[mythtv-users] Low Power System

[James Linder]

On 6/3/17 10:28 am, mythtv-users-request at mythtv.org wrote:
>> I have been a MythTV user for over 10 years but haven't kept up with
>> the changing hardware.  My last iteration was a Zotac Atom 230
>> combined front/backend which unfortunately died recently.
>>
>> We are moving off-grid (solar only) soon so I am looking for a
>> low-power system to watch TV/videos and listen to mythmusic. That's
>> basically all we use the Mythbox for.  Tuner is a networked HDHomerun
>> and there is ~2TB of data (recordings, videos, music).
>>
>> Should I be looking at the latest generation of Zotac motherboards or
>> am I better off looking at a laptop?  I could probably squeeze
>> everything into a laptop if it had dual HDD slots.
>>
>> All suggestions welcome.
>>
>>
> I've just updated one of my MythTv frontends using an ASRock J3710-ITX
> mini-itx board. This has an Intel Quad-Core Pentium Processor J3710built
> onto the board and has a power usage of < 6 Watts. It has optical audio
> out for surround sound amps etc. There is a Celeron version which is
> slightly cheaper. Teamed with a cheap SSD SATA disk or USB stick to boot
> from it work well with SD and HD. The video is hardware decoded in the
> CPU's graphics chip. Using a Fedora 25 installation with the VAAPI
> drivers uses about 15% of the CPU's watching full HD and is quick with
> the MythTv menu's etc. Seems to work well so far.
What I've found is

I use a NUC with a decent processor (i3 v6 or i5)
The box is not rated for low power in particular but running mythbackend 
on a flash disk actual power usage is a couple off watts only.
if you use flash then 2 stuff:
    partition your flash such that (say) 20% is unpartitioned. That 
gives a stock of sectors that trim can claim as sectors get worn out
    deal with mysql logging. The log will wear out your flash in a year.
    I run trim as a daily cron task. Recomendation is to not put it in 
fstab.
    BTW a 2.5" 1T spinning disc adds little to power, but makes life 
much easier

James