MetalheadGautham

I was wondering how would an atom 330 CPU perform when used as a server. I am currently happy hosting stuff occasionally on my crappy sig rig and my upgrade is reserved for an Athlon II X4 rig so I'm not buying this. But my curiosity is still pushing me to ask how this can possibly perform.

I want to minimize hardware cost power consumption so I am thinking of the following theoretical configuration:

• Intel BOXD945GCLF2D or BOXD945GCLF2 CPU/GPU/Mobo combo - 77$ or 80$

• Any common 2GB DDR2 667MHz Memory Stick- 19$

• 4GB or 8GB pendrive which I can find lying around somewhere - for FREE

Net cost: 100$ plus 10$ if you include cost of a 4GB pendrive. But since pendrives are extremely common, I am excluding their cost so I still get to go under the 99$ mark

Well, I am using a pendrive to boot the server OS, which will be a server grade Linux distro like Slackware, since I plan to minimize cost and also by considering the fact that a pendrive uses less power and a server needs to do mostly read operations and not write operations and flash memory has quite fast read times and unlike the limit in number of write cycles, the number of read cycles is virtually unlimited.

Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor can be sourced from the main rig just for configuring purposes and can be removed later. A case isn't really needed for such a server. Besides, a system-on-a-board looks cool when naked

Power consumption: should be less than 50W I guess... (22W for chipset components and pendrive, 10W for CPU, 10W for RAM).

So net power consumed per year = 50W*24hours*365days = 438,000 Watt Hour = 438 KWH.

And cost of power @ 10c/unit = 4880 cents = 48.80$ or 50$ approx.

The funny part is that you need to spend amount equal to the server's cost every 2 years on power.

So what do you think ? What kind of site can be hosted with this configuration ? I'm putting my money on a heavy traffic wordpress blog.

EDIT: DAMN. Forgot the PSU. The cost might increase by a bit there, but for powering this kind of thing, even an old 100W PSU used in historic rigs available second hand for scrap metal prices will do.

But what the heck, I can also get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856119012 for 130$ which includes a PSU, Case and the atom/mobo combo for 130$. Then the overall cost comes to 149$ so what ? Its still cheap.

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phonyphonecall

lol, it wont be very fast.... but itll get the job done : )

MetalheadGautham

Thats what I think too. But I think the attractive part is the price. Its actually working out to be cheaper than some shared hosting or VPS sites.

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I am 26% addicted to Counterstrike. What about you?

e_dogg

I think an Atom CPU would be just fine for a file/backup server. But I don't think it could handle a whole lot of web traffic very well.

I'd recommend going with a low power AMD Sempron at least...if not a low power dual core.

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jaclipse

The 330 is the dual core link

Hephasteus

There's kind of a tactics war with all that. IBM is running around yapping about how you can replace 24 servers with just 2 new blah blah blades. While Dell is selling 1u servers with via c7's and saying you can replace 24 servers with 48 servers and use 1/4 the power.

SgtSpike

Hmmmm.... sound viable, but then again, with $150, you could pick up a sweet tigerdirect barebones kit. That's what I did for my server. All I had to add was a couples hard drives and a HSF, and I was good to go. Put it together a year ago, and it has an AM2 socket motherboard with an Athlon 64 processor, 1gb memory, Centurion 5 case, generic PSU, and onboard video. Couldn't be happier with that build, actually. For $150, you really can't beat a tiger direct barebones kit, if you find one on sale in one of their newsletters.

EDIT: And today, they'd probably give you 2GB ram and an X2 processor for $150.

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keith27

I don't like the idea of a USB drive for storage. Too, risky.

e_dogg

Here are some reports of people sucessfully running WHS on an Atom 330. The only complaints seem to be slow disk access times and lagginess while running Virtual Server.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?showtopic=4093

I think the first reply in that thread sums it up nicely...with the Atom setup, there's little room for future expansion/growth. SgtSpike's recommendation of getting a cheap barebones on TigerDirect is a good idea.

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MetalheadGautham

But the power factor is still there right ?

I mean, look at this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8888&CatId=333

A 170$ barebone (comes to 190$ when you add a HDD) which consumes about 200W power, vs this 50W machine.

Isn't there an obvious difference in maintenance costs ?

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I am 26% addicted to Counterstrike. What about you?