Low power home server feedback

[doubleororo]

Hey folks,

I want to build a NAS for storing raw videos, time machine backups, and various other stuff accessible locally. My requirements are:

• $0.13 per KWh in my neighborhood, so minimizing runtime costs (<30W idle)

• High speed read and write over my local gigabit cat6 (~100Mb/s)

• Total cost under $500 (I know, crazy)

Here's my proposal:

• Motherboard: MSI H110M ECO-S0 LGA1151

  • Has PCI 3.0 16x1

• CPU: G3900 Celeron

• Ram: 32Gb 2133MHz

• Cache drive: Optane 32gb m.2 SSD

  • I'm not positive I have enough PCI lanes to sneak this in.

• SAS controller: LSI 9207-8i PCI 3.0 x8 SAS controller, then 2 SAS to 8 SATA cables

• Drive: 3x10TB 7200RPM WD Red Pro drives (2 storage, 1 parity)

• OS: Unraid (only because I want to be able to add more random drives)

Total cost: $400 (Parts from ebay + marketplace)

What do you think about the build above? Do you think there's a more performant setup I could get?

[BiotechBen]

7 minutes ago, doubleororo said:

Hey folks,

I want to build a NAS for storing raw videos, time machine backups, and various other stuff accessible locally. My requirements are:

• $0.13 per KWh in my neighborhood, so minimizing runtime costs (<30W idle)

• High speed read and write over my local gigabit cat6 (~100Mb/s)

• Total cost under $500 (I know, crazy)

Here's my proposal:

• Motherboard: MSI H110M ECO-S0 LGA1151

  • Has PCI 3.0 16x1

• CPU: G3900 Celeron

• Ram: 32Gb 2133MHz

• Cache drive: Optane 32gb m.2 SSD

  • I'm not positive I have enough PCI lanes to sneak this in.

• SAS controller: LSI 9207-8i PCI 3.0 x8 SAS controller, then 2 SAS to 8 SATA cables

• Drive: 3x10TB 7200RPM WD Red Pro drives (2 storage, 1 parity)

• OS: Unraid (only because I want to be able to add more random drives)

Total cost: $400 (Parts from ebay + marketplace)

What do you think about the build above? Do you think there's a more performant setup I could get?

The G3900 is a super inefficient chip on 1151, a 7500t is a much more solid choice and it's a super low power draw chip. Unless you're getting the G3900 for effectively free, it's not a great option, a 7500T can be had for about $35 on eBay. Or if you need that sweet, sweet, single thread: a 7600T is about $5 more 

[manikyath]

15 minutes ago, doubleororo said:

$0.13 per KWh in my neighborhood, so minimizing runtime costs

that's funny.. my rate is ridiculously low for my area.. and i pay double.

 

also, CPU choice does very little for power draw because a higher power cpu will be faster, and thus complete a task faster before going to idle clocks.. whereas a "barely sufficient" cpu will really hurt your server's performance while spending most of it's time at max power target.

[Needfuldoer]

9 minutes ago, manikyath said:

that's funny.. my rate is ridiculously low for my area.. and i pay double.

 

also, CPU choice does very little for power draw because a higher power cpu will be faster, and thus complete a task faster before going to idle clocks.. whereas a "barely sufficient" cpu will really hurt your server's performance while spending most of it's time at max power target.

Exactly. The "low power" chips have a limited TDP for applications where cooling is limited. (Ultra-small office PCs, for example.) 

 

All Intel CPUs in a given generation should idle within a few watts of each other. 

[BiotechBen]

12 minutes ago, manikyath said:

that's funny.. my rate is ridiculously low for my area.. and i pay double.

 

also, CPU choice does very little for power draw because a higher power cpu will be faster, and thus complete a task faster before going to idle clocks.. whereas a "barely sufficient" cpu will really hurt your server's performance while spending most of it's time at max power target.

My effective rate is around $.14/kwh, with benefits if I use more. After I go over 1MW the rate gets cheaper.

[Electronics Wizardy]

43 minutes ago, doubleororo said:

• SAS controller: LSI 9207-8i PCI 3.0 x8 SAS controller, then 2 SAS to 8 SATA cables

•  

You got 4 sata ports on board. Why get the sas adapter. You only seem to be using 3 ports with this config.

 

And I'd probably get 2 biger 20/22 tb drives to save even more power.

[doubleororo]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

You got 4 sata ports on board. Why get the sas adapter. You only seem to be using 3 ports with this config.

 

And I'd probably get 2 biger 20/22 tb drives to save even more power.

There were a couple of articles I read [1] and [2] which describe that motherboard SATA connectors aren't excellent, so I figured I'd spill a few bucks to buy a dedicated controller running in HBA mode to get higher speeds. I'll update this thread with my findings though whether the integrated motherboard sata is comparable.

 

[1] - https://forums.unraid.net/topic/41340-satasas-controllers-tested-real-world-max-throughput-during-parity-check/

[2] - https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, doubleororo said:

There were a couple of articles I read [1] and [2] which describe that motherboard SATA connectors aren't excellent, so I figured I'd spill a few bucks to buy a dedicated controller running in HBA mode to get higher speeds. I'll update this thread with my findings though whether the integrated motherboard sata is comparable.

 

[1] - https://forums.unraid.net/topic/41340-satasas-controllers-tested-real-world-max-throughput-during-parity-check/

[2] - https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html

Thank link doesn't show the intel onboard sata controller, and that a onboard sata will work fine for this use case, I wouldn't worry about this, esp with HDDs that don't need much speed. I have used many a intel sata controller without issues.

 

Also I don't think that ZFS article isn't relevant here as you don't seem to be using ZFS here.

 

Also those HBAs are fairly power hungry, pulling probably about 10w. And you want a fan for the chip too.

[SupaKomputa]

53 minutes ago, doubleororo said:

CPU: G3900 Celeron

Get kaby lake pentium instead. Better power consumption + better video encoder + HT for a tad bit money.

As mentioned above, even better if you can get 7400t, it idles about the same as that celeron.

 

1 hour ago, doubleororo said:

Ram: 32Gb 2133MHz

Why you need so much ram? Mines running perfectly fine with 8gb. Unraid doesn't need that much ram unless you're planning to run VM, which i doubt with 2 cores celeron.

 

1 hour ago, doubleororo said:

Cache drive: Optane 32gb m.2 SSD

No need. get a sata ssd instead as a cache drive, as you are working with large files, the files won't be stored directly in your HDD, from the network they will be placed temporarily in the SSD and later on transferred. Optane is good at caching small files.

 

27 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Also those HBAs are fairly power hungry, pulling probably about 10w. And you want a fan for the chip too.

True, extra card will only add more power consumption. I've no problem with my onboard intel sata for unraid.

 

For better power usage, you can also schedule sleep (install s3 sleep plugin), so that the server only wakes during working hours.

 

[mariushm]

I wouldn't go with that hardware combination.  G3900 is really slow and a h110 chipset mobo is cheap and barebones.

 

no need for red pro,  red plus is enough (plus is guaranteed CMR).

 

You can get a ryzen 2200g with cooler for $35 on eBay : https://www.ebay.com/itm/305259453794

$26 without cooler : https://www.ebay.com/itm/134797629611

 

Ryzen 1200  (4c/4t) is $27 : https://www.ebay.com/itm/174723918609 or https://www.ebay.com/itm/353553553948  - you can easily find a cheap 5-10$ video card to install if needed.

 

less than $50 for a mobo, doesn't have to be anything fancy... a cheap 20-30$ case or something recycled for free..

 

Alternatively, you could go for refurbished computers, but there's complications with weird motherboard shapes, or cases using weird shape power supplies.

 

 

For example, I'd look at something like this : https://www.newegg.com/p/1VK-0001-6H987?Item=9SIAMH5JZ30294

 

It's Dell Optiplex mid tower , for $85 you get i5-6500T, not TE as the title says, performance is around 2-2.5x better than a G3900 in same 35w TDP,  8 GB DDR4,  4 ram slots if you want to add more, decent case and a 240w psu ... it's a dell proprietary connector, but you can get adapter cables to use ATX power supplies from ebay for 5$ ... also sata power cables to power drives from mobo if needed are 5-10$, example : https://www.ebay.com/itm/175580912929

 

Board looks like this : https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-vg/optiplex-7040-desktop/opti7040mt_om-v1/system-board-layout?guid=guid-8b3564e4-40f3-4c31-8eb7-b004b3696f43&lang=en-us

 

Case has 2 3.5" slots but you may not get the plastic bits that are needed to lock the drives in the cage, it's hit and miss... also have 2 5.25" bays where you could put more drives.

So it may not be the best  but for 85$ it's a good deal, you get a lot of hardware 

 

Look into other refurbished servers... with processors like 6500T or similar. Lenovo tends to have standard atx size power supplies, but proprietary connectors (again you can find adapter cables to use atx power supplies), their cases are also sturdy.

 

For example Thinkcentre M700 for 89$ :  https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-thinkcentre-m700-student-home-office/p/1VK-0003-1N233?Item=9SIAKDXJW08693

You can see the case and internals in the video below

 

Look also at M92 or M93p  mid tower systems.

 

 

 

[doubleororo]

Quick update everyone! I really appreciate all y'all comments.

I ended up going with Unraid + MSI H110M-ECO for the motherboard, 8gb 2400 ram, and an i5-7500T with turbo-boost OFF and eco mode in the bios (all lights are off)

All of that + 256gb SSD for a docker container + 1 container running, I idle at 14Watts. In my area this is $1.30 per month, so I think this is a success.

Without an HBA, my SMB share running off the SSD gets 321megabits/second measured by transferring a 10g file.