By Philip Churchill on September 12th, 2008
Building a Energy Efficient Windows Home Server
Ade Miller a Microsoft Development Manager in the patterns & practices group (p&p) has published a series of 4 articles on building a green energy efficient Windows Home Server using low power consumption components:
And I must say that is a lovely case!
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I have power numbers for this now. When idle it uses 37W on average. More details on this here.
http://www.ademiller.com/blogs/tech/2008/09/building-a-green-windows-home-server-the-37-watt-server/
If anyone has other data on their builds I’d love to hear about it.
Ade
It is interesting what someone defines “energy efficient”.
My VIA EPIA + two 500GB 2.5″ laptop drives machine uses about 21W idle on a PicoPSU. I so wish Intel would release an Atom board with a proper energy efficient (i.e. non-945) chipset.
Wy,
It’s definitely possible to do better than 37W. The Tranquil PC guys have several systems that come in around the 20W mark but they seem to know what they’re doing on the hardware front. I’m no expert I just assembled a system from the best off the shelf parts I could find.
Does your system run WHS?
Ade
Yes mine does run WHS and is current in a rackmount case. But I also have similar systems for other places… desktop (T7200 MoDT), HTPC (T5500 MoDT), spare PC (Pentium-M), car PC (D201GLY), etc… I am into the whole low-power consumption movement.
And yep I know about Tranquil PC. In fact I live not too far from them.
I really like that you have taken the initiative. So many people I have seen just slap some old banger Pentium-4 plus as many old low capacity spare hard drives as possible, resulting in a machine that takes 200W+ which is no better than a 20W one. A 3.06GHz Pentium-4 is no better than a 1.2GHz C7 on a WHS. Likewise six 160GB drives is no better than a single 1TB drive!!
It drives me mad sometimes…
Dear Wy,
I am looking for the right stuff to build a WHS with and aim for lowest power consumption possible. Googling around, however, I come across a lot of sites talking about “power efficient” computers with a 500W PSU. Do you know an informative site about building server below 100W?
Thanks in advance,
Tim