[mythtv-users] Power efficient backend-only server

Jelte Veldstra jelte.veldstra at gmail.com
Tue Oct 20 14:30:51 UTC 2009


>
>
>
>> So my question is, has anyone created a backend-only MythTV system using a
>> small, power efficient computer, and if so, what components did you use, and
>> how well does it run?
>>
>>
I'm quite happy with my Sempron LE1250 based backend. It has the following
specs:

Asrock ALiveNF7G-FullHD R3.0 mainboard (based on power efficient nVidia 630a
chipset)
AMD Sempron LE1250 CPU
1 GB DDR2 RAM
2 WD GP 1 TB hdds ("EADS" with 32MB cache)
2 Hauppauge Nova-S tuners

This backend runs CentOS 5 and cpupowerd throttles down the CPU and
undervolts it when it's idling. When the processor power is needed it runs
at stock voltage and speed again. Of the two harddisks (taking about 4W each
during operation) one is powered down most of the time and is only mounted
once at night to write backups to using rsnapshot aftwer which it gets
unmounted again and powered down. Lastly during daytime I switch to 100Mbit
and during the evenings it's back to Gbit ethernet. This saves another 2W.

When idle the system uses 37W. During recordings it can go up to 58W. The
stability has been great. During the initial setup I had frequent lockups,
but looking back the blame should be put on me for that :-). Once I figured
out the erroneous MySQL entries that I manually added it has been rock solid
since.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20091020/201cc6ea/attachment.htm>


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list