# Best hardware for home server

## rado3105

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).

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## trikolon

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.Last edited by trikolon on Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:17 am; edited 1 time in total

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## szczerb

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.

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## energyman76b

 *trikolon wrote:*   

> 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.

 

and then the big. fat, power hungry intel chipset will screw you up.

The AMD 7XX chipset series is very low on power consumption. Add a nice, small dual or single core amd cpu and you have a low power combination.

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## Carnildo

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.

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## Stupendoussteve

 *Carnildo wrote:*   

> 
> 
> A Pentium MMX 266 with 48MB of RAM: runs lighttpd, qmail, courier, tinydns, dnscachex, mysql, and runs a few Perl scripts for Wikipedia maintanence.

 

I run the same hardware on a laptop server, it's the home router among other things. Works outstanding, sped up my connection when moving from an embedded router.

Anyway, for a file server storage is more important than processing power.

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## energyman76b

 *Stupendoussteve wrote:*   

>  *Carnildo wrote:*   
> 
> A Pentium MMX 266 with 48MB of RAM: runs lighttpd, qmail, courier, tinydns, dnscachex, mysql, and runs a few Perl scripts for Wikipedia maintanence. 
> 
> I run the same hardware on a laptop server, it's the home router among other things. Works outstanding, sped up my connection when moving from an embedded router.
> ...

 

when you are using any kind of raid, processing power becomes a factor. Not a big one, but it is there. It is also nice to have some 'spare' power, so you can still watch videos streamed from the server while it is doing some maintenance in the background.

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## Carnildo

 *energyman76b wrote:*   

>  *Stupendoussteve wrote:*    *Carnildo wrote:*   
> 
> A Pentium MMX 266 with 48MB of RAM: runs lighttpd, qmail, courier, tinydns, dnscachex, mysql, and runs a few Perl scripts for Wikipedia maintanence. 
> 
> I run the same hardware on a laptop server, it's the home router among other things. Works outstanding, sped up my connection when moving from an embedded router.
> ...

 

Depends on how you've got your RAID set up.  I've got a 300MHz K6-II with a RAID-1 array.  It's using a hardware controller card, so it doesn't use any CPU time beyond what a single hard drive would.

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## minor_prophets

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 Evil: 

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## rado3105

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.

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## energyman76b

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

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.

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