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On 19/05/10 11:14, Vitani wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTimqLexjMfXs5yeNOPI56cUZnKfGg5Npwemle5Zs@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Good morning all,<br>
<br>
I'm currently using a full-blown 2.8GHz P4 (with HT) for my backend,
but it's costing waaay too much to keep that running 24/7 (and it
sounds like the inside of an aeroplane in our living room!). I was
wondering if anyone here had any recommendations on what I should
replace it with?<br>
<br>
Things I use the backend for:<br>
- Recording 1-3 SD programs simultaneously from a PCI Nova T500 (Dual
tuner)<br>
- Sharing those recordings, plus other videos, music & pictures
using Samba (my frontends are Xboxes running XBMC)<br>
- Mythweb & Webmin<br>
- Transmission torrent client<br>
<br>
Things I *don't* do:<br>
- Transcoding or comm flagging<br>
- Live TV<br>
- HDTV<br>
<br>
I've done a bit of Googling, but all the site/thread/posts I find are 2
or more years old, and thus are pretty irrelevant (or are they?). I'm
happy to build my own box from scratch, or use something pre-built.<br>
<br>
Thanks!<br>
Vitani<br>
<pre wrap="">
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</blockquote>
I posted this a few weeks back, as you didnt find it in the search,
here it is again :-)<br>
<br>
Travis Tabbal wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
<br>
On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:39 PM, <<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:glenhawk@optusnet.com.au">glenhawk@optusnet.com.au</a> <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:glenhawk@optusnet.com.au"><mailto:glenhawk@optusnet.com.au></a>>
wrote:
<br>
<br>
<br>
I have been considering the same thing because an "always-on" low
<br>
power server is attractive. The only major thing holding me back
<br>
is not being able to install my PCI HDTV cards in it. I have found
<br>
one ION board with a PCI slot (Zotec I think) and I could put my
<br>
dual tuner in it and then have a secondary backend for a couple
<br>
more tuners when needed.
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
Just been round the same loop. I want a silent full speed server that
<br>
doesn't use any power <span class="moz-smiley-s1" title=":-)"><span>:-)</span></span>
<br>
<br>
I have a small Buffalo NAS with a couple of 1TB USB drives attached
<br>
which is reasonably quiet, and only uses about 10 Watts above the draw
<br>
of the Hardrives, so 25W all spinning but idle. Its an arm processor
<br>
with 128 M RAM
<br>
<br>
I have a little acer revo, which is a fantastic machine, dual core,
<br>
quiet ( but not silent) reasonably powered with a 160G laptop drive and
<br>
1G Ram only 20W all in (about half of a first generation desktop atom
<br>
board)
<br>
<br>
My old backend had 4 IDE drives with a total of 1TB of storage, a duron
<br>
1600 and 3 PCI capture cards, and a total of 115w all spining.
<br>
<br>
It was all working well wake to record on the backend ( which is
<br>
actually probably the lowest power option, depending on the hours the
<br>
backend is recording or streaming) But I went through a loop of trying
<br>
to run an always-on low power backend.
<br>
<br>
Options tried:
<br>
<br>
1) Run backend on the NAS. Hard to compile myth on the arm platform,
<br>
not enough memory and CPU to run backed, particularly the Mysql
<br>
database <span class="moz-smiley-s2" title=":-("><span>:-(</span></span>
Possible, but not practical.
<br>
<br>
2) Backend on the revo. Plenty of CPU for the Job, and memory, x86 so
no
<br>
compile issues. Using this with the NAS would have been a good
solution,
<br>
but none of my PCI tuner cards are useful. DVB-T USB devices are easy
<br>
to get, and about £30, got one and it works fine, as long as you are
<br>
careful with the chipset you buy ( learned that to my cost)
<br>
However two of my tuner cards are dvb-s, and they are not as common or
<br>
as cheap in USB versions. There are really cheapUSB DVB-S out there,
but
<br>
they have no linux support.
<br>
<br>
3) A hybrid approach, revo master backend with DVB-T, the old backend
as
<br>
slave with DVB-S PCI cards.
<br>
This is a reasonable compromise. If I was only recording TV I would
have
<br>
probably stopped at this, with wake to record on the slave, so all the
<br>
convenience of the always on backend, with the power draw of the revo.
<br>
Automatically turning on the bigger machine to record DVB-S channels.
<br>
The wake to record fuctions work perfectly in 0.23, with the master
<br>
backend closing down and starting the slave. Only downside is I often
<br>
use the dvb-s cards for LiveTV, and the wakeup stuff doesnt support it.
<br>
In fact it desperately tries to shut down the slave whenever you turn
it
<br>
on if nothing is scheduled !
<br>
<br>
You could make this work but I had some of the issues with the
hardware.
<br>
and moved on to ....
<br>
<br>
4) Looked again at a stand alone atom board, but we hit the PCI slot
<br>
count, a single slot is the most you can hope for. Also as said the
<br>
older atom platforms are 40 Watt draw, because of the motherboard
chipset.
<br>
<br>
5) Where I am now ........kind of back where I started.
<br>
<br>
There is a good article on Toms hardware comparing the power efficiency
<br>
of Atom and newer core 2 duos (both 45nm fabrication). Not that much in
<br>
it really
<br>
<br>
Replaced the old motherboard with a cheap Gigabyte 775 board, with a
low
<br>
end 45nm core2duo chip. I also swapped things around to make sure I had
<br>
a good 80+ powersupply.
<br>
<br>
Changing the power supply saved about 10W, which is surprising, ditched
<br>
some of the smaller drives, 7 watts each, and the dvb-t pci card 7
watts.
<br>
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L iG31 Socket 775
<br>
So my backend is now 2 hardrives, 2 DVB-S PCI, 1 USB DVB-T, 80+ PSU, a
<br>
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L iG31 Socket 775 and an e3300 cpu. The gigabyte
<br>
board lets you undervolt the processor, and if you let everything but
<br>
the boot drive spin down, it idles around 50W at the wall. So not much
<br>
more power than a cheaper atom board, with only about 40W being used
by
<br>
the MB/processor and psu losses. The rest is the DVB-s cards and HD
when
<br>
spinning. The up side is for a few watts more at idle, it has the guts
<br>
to do other things if needs be. It leaves me with 4 spare SATA ports, a
<br>
2.5GHz dual core CPU and 2GB ram for emergencies or other applications
<br>
to use.
<br>
<br>
Hopefully the info on pros and cons will be useful, even if you don't
<br>
end up with the same conclusion.
<br>
<br>
john
<br>
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