# Recommendation for Low Wattage Gentoo Server

## jlpoole

I have been using a Sheevaplug (8 watts) server both at home and at work.  The one at work died recently, I believe its internal power supply gave up the ghost.  I also have the OpenRD Client which has an external power supply, but I am gated on installing Gentoo due to a problem with cross-compiling initramfs.  I've read about others experiencing power problems with the SheevaPlug and its successor the GuruPlug.  I've decided these units, marvelous as they are for low power consumption, have consumed way too much of my time, I want to devote my time towards some software projects instead.

So what other options are there out there for a server running Gentoo that consumes low wattage?  My office mate suggest the Asus eee Box, but I saw one recent thread of someone have problems with the kernel and other things.  I do not want to struggle with something new, I just want to run Gentoo continuously and full time (24 hours/7 days a week) on a system built with reliable parts (referencing the SheevaPlug's questionable transformer) that doesn't consume 80-100 watts.

I will be running various servers and probably will want to  have a recent processor to give the response times some zip.

Anyone have any suggestions?  Just looking for a barebones system that has some quality name associated with it.  eee Box? Shuttle?  Motherboard/Processor combination?

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## pierro78

Not what you're looking for but my hp 2510p ultra portable has been very reliable so far (has been on 24/7 for more than a year, running small virtual machines on usb hard drives) and doesn't eat much power ...

(having a battery is good against power outages)

(there's a lot of info about it in this thread : http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/352887-2510p-owners-lounge.html )

(I think someone in this thread measured it at about 6W idling)

(it was cheap to buy it used)

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## dermund

I use a jetway board (J8F9) as my server/router. I measured ~ 9W when the system is idling. It runs with 12V - that's also a nice feature.

It has a AMD Geode LX800 CPU (500MHz) that is running even without a heatsink. It has a hardware **cryption engine - I don't use it, but it's nice to have.

(Just in case that you are interested, be careful that you take the right SODIMM DDR modules - it runs DDR1 not DDR2)

I'm quite happy with it, altough I can't say how endurant it is, because I have bought it just 3 months ago.

Here is the link to the manufactors description.

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## darkphader

A long way from your 8W but more powerful: I've built up some SuperServer 5015A-EHF's from Supermicro. With 2GB memory and a 40GB SSD they measured 25W usage during compile (-j5). Two Intel Gbe NIC's, PXE, IPMI (KVM over IP, virtual floppy and CDROM support, etc.).

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## Princess Nell

Running OpenBSD on one of those, 24x7 for the past year and a half or so. Linux is definitely supported. Power consumption is somewhere in the 5-15W range. Not quite as small as the *plugs  :Smile: 

http://www.soekris.com/

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## matze_na

My mini-server at home is running on this board: http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/D945GSEJT/D945GSEJT-overview.htm

If you go for an Atom, just be careful that the chipset is one of the netbook variety, which consume a lot less power than the traditional mobile ones.

The above board was the first I could find which was for sale to end-users and packs exactly the chipset and CPU as most of the earlier eeePCs.

Power consumption is somewhere between 15 and 20W, depending on system load. With 2x 2.5" HDDs included.

As power supply you can use pretty much any cheap supply for monitors which has the right connector and voltage. Mine is specified for 60W maximum and does the job without any problems.

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## Ant P.

I'm using a Jetway mini-ITX with an Atom CPU as a server. The BIOS is crippleware intended for dumb OSes (Windows XP...), but the kernel has workarounds so it at least gets some power management out of it. Runs on about 20W.

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## mr.sande

This was recently mentioned on my local LUG mailinglist, it might be of interest.

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## ewaller

Gumstix

http://www.gumstix.net/Setup-and-Programming/view/Overo-Setup-and-Programming/Overview/111.html

Edit: Okay, it is not Gentoo, but it is Linux

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## Shining Arcanine

 *jlpoole wrote:*   

> I have been using a Sheevaplug (8 watts) server both at home and at work.  The one at work died recently, I believe its internal power supply gave up the ghost.  I also have the OpenRD Client which has an external power supply, but I am gated on installing Gentoo due to a problem with cross-compiling initramfs.  I've read about others experiencing power problems with the SheevaPlug and its successor the GuruPlug.  I've decided these units, marvelous as they are for low power consumption, have consumed way too much of my time, I want to devote my time towards some software projects instead.
> 
> So what other options are there out there for a server running Gentoo that consumes low wattage?  My office mate suggest the Asus eee Box, but I saw one recent thread of someone have problems with the kernel and other things.  I do not want to struggle with something new, I just want to run Gentoo continuously and full time (24 hours/7 days a week) on a system built with reliable parts (referencing the SheevaPlug's questionable transformer) that doesn't consume 80-100 watts.
> 
> I will be running various servers and probably will want to  have a recent processor to give the response times some zip.
> ...

 

Do you have a reference for issues with the SheevaPlug? I have only heard about problems with the GuruPlug and as far as I knew until now, there have not been any major issues with the SheevaPlug.

Anyway, here is an alternative:

http://www.pandaboard.org/

The previous generation model is the Beagle Board:

http://www.beagleboard.org/

They are meant to be development platforms, so they are not nicely self-contained like the SheevaPlug is, although I imagine that you could find cases for them if you look.

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## jlpoole

 *Quote:*   

>  Do you have a reference for issues with the SheevaPlug? 

 

Check out http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugforum/ and search for "power supply". There are several posting by people whose plug just "bricked".

I just fixed my office one yesterday with about $30 of parts and will be posting a tutorial on how to replace the power supply (mine was melted capacitors) with an external one.

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## Naib

I'm a fan of via for my home nas boxes (plus HTTP,git, irc )

Compared to an atom the CPU is slightly more hungry but as a system uses less since the northbrigde in atom systems are crap.

Also the padlock core in via systems are <3 for encryption

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## jlpoole

Okay, we're almost into 2016.  I went with an atom and it has served me very well.  I think it's time for an upgrade, with all the additional software I want to incorporate on my server I'm finding it very very slow.  That, of course, is the trade-off for low power consumption.

Any rate, I'm responding to this thread to see if any one has any current recommendations for a low wattage server.

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## schorsch_76

For my home made router i use a pc engines APU.

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm

It is low power and offers 3 network devices, x86_64 and 4 GB of ram. 2 cores ... pretty neat. I compile gentoo on it self (of course on a app-misc/screen terminal over night). I use a mini ssd with 64 GB. Via USB you can add additional storage. As a FLOSS benefit, it uses coreboot as a BIOS  :Smile: .

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## jlpoole

 *schorsch_76 wrote:*   

> For my home made router i use a pc engines APU.
> 
> http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm
> 
> Information
> ...

 

It is offered from Switzerland by a 32 patent-awarded gentleman, Pascal Dornier, who has been in business since 1995 in the USA and 2002 in Switzerland.  The "APU" is powered by a AMD G series T40E APU, 1 GHz dual core (Bobcat core) with 64 bit support, 32K data + 32K instruction + 512KB L2 cache per core and consumes 6-12 watts.

Here's a breakdown of what I think would be a complete build (no hard drive):

 $145 - The top unit, APU.1D4 system board (T40E / 4GB / 3 GigE / 2 miniPCI express / mSATA / USB / RTC battery)

 $10 - enclosure

 $4.40 - AC adapter

 $18 -  SSD M-Sata 16GB MLC, Phison S9 controller (for apu)

 $48.40 - shipping & handling

Total $215.80

There may be a customs duty of "400%+" for the case, so another $40?

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## schorsch_76

I got their case for the board. About shipping to the US ... no idea. I bought it in Germany from an online shop. Maybe better buy it from here.

http://www.microcom.us/apu1d4.html

About your list: Yes i think that would be complete.

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## enZom

Might want to look into the something running the intel N3700, or Celeron N3150.

Both chips are 6w TDP, have aes instructions and can run completely fanless.

N3700

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3700M/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3700-ITX/

http://ark.intel.com/products/87261/Intel-Pentium-Processor-N3700-2M-Cache-up-to-2_40-GHz

N3150

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3150M/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3150-ITX/

DC version -> http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3150DC-ITX/

http://ark.intel.com/products/87258/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N3150-2M-Cache-up-to-2_08-GHz

More here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/index.asp?s=Intel%20CPU

There's several companies that offer various setups using those chips.

I have 2 embedded setups running the Celeron J1900 - The J1900 is the older version of the above chips but without aes. - and yes I notice the lack of aes.

One of my q1900m setups runs a full linux desktop, X, mate, firefox ect. The other is router that runs off a flash drive. Both run fanless. 

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Q1900M/

The one with a desktop was built out of boredom, I tossed linux on it just to see what would happen never expecting to leave it installed or running as a desktop. I was amazed at how well it worked and many months later its still running that desktop install. I even threw xbmc on it and hooked it up to a tv. I want to upgrade it to the N3700 though at some point.

If you're looking for more power there's a 35W TDP intel i3 that's pretty amazing. I'm compiling on one now  :Wink: 

i3-4130T http://ark.intel.com/products/77481/Intel-Core-i3-4130T-Processor-3M-Cache-2_90-GHz

There's also a fair amount of ECC supporting motherboards that can run this chip too.

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C226D2I#Specifications

And for low power but large drives these idle at 0.5w - 0.6w or so, max wattage at full read speed via benchmark is around 2.3w.

HGST Travelstar 5K1000 1TB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145584

Been using these in NAS setups or for storage drives for a while now. - They put off nearly 0 heat and are very quiet. I stream blu-ray backups from them all the time. When 4 drives are crammed in a tiny NAS and don't need a fan its a good day  :Wink: 

Anyway sorry for the long post. I just like low power stuff.

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## freke

+1 for the APU.1D4

I got two - one for my firewall (m0n0wall / BSD) and one running Gentoo for mail/dhcp/dns/http/mysql/tor/munin/ntpd and maybe other small stuff I forgot  :Wink: 

Planning to get another one for toying around with or maybe use as backup-mx at another location.

https://www.vlh.dk/munin/vlh.dk/ns.vlh.dk/index.html

After getting booting figured out I haven't had any issues what so ever.

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## 1clue

I have one of these: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRM-LN7F-2758.cfm

It's definitely not an i7 but it's not a regular old atom either. Gentoo takes awhile to update but it's designed to handle gigabit routing so it handles that and a couple low-load vms just fine.

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## jlpoole

There's a wide variety options here.  So I thought I would determine what is driving me to want low power requirements.  I determined what it costs to run continuously 1 watt of power for a year based upon our electricity rate plan in Napa, CA: $2.54   See https://www.ethercalc.org/2wuzvldaai

So, if I'm running a server that consumes 80 watts on standby, that is basically costing me $203 vs. running a server at 25 watts costs $63.  That's about a $140/year difference, over 5 years for $700.

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## enZom

 *jlpoole wrote:*   

> There's a wide variety options here.  So I thought I would determine what is driving me to want low power requirements.  I determined what it costs to run continuously 1 watt of power for a year based upon our electricity rate plan in Napa, CA: $2.54   See https://www.ethercalc.org/2wuzvldaai
> 
> So, if I'm running a server that consumes 80 watts on standby, that is basically costing me $203 vs. running a server at 25 watts costs $63.  That's about a $140/year difference, over 5 years for $700.

 

I did the same thing a while back after getting tired of a $300 a month electric bill lol. I thought it was my audio amps, it turned out to be all the computers and monitors. -Thank you kill-a-watt  :Smile: 

Its actually difficult finding green friendly components that aren't painfully slow, especially for workstations. Router and server setups aren't as difficult depending on how much performance you actually need.

My i3 workstation idles at 22w-24w when the bigger WD black drives go into standby. It would probably be lower if I picked up a picoPSU or something more efficient at running such low wattage. High wattage power supplies  generally aren't efficient when providing low wattage loads. At full cpu load via stress with 4x 1tb WD black + 2x hgst drives spinning and 2 monitors running via the onboard it pulls around 58w. But it takes a benchmark or something to load the system up that much.

The q1900 desktop with 1x 1Gb nic and a 7200rpm drive idles at around 12w when looking at the desktop. Full cpu load via stress benchmark @ 4 cores was 28w.

The q1900 router with 3x 1Gb nics running off a flash drive idles at around 8w. I've never seen this not idle / at it lowest cpu speed.

The N3700 and N3150 are more powerful and even lower tdp  :Wink: 

I guess figure out how much power you really need, or how little performance you can deal with.

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