[mythtv-users] Low Power System

[James Linder]

On 6/3/17 8:00 pm, 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
> Thanks James, I actually do most of that now, with the exception that
> trim is in fstab - any sources on why not?

I've seen the same argument in various places
https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337

> Do you know of any NUCs that could fit two 2.5" or perhaps 1 3.5" and a
> boot disk?  Probably starting to creep the power up now.
NUC is rather limited, you *could* use a SSD and a M2 ssd card
>
> I assume NUC's would typically use a power brick which should be more
> efficient than standard ATX power supply. I may also be able to run it
> straight from our battery bank instead of using an inverter.
>
> I will also be investigating spindown, ACPI wakeup & Mythwelcome, etc..
James