Best hardware for home server

rado3105 · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2007 Posts: 293

Hi I am looking for motherboard and CPU for home server, I was thinking of any AMD cpu and motherboard, probably without any graphic card. I want it to have minimal power consumption, but I dont have how it is with support under kernel. Can you recommend me any motherboard with great support under inux(it can be also intel).

trikolon · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:05 am Post subject:

i am using a AMD x2 4850 with 2x2,5GHz and a maximum of power of 40watt with a 780G chip which consumes less than 1 watt. i think thats a good combination for the time i bought it. nowerday i would probably buy an intel Atom dualcore with 8watt maximum of power an a really small mainboard. they aren't that expensive.

szczerb · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:13 am Post subject:

Have a look at that:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,review-31253.html

So I'd totally go with the 780G and for now probably a single core sempron as the mentioned CPU is still not in sale.

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2048 Location: Germany

Carnildo · Guru Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 595

What are you going to be serving? For a file server that doesn't run any applications, you'd be amazed at what you can get away with. I'd recommend a Via-based mini-ITX system if power consumption is more important than money, or an Intel Atom-based system if money is more important than power. For a web server, mail server, database server, or any other server, it depends on how heavy the load is, but home servers usually don't need much.

As a reference point, I've got the following servers:

A Pentium MMX 266 with 48MB of RAM: runs lighttpd, qmail, courier, tinydns, dnscachex, mysql, and runs a few Perl scripts for Wikipedia maintanence.
A Celeron 466 with 64MB of RAM: acts as a router, seven-port switch, wireless access point, and firewall, and provides DHCP and DNS resolution.
A SunBlade 100 (400 MHz, 1GB RAM): runs apache, postfix, dovecot, mysql. Really overkill for the job, but the Pentium MMX was getting overloaded.

Stupendoussteve · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2005 Posts: 72 Location: US West

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2048 Location: Germany

Carnildo · Guru Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 595

minor_prophets · Apprentice Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 281

For anywhere between $50-200, you could pick up a Dell PowerEdge or IBM server. I got a Dell PE2650, dual Xeon 2Ghz 2GB 3 36GBscsi with Perc3Di and DRAC3 free delivery for $139. Seller said it passed all Dell diags. I tested and it was flawless.

I also have an Athlon XP 3200 system w/ 1.5GB RAM Silicon chip onboard hardware RAID1(When/if I need to do this again, I'm definitely doing soft raid though) that flies. Very quiet server compared to my 2650 :twisted:

rado3105 · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jul 2007 Posts: 293

I want it mainly to be silent and with low power consumption. I am now thinking of motherboard - based on AMD690G/AMD740G. And processor athlon x2 4050. Also I am thinking of SSD as a system disk and Western Digital RE2GP as a storage disk. For powering this I am planning to use PicoPSU.

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2048 Location: Germany

the 770/780/790 series of chipsets is very light on the energy budget - they might be better than the 690/740. They claim ~ 10W consumption for their 790FX ....
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pdr · l33t Joined: 20 Mar 2004 Posts: 618

I run an intel 945 mini-itx with a celeron 520 in it - case uses a laptop-like external brick (80W passive cooling). Originally was going to use my fit-pc (amd geode) but worried it was too underpowered and also I don't like having my server be physically the same as my firewall - so the fit-pc is the firewall and (still) the NTP server. The celeron is the file, apache, mysql and dns server. LAMP parts are light load.