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That's way more CPU & RAM than you're going to need. 850W is A LOT for an idle machine. Fortunately, you won't draw anywhere near that without a graphics card.

That's way more CPU & RAM than you're going to need. 850W is A LOT for an idle machine. Fortunately, you won't draw anywhere near that without a graphics card. Let's do some math. Say your machine draws 250 Watts (~2 Amps). That's 6 KilowattHours(kwh) per day. The US. national average for electricity is $0.112/kwh (as high as $0.31 in Hawaii) http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html Electricity for your machine will cost 6 * $0.112 = $0.67/day (on average) That's $245.28/yr These days you can get integrated Atom boards with up to 8 SATA ports. Less power, less heat, less space. http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2 http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2

nemof 15y ago
Definitely agree. I'd be more inclined to go for a sandybridge processor http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-efficienct-32-nm,2831-7.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-efficienct-...
kayoone 15y ago
250W is already pretty high, i think you can get away with 150-180W for that machine and 4 disks, which would bring costs down to ~$180/yr or $15 a month. Depening on what you do with it thats fair i think. If you just need media storage an atom or similar cpu will work, but if you need/want to run a couple of VMs a Server like this one is the better choice.
miahi 15y ago
Yup, that thing is way too big and expensive for what it is. I get the same functionality (NAS, media server, torrent machine, small DB server, small web server, FTP, git, SSH, remote desktop, caching proxy, print server, UPS monitor) from an $100 Atom mITX system with 2GB RAM that draws 50 Watts. I get 5TB of storage, available at 85-90MB/s through Gigabit. Why would I need more? Also a benefit of the low power draw, a 700VA UPS can keep that thing running for about two hours.
markdennehy 15y ago
Kev, I could definitely do this on less CPU, less RAM, less power, and possibly less money (some of the parts for the custom small atom boards are more expensive, pound-for-pound, than their mainstream desktop counterparts). But the moment I hit any extra task, my spec would be all out of whack and I'd have to rebuild the box. No thanks, I'll accept a higher initial spend and a less-than-optimal running cost as insurance against the time and effort I spend keeping an infrastructure box up and running over that time period. To give you some math back, my time on salary comes to a net of (approximately) €20/hr (and yes, it'd be far higher if I was contracting, thanks). Lets say a hard drive goes because I bought a different PSU which was closely matched to the spec but it's a friday model so the 12V line was kinda struggling. Now I have to buy the new hard drive, have it shipped, install it and rebuild it; that's going to come to 1-2 hours of my time in total on repairs, and probably three to four days where I don't have my infrastructure here which comes to around 24 hours of my time where I'm being put out because of a hardware failure. That's €480 worth of my time, against about $163/yr in running costs (because I really doubt this will be pulling 250W continously). Think of it as health insurance - yeah, odds are you'll never get back services equal to what you paid for, but that's not really the point...
- qw 15y ago
  It only costs you €480 if you lose time that would otherwise be spent at work. But I understand (and agree) with your point of losing time. If you use it for as your media library, 4 days with only standard TV broadcasts can be boring :-)
  - markdennehy 15y ago
    Even more boring when you don't have a TV in the house qw :)
- KevBurnsJr 15y ago
  also i don't have health insurance.

nemof 15y ago

Definitely agree. I'd be more inclined to go for a sandybridge processor http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-efficienct-32-nm,2831-7.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-efficienct-...

kayoone 15y ago

250W is already pretty high, i think you can get away with 150-180W for that machine and 4 disks, which would bring costs down to ~$180/yr or $15 a month. Depening on what you do with it thats fair i think. If you just need media storage an atom or similar cpu will work, but if you need/want to run a couple of VMs a Server like this one is the better choice.

miahi 15y ago

Yup, that thing is way too big and expensive for what it is. I get the same functionality (NAS, media server, torrent machine, small DB server, small web server, FTP, git, SSH, remote desktop, caching proxy, print server, UPS monitor) from an $100 Atom mITX system with 2GB RAM that draws 50 Watts. I get 5TB of storage, available at 85-90MB/s through Gigabit. Why would I need more? Also a benefit of the low power draw, a 700VA UPS can keep that thing running for about two hours.

markdennehy 15y ago

Kev, I could definitely do this on less CPU, less RAM, less power, and possibly less money (some of the parts for the custom small atom boards are more expensive, pound-for-pound, than their mainstream desktop counterparts). But the moment I hit any extra task, my spec would be all out of whack and I'd have to rebuild the box. No thanks, I'll accept a higher initial spend and a less-than-optimal running cost as insurance against the time and effort I spend keeping an infrastructure box up and running over that time period. To give you some math back, my time on salary comes to a net of (approximately) €20/hr (and yes, it'd be far higher if I was contracting, thanks). Lets say a hard drive goes because I bought a different PSU which was closely matched to the spec but it's a friday model so the 12V line was kinda struggling. Now I have to buy the new hard drive, have it shipped, install it and rebuild it; that's going to come to 1-2 hours of my time in total on repairs, and probably three to four days where I don't have my infrastructure here which comes to around 24 hours of my time where I'm being put out because of a hardware failure. That's €480 worth of my time, against about $163/yr in running costs (because I really doubt this will be pulling 250W continously). Think of it as health insurance - yeah, odds are you'll never get back services equal to what you paid for, but that's not really the point...

qw 15y ago
It only costs you €480 if you lose time that would otherwise be spent at work. But I understand (and agree) with your point of losing time. If you use it for as your media library, 4 days with only standard TV broadcasts can be boring :-)
- markdennehy 15y ago
  Even more boring when you don't have a TV in the house qw :)
KevBurnsJr 15y ago
also i don't have health insurance.