Madmagudaman

So after about 6 months of using self contained NAS drives from a variety of manufactures I had grown tired of dealing with proprietary imbedded OS’es and crappy web interfaces. I was also really bothered by the fact that under the best of conditions I would only be getting around 20MB/s during file transfers.

So with both my Buffalo NAS unit on craigslist I decided to build myself a small Win2k3 server based on an Intel Atom 330 micro-itx board and two 1TB hard drives. The unit is now configured with no monitor and I am only using VNC for management. The drives are in the unit in a mirror configuration for redundancy.

So far the results are spectacular!!! I did some initial empty drive transfer and was getting 75MB/s writes and around 100MB/s reads. Now the drive is half full and I am getting around 75MB/s reads and around 50 MB/s writes. This pretty much sounds like my bottle neck is from my HD.
I am also now able configure my server for Torrents, media servers, and other tasks that were difficult if not impossible to do with small self contained boxes.

Part and Cost list (includes tax and shipping)

Intel D945GCLF2 – 75
2x 1 TB Samsung HDD – 180
2GB 667mhz ram – 22
Rosewill Smart RS-MI-01 with PSU - 60

TOTAL COST TO MY DOOR: $337

Here are a couple of photos of the build. I also post up power consumption numbers when I get my meter.

Frog_Racer

nice system, Im thinking of using this kind of hardware as a fileserver/router too, but I would run linux or one of it bretheren, having fun with pfsense on a old dell atm so no need at the moment.

GO ATOM FOR SERVER USE.

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yawnbox

sweet rig!
rep+
i wasn't sure what kind of power supply i would need for a mini-itx system!

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Madmagudaman

Well linux might be just as easy as Windows 2003 server. It was sort of a nightmare to get running because realistically Intel didn't intend to have this MB used as a server. A lot of the cd driver didn't work or caused problems. The later drivers on the website seemed to not be so destructive but it had already caused me one reformat.

The power of the unit is fairly impressive and really seems responsive but it is sort of deceiving. I tried a little video encoding and I get around 12x less performance even when hyperthreading.

In addition just a note: When using the software mirroring in Win2k Server, a restart make the array do a resynchronization, which takes at least 3 hours. The computer still can be used but doing full write and read processes.

As for the power supply with this case, it is very very quite but seems to pump out a lot of heat. I will know better if it is efficiency when I check this unit with my Killawatt on Sunday.

Last note. The case has room for a full size CD ROM or DVD drive but the two extras I have laying around are too long to fit in that space, kind of a bummer.

Mr_Nibbles

Nice job, that's a great cheap server.

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DuckieHo

Get a 5.25" bay adapter for another HD?

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Madmagudaman

Definitely! I was originally going to do software raid 5 with 3 (2 sata 1 pata) but many of the reviews really discouraged me with the write and read speeds. I really think you could get around 4 HDD in this case, if you were comfortable with drilling some holes, it would be a tight squeeze, but doable.

trogalicious

This is a brilliant idea. I've been tinkering around with the idea of doing a Atom build and this thread has almost pushed me to hit the "submit order" button.

where did you come across the majority of your parts?

the build looks great +rep

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Megas3300

I thought about doing my sub system with that board because of its novelty price, but I am about power, so I'm getting an ITX Zotac 9300 wifi and an e5200 with 4gb of ram.
It will be my subsystem for music and backup. I will have it in a really tiny case with a PicoPSU.

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Madmagudaman

I too am thinking of going to with the PicoPSU and using an old laptop power brick for around 100 watts or so and hoping for better efficiency . If I feel my case directly above my PSU it is pretty dang warm while ever where else on top of the case is quite cool. I think the PSU that comes with this unit is kind of lame and inefficient , BUT I won't pass too much judgment until I get the watt meter on the unit.

Also on my to do list is to pull out the North bridge fan and replace it with something larger to quite this thing down a bit. The loudest part of this entire machine is that North fan.


Got the case at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811147131

Ram at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134192

Drives Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145233

and motherboard and processor at my local Central Computer in San Francisco: http://www.centralcomputers.com/comm...=1237598478906

Price went back up at central computer and I'm pretty sure they were down to one unit when I went in a bought mine there. That store is freaking awesome, it like newegg price but no shipping and in your hands now!