Yesterday Intel announced the Atom D425 and D525 platforms targeted for small storage servers. Both chips are 1.8GHz parts with Hyper-Threading. The Atom D425 is a single core with 512KB of cache (10w TDP) and the Atom D525 (13w TDP) being the dual core chip with 1MB of L2 cache.

The chips support both the DDR2 like the Atom D410 and Atom D510 did, but also support DDR3 SODIMMs. Generally speaking, DDR3 SODIMMs use slightly less power than their DDR2 variants. The TDP of the new chips is identical to the older D410 and D510 chips rated at 1.66GHz. Continue Reading

Many of this site’s readers have large storage requirements due to a focus on centralizing redundant storage for multiple client PCs. One common scenario is streaming video to client PCs. Personally, I use a mix of mainly micro ITX (mITX) platforms as HTPC streaming PCs. My typical configuration involves a mITX motherboard with a low power CPU, on-board GPU capable of accelerating popular video codecs, 4GB of RAM and a solid state drive. In fact, I have moved away from even including optical drives in these configurations because they tend to add cost without much value. Over the past few months, I have tried about twelve different mITX cases from approximately $35 to $150, and have found the Apex MI-100 mITX HTPC case to be a nice mix of value, functionality, size and feature set. To that end, I now own three of them and figured since I get questions about them quite often, I may as well do a short write-up. Continue Reading

Out with the old and in with the new, but worse platform. I have been wondering about the Intel Atom D510 performance for quite a while now alongside the NM10 chipset. It is essentially Intel’s upgrade to the venerable dual-core Intel Atom N330. With the consolidation of features to the D510 and NM10 Intel was able to get rid of a power- hungry 90nm process component and deliver a reduced feature set in the name of lower power consumption. For low power file servers, the Atom platform is great. One will notice these days that Intel’s 32nm Clarkdale line has idle power consumption similar to the D510. Where the Atom CPUs really shine is in load power consumption. Unlike the Core i3-530 and Core i5-650 (and their higher clocked Clarkdale brethren), the Atom CPUs are somewhat famous for only adding a nominal amount of power consumption when being fully taxed versus sitting idle. That is why many of the NAS appliance vendors that run proprietary Linux distributions choose the Atom to do software raid parity calculations.

Sadly, Intel has decided to leave the NAS and HTPC markets out to look at other offerings instead of its Atom D510 platform. Continue Reading

To update to my review of the Supermicro X8SIL-F, I took some Kill-A-Watt power consumption numbers with the Supermicro X8SIL-F to answer a few questions regarding power consumption with real server hardware compared to consumer-level hardware. Below I am focusing on idle power consumption as with the Intel Core i3-530, Xeon X3440, and other LGA 1156 CPUs the CPU utilization while running a NAS application will be very low. After a bit of testing I found the i3-530 again leading the pack in idle power consumption and the Xeon X3440 turning in very respectable idle power consumption numbers.

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After using one of the the lowest power AMD CPUs around, the Sempron 140 Sargas (single core) in a WHS, I decided to go to the other extreme and try a Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. With the release of six core AMD CPU’s, and the existence of the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, the  Phenom II X4 BE chip is not the highest end AMD CPU out there. On the other hand, WHS is currently based on the older 32-bit Windows Server 2003 kernel, so it runs on dual core CPU’s just fine. The impending release of Windows Home Server V2 VAIL means that 64-bit will be the new requirement and a bit more power will be needed for future WHS systems. A quad core is overkill but a six core CPU is basically a waste for WHS. Luckily, with the Phenom II X4 955 BE’s unlocked multiplier, we can emulate a Phenom II X4 965 BE through a very mild overclock, and some other AMD CPUs as well. The following is a quick review of what I encountered with the Phenom II X4 955 BE, and how I managed to get the Phenom II X4 955 to boot using the PicoPSU (to get comparable idle power consumption figures).

Phenom II X4 955 Boxed

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Sempron 140 WHS - In a Corsair Cardboard Box

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Intel’s Clarkdale and H55/ H57 platforms are quite intriguing for several reasons. First, the performance is fairly good starting at 2.93ghz, and with hyperthreading, it is possible to get closer to a quad core performance in some tasks where multiple cores do well, such as video encoding. A second aspect is that Intel moved the IGP to an on package solution and really cut the power consumption/ heat dissipation of the platform. Finally, the cost of an i3-530 or i5-650 CPU plus a motherboard is often in the $200 or less range, making them quite affordable.

Two great uses for the chips are home servers and HTPC’s. Low power consumption and low heat generation ultimately enable lower acoustic signatures, as well as lower TCO through lower electric draw.

Core i5-650, Gigabyte H55M-UD2H, Dual Intel Pro/1000 GT PCI NICs

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As I posted previously, the new Clarkdale based chips (or Intel’s 2010 Core line-up) are quite nice chips. Speed wise, they are similar in performance to the venerable Core 2 Quad Q6600 (often faster) yet come equipped with integrated graphics and a much refined process (32nm on the CPU core for the i3/i5′s and 65nm for the Q6600). The net result is that the power consumption is particularly great on the new chips.

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