[mythtv-users] Low Power MythTV Server on Via EPIA M6000 - 37 watts

Bob spam at homeurl.co.uk
Fri Apr 20 13:31:42 UTC 2007


David Rees wrote:
> On 4/19/07, Kevin Dalley <kevin at kelphead.org> wrote:
>   
>> My 4-5 year old Tivo uses about 35 Watts average, measured with my
>> power meter over about 1000 hours.  I was hoping to cut the power
>> under that, and replace the box with something more flexible than
>> TiVo.  I'm undecided on whether this is encouraging or not.  I could
>> replace my TiVo, but I would use more energy, though not much more.
>>     
>
> It will be tough to build a MythTV system that uses less power than
> that. Pete's backend-only system (you still need a frontend) uses 37w
> at idle. To get it lower than that you'd need lower power components.
> The PVR-350 he uses should draw about 10w (would be nice if he could
> confirm it) and PVR-150s should draw less, but I don't think anyone
> has actually measured it. If you have a PVR-150 and a Kill-A-Watt I'd
> be very interested to see how much system power usage goes up by
> adding a card when idle and when in use!
>
> A notebook drive instead of a standard 7200rpm IDE/ATA drive would
> further reduce power utilization, but at a cost.
>   

For the most part the data rates required by MythTV are not that high, 
particularly if you've only got one/two sources and/or one/two 
frontends, you could probably make do with a couple of 4200RPM jobs, 
according to THG the fujitsu 200GB only consumes 2.2m max and 0.6w at idle
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html?modelx=33&model1=598&model2=602&chart=157
if you put /etc and a few of the more static mount points on a CF card 
with the rest on a Fujitsu 200 you could then use LVM to join whatever's 
left of that drive with another, probably resulting in around 390GB of 
storage for recordings, that consume less than 5w.

I'd love to see a comparison of power consumption of a Via EPIA vs an 
AMD Geode NX1500 (6w) on an AsRock K7S41GX, if that MB had gig ethernet 
I'd have 3 by now.

I have a Geode NX1500 in my webserver and it's very cool but the MB's an 
AsRock K7VM3 which has a VIA chipset, which, in all fairness, hasn't 
given me any problems, but I have an irrational dislike of VIA chipsets 
since a USB2 Firewire comi card that sucks hard, so in a ideal world I'd 
like to switch to the SIS based K7S41GX.

For the same reason I also hate Ali but double, nay triply so, I used to 
hate SIS (for different flaky reasons) but since the 735 I've revised my 
opinion of them, anyone know where I can get an NEC, SIS or Ti based 
combi card?



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