far more computationally efficient, power-wise, than the low-power stuff is).

Happy days to you DadAN.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 16, 2018)

What are your performance requirements?  You talk about what software needs to be installed.  But there is a difference streaming one compressed audio stream (<100 kByte/second), and streaming a half-dozen high-quality 4K movies.

Another question: Why do you need 3-4 SATA disks?  How much data do you have?  If you have less than a few TB, the most power-efficient solution would be a single SSD.  If you can't afford SSDs, or have too much data for one (SSDs now come in sizes up to 16TB), then the most power-efficient solution would be the minimum nuber of large nearline helium-filled drives.

Since a single disk is unsafe (RAID is mandatory today), you'll eventually need at least a second one.  But depending on what your write traffic is, and whether it would be admissible for some writes (like the last hour's worth) to vanish in case of a hardware failure, you could significantly reduce power consumption by having only 1 disk that is always on, and once on hour mirror a snapshot of your file system to the second disk.  In a nutshell, you can trade energy usage versus availability and reliability of the most recently written data.

I'll give you two examples of relatively low power consumption.  My regular home server (now about 5 years old) is a MicroATX motherboard with a 1.8 GHz 32-bit Atom on it, using a motherboard that is selected to not require power-hungry PCIe cards (there are none), and 4 disks (two large spinning data disks, a boot SSD, and an external backup disk that is always on but physically stored in a large and heavy fire safe).  A few years ago, I measured average power consumption to be ~35W.  That machine can stream data over the internal ethernet at 20-40 MByte/second (most ethernet ports in the house are only 100baseT), which is enough for video.  It also does all the other server functions (firewall, router, DNS, DHCP, NTP, NFS, Apache, ...).

The other example that surprised me recently: I had a Raspberry Pi 3 on my electronics workbench, and for fun connected a keyboard and display to it, and discovered that it is capable of running a Xwindows GUI, play music, and display video.  The ethernet is a bit anemic (100baseT, connected internally via USB), but good enough for 10MByte/s.  I also recently bought a 2TB Seagate USB-connected disk (it was on sale at Costco for $69, a deal too good to pass up).  I bet a RPi3 with two USB-connected disks would have enough power to run as a home server at a throughput of several MByte/s.  Whether it could ZFS (which would be my #1 choice for a file system with built-in RAID) is a difficult question though; one might have to use a simpler file system (UFS, ext4, ...) with a separate software RAID layer.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 16, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> I measured average power consumption to be ~35W.


The OP should think about what size light bulbs he's running in the same room as his computer by comparison.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 16, 2018)

It saves electricity if and is more romantic if you play with your computers without lights on.  Plus, it prevents you from discriminating on the basis of the skin color of your server, and thereby makes the so-derided CoC less necessary.  Obligatory link to really good music, the nearly forgotten Alberta Hunter singing You can't tell the difference after dark.


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## robroy (Feb 16, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> and is more romantic



This consideration's given to computer equipment far, far too rarely!  'nice one .


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 16, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> if you play with your computers without lights on.


Especially with hardware and unintentionally surprising light effects.


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## Oko (Feb 17, 2018)

I built few of these for few local business happily running FreeBSD 11.1. Price is well under $1500. Very light on electric consumption


Motherboard: Supermicro Atom C2758 64GB DDR3 PCIE SATA USB Mini ITX DDR3 1333 NA Motherboards MBD-A1SRI-2758F-O
RAM 4x8GB=32 GB: Micron Consumer Products Group CT102472BF160B 8gb DDR3-1600 1.35v Dr X8 Unbuffered ECC Sodimm 204p
Supermicro Superchassis CSE-721TQ-250B Mini-Tower with 250W Power Supply
HDD for OS: Transcend 2x64GB MLC SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive 37 (TS64GSSD370S)
HDD for data: 2x4TB WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD40EFRX
Note that I switched to buying 8TB drives since that last build. If the money is not an issue I would go for Gold instead of Reds.


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## DadAN (Feb 17, 2018)

Hi,

thanks for all suggestions 
Want to build small home server.
3-4 SATA 3 ports are planned to have some reserve for future data

My plan is to use 2 disks for system mirror and 1 disk for non critical data or another mirror in case of 2 disks.


My hardware requirements are 
processor Intel Atom


ECC RAM memory (from 8GB but upgrade possible to 16 at least)
(wants to run ZFS)

minimum 4 SATA 3 ports 6Gb, better 6

1 Gb ethernet LAN port


remote control if possible

USB3 ports

COM port, PCI-E slot  (not requirement)

Power consumption up to 80-90W, seems I will have to choose something from supermicro, what do you suggest ?
Server will be used by 1-3 ppl, it will be really home server for user data.
thanks


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 17, 2018)

I second some of the thoughts above suggesting that performance can easily be, or become, a consideration. You're not going to get both low power consumption and performance.

One thing that is often overlooked though is the efficiency of the power supply. Switching supplies will typically have best efficiency at some specific load and be very inefficient at low loads. Make sure that you consider the length of time for any particular load level usage and not use an average as that is meaningless. For example, you could have 80% efficiency for a total of 30 minutes per day at full load, and then be working at 50% efficiency the rest of the time. Also, it is worth doing actual measurements as the real world is generally quite different from what you see in a file written by somebody trying to sell a product.


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## vermaden (Feb 17, 2018)

DadAN said:


> Hello,
> 
> I am searching for hardware to run small home server, it should be able to serve 3-4 HDD SATA, GEOM mirror and
> running services like Apache, PHP, MariaDB, OpenVPN, music and video streaming over LAN, freeNAS?
> ...


This one uses 6W and has 4 SATA ports:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J3160DC-ITX/index.us.asp


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## DadAN (Feb 18, 2018)

that one does not support ECC.. btw is there some catalogue of motherboards were you can search by criteria?


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 18, 2018)

DadAN said:


> support ECC


With such criteria it doesn't sound like you're on the right track. Yes, ECC has the advantage of being able to get cheap outdated server RAM from Ebay, but for a home server is there any other advantage - I mean an advantage that you will be able to detect?


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## trev (Feb 18, 2018)

DadAN said:


> processor Intel Atom
> ECC RAM memory (from 8GB but upgrade possible to 16 at least)



Is this even possible? Last time I looked at the Intel datasheets for the Atom processors, there was no mention of ECC RAM and the amount of memory was restricted to 2GB or 8Gb depending on the type of memory DDR vs LPDDR.


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## Oko (Feb 18, 2018)

vermaden said:


> This one uses 6W and has 4 SATA ports:
> https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J3160DC-ITX/index.us.asp


That is a desktop motherboard. I have J4205. It is collecting dust. Unfortunately even OpenBSD has no stable video driver for Apollo Lake  

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=150977304620767&w=2

X is crashing. DragonFly guys have some patches. One of OpenBSD guys was playing with it. I will try it again after 6.3 release. 

It could be very good firewall hardware for SOHO possibly good DragonFly file server with Hammer. I would not run ZFS on it.


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## Oko (Feb 18, 2018)

trev said:


> Is this even possible? Last time I looked at the Intel datasheets for the Atom processors, there was no mention of ECC RAM and the amount of memory was restricted to 2GB or 8Gb depending on the type of memory DDR vs LPDDR.


Did you check my post? Here it is again

Motherboard: Supermicro Atom C2758 64GB DDR3 PCIE SATA USB Mini ITX DDR3 1333 NA Motherboards MBD-A1SRI-2758F-O

I have 32 GB of ECC Unbuffered memory although Sodimm 204 which is more expensive than normal standard size server ECC unbuffered memory.


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## DadAN (Feb 18, 2018)

Oko said:


> Did you check my post? Here it is again
> 
> Motherboard: Supermicro Atom C2758 64GB DDR3 PCIE SATA USB Mini ITX DDR3 1333 NA Motherboards MBD-A1SRI-2758F-O



This one looking pretty okay but only 2 SATA 3 ports available, nowadays almost all new disks are SATA3..


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## Oko (Feb 18, 2018)

DadAN said:


> This one looking pretty okay but only 2 SATA 3 ports available, nowadays almost all new disks are SATA3..


it has total of 4 ports 2 of which are 6Gb/s  and 2 have speed 3Gb/s. Use faster ports for data drives. Two let say Golds of 8TB in ZFS mirror. Your bottleneck is going to be 1Gig/s NIC unless you upgrade to infiniband.


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## shepper (Feb 18, 2018)

Oko said:


> I have J4205. It is collecting dust. Unfortunately even OpenBSD has no stable video driver for Apollo Lake


I have a Asrock j3355m (same video) and it recently is running in openbsd current with caveats.  The intel video driver wants to load some intel firmware which I suspect manages the C-states.  It would not wake from sleep in deep C states - the work around was to disable C states in the bios.

When I first bought the board, OpenBSD video did not work, but Debian 9 did.  It also incorporated the intel video firmware in a non-free package.


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## vermaden (Feb 18, 2018)

DadAN said:


> that one does not support ECC.. btw is there some catalogue of motherboards were you can search by criteria?


I do not know any 'global' site for that, but a lot of vendors provide filtering, ASRock for example: https://www.asrock.com/mb/index.us.asp


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## ralphbsz (Feb 19, 2018)

Oko said:


> iUse faster ports for data drives.


Spinning disk drives max out at about 250-300 MByte/s, which is about 2 Gbit/s.  So for a single spinning drive, a 3gig port is perfectly adequate.  Even consumer SSDs can do more than that (enterprise grade SSDs are typically bandwidth-limited by their interface, I don't know whether consumer-grade SSDs are too).  Better advice: Use faster ports for SSDs, slower ports for spinning rust.

In practice, with a slow machine (Atom!) and a 1gig Ethernet network if the machines main purpose will be a server, the bottleneck will not be the disk interfaces anyway


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 19, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> the bottleneck will not be the disk interfaces anyway



And that is worth remembering.  When building a system, first find the bottlenecks.


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## sko (Feb 19, 2018)

Just to throw in a slightly more capable option than the mentioned Atom C2xxx: Have a look at the smaller (i.e. 4-core) variants of the Xeon-D 1500 platform.

We're running 2 Xeon-D1518 systems (Supermicro X10SDV-TP8F) as Gateways/Routers (FreeBSD and SmartOS + FreeBSD in KVM VMs) and they are usually using ~40-45W under normal load with redundand PSUs (the second PSU adds ~5W to the figure). Higest I've ever seen was 72W when cold-booting the system; as soon as the BCM is kicking in this drops to ~60W while the OS is booting. A Kernel build runs at ~55W, idle system with all NICs powered is ~35W. (All numbers are from the PSU readings in the IPMI, which match the UPS load readings within ~1W accuracy)
Both systems are equipped with 2x16GB Reg ECC and 2x 240GB intel DC S3520 and all NICs are in use (4x GbE + 2x 10GbE SFP+), so the power consumption is pretty impressive IMHO, especially considering these are quite beefy CPUs for only 4C/8T.
Getting dual 10GbE from the SoC is also great, as a dedicated PCIe Card would easily draw an additional 20W+


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## diizzy (Feb 21, 2018)

It would help tremendously if you could tell where you live (country) as availability and pricing can be quite a bit different in let's say EU vs CA/US.
What robroy mentioned is something that you should highly take into consideration, not to mention that it's usually a premium price for low-power hardware which might actually end up being more expensive than going for the run of the mill stuff in the end. If you're a somewhat "regular" home user and do compilation etc from time to time I'd say that a Dell T30 and/or T130.
You can find decently priced ones (if you're in the US) at Dell outlet site. http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnline...x?brandid=2804&c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&frid=208
If you're concerned about power usage you can get an adapter cable to replace the PSU with a standard ATX one instead with Gold rating but I doubt it'll help much. I haven't looked into these models that much but if you're lucky they might also use standard mATX form factor (Dell T20 used that at least) which means that you could move the hardware into a larger case if needed but that's really just necessary if you want to have a lot of HDDs.

These are really nice sources of information (in german however) but you can use Google/Bing/* Translate to english.
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/comunity/f101/dell-poweredge-t30-1142541.html
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f101/dell-poweredge-t130-1106619.html


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## Mjölnir (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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## jmos (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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## JohnnySorocil (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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)


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## rootbert (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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## Phishfry (Jul 9, 2020)

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


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,


There are some RK3399 boards with built in 16GB eMMC flash drives. This is the trend in embedded platforms.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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## Phishfry (Jul 9, 2020)

You want IPMI too then you are jumping way up in price.


			SYS-E200-8D | Mini 1U | SuperServers | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 9, 2020)

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.


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## Phishfry (Jul 9, 2020)

With a tiny ITX case these IPMI boards and would make a nice mini-server combined with E3-1240LV5.
Asus p10s-i
ASRock Rack E3C236D2I
Gigabyte MX11-PC0


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## vermaden (Jul 9, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I'm going to hijack this thread since I now have the same question and two years have passed.
> 
> ...


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.


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## diizzy (Jul 10, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I'm going to hijack this thread since I now have the same question and two years have passed.
> 
> ...





			arm64/ROCKPro64 - FreeBSD Wiki
		

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.



			https://qdms.intel.com/dm/d.aspx/9c676e9d-27bd-4ea0-801a-9689ddcc4425/PCN117653-00.pdf
		






						Transient execution CPU vulnerability - Wikipedia
					






					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.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 10, 2020)

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!


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 10, 2020)

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!!"


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## Mjölnir (Jul 10, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> "Say what?", I asked. "Wifi hard drive?! What sorcery is this?!!" And I ran out the door screaming "Witch!!"


You are in urgent need of a _wireless bluetooth UPS_, too!


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## diizzy (Jul 10, 2020)

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





						Small Business Cyber Savings Event 2020 Computer & Electronics Deals | Dell US
					

Dell 2020 Black Friday in July Deals. Save on business laptops, desktop pc's, workstations, monitors, servers & accessories. FREE SHIPPING ✓.



					deals.dell.com
				



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)


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## Mjölnir (Jul 10, 2020)

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.


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## Jose (Jul 10, 2020)

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.


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## Phishfry (Jul 10, 2020)

Jose said:


> I'm really regretting not looking a Pcengines, though it looks like 1U cases for their products are hard to find.


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.





						Wandmontage-Kit für PC-Engines case1d* - meconet-Shop
					

Wandmontage-Kit für PC-Engines case1d*: Wandmontage-Kit aus Stahl für PC-Engines case1d* Gehäuse, inkl. Montagematerial 4 * Schrauben & Dübel für ...




					shop.meconet.de


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## Mjölnir (Jul 11, 2020)

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.


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## Phishfry (Jul 11, 2020)

mjollnir said:


> Some otherwise very good SOHO NAS boxes come w/ oversized PSU (180W for 4 HDD's ???)


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.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 11, 2020)

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.


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?


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## rootbert (Jul 11, 2020)

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.



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.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 11, 2020)

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


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## Phishfry (Jul 11, 2020)

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.








						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
				



They also work with NUT.


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## Mjölnir (Jul 12, 2020)

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, ...).


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).


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## Phishfry (Jul 12, 2020)

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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