Self-builders: What’s the Best Processor for a Home Server?

By on March 2, 2009 in Hardware, Windows Home Server

Computerworld points to Microsoft researching the use of low-powered processors in server farms, such as Intel’s Atom processor, which was designed predominately for the thriving netbook market, but is popping up in home servers from Tranquil PC, Acer and others.

If you were building a new home server today, what would be your choice of processor and why?

More Info: Computerworld


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Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • Tim

    I’d probably go with the one of the AMD 45w dual-core Athlon64 “e” series (4850e, 5050e); very quiet cooling yet still capable of handling things like on-the-fly transcoding for streaming multimedia.
    I think the Atom’s a very fine chip for the bulk of what WHS is for (file storage and backups) but might be a bit anemic for media performance.

    • http://twitter.com/lejimster @lejimster

      Couldn't agree more. A *good* dual core Athlon or Core2 is what I'd like to see in a NAS. Along with atleast one PCI/PCIe expansion port for a capture card. I'm struggling to find anyone doing such a system. There always seems to be a drawback for each system. The Acer looks good, but has only a N230 Atom. The Chenbro looks great as a case, but has no expansion card space. I can't be the only person who wants to capture/stream/record Satellite TV across my network?

    • Dave

      I agree as well. My current WHS box is VIA C7 CPU based and comes in around 40 watts. Recently, I built my dad a computer based on the 4850e CPU and it came in at 40 watts as well! For the same power draw, I'd much rather have that CPU.

  • Nick Clark

    I went with a 2Ghz Celeron 440 in my recently-built WHS but am toying with an Atom-based platform for my new media centre pc…

    There are definitely options out there – and what about Nvidia’s Ion platform too??!!

  • http://mejifair.homeserver.com/blog Erik

    Agree with the AMD “e” series processors. They are a spectacular processor with the perfect combination of low power and high performance.

  • qtip

    I was going to use the AMD 5050e (same TDP as the 4850e), but I upgraded to a Phenom II X3 710 after checking out the power consumption on the new phenom chips. Add the fact that my WHS will spend some time transcoding videos and the $119 price point isn’t bad at all. After 4 days running and checking power usage with a kill-a-watt, I can say it was well worth it. I have cool n quiet turned on and I had to install the AMD processor driver so WHS correctly downclocks the CPU to 800Mhz when idle.

  • John

    I went with the celeron 450 2.2ghz chip, and it never gets stressed. Runs cool and only draws 35w. Combined with WD GP drives, it’s easy on my utility bill.

    Atoms could be a future possibility as availability of the chips and boards improve. I have 8x SATA2 on my board and doubt you will see that on an Atom board soon.

  • Kelly

    Atom Dual Core 330. This chip has plenty of horsepower to serve files, do backups and transcode video, albeit overnight instead of “on-the-fly”. I’d love to get my hands on an ION-based system.

  • GuustFlater

    I like the Atom330. I’ve just build a small PC with the Intel D945GCLF2 board. Good performance. I only hate the graphics engine (945G) that comes along with these boards. For a PC, which is on for say 10 hours a week that’s fine, but for a homeserver you don’t want a board where the graphics processor consumes 22 Watts.

    With the mentioned board you can easily create a home server with 2 or 3 hard drives: to use a low power 2.5″ drive (PATA) for the system and 2 WD 3.5″ Green drives. Only the graphics power…. I guess I’ll wait a few month for the new release without the 945G.

  • Peter

    AMD 4850e and 740G chipset motherboard.

  • Aaron

    My goals were low cost and low power. The Atom is obviously a low-power processor, but what’s not mentioned very frequently is that the only mobo that is offered for the original Atom is the 945GC which is a power hog. It’s a stupid combination IMO.

    So I chose a Mobile Sempron (25W TDP) which runs at a very low power state 95% of the time when no horsepower is required. I had to be careful to get a mobo that supports it. But now I have a WHS that hums along at 30W idle (passive cooling and GP drive). Unfortunately, the Mobile Semprons are not easy to find new, but I bought a few used ones on Ebay for about $10 each. So far no problems, and I have some backups waiting in case the current one fails for any reason.

    • Terry Thomas

      You say you had to be careful to select a motherboard that supports the Atom but then you don't say what that board is! Please do.

      Thanks.

      Terry Thomas
      PC Tech Support
      Atlanta, Georgia USA

  • Peter (W)

    780g Motherboard and AMD 4850/5050E CPU for system that does extensive transcoding.

  • http://www.hodgkinshistory.com/ Mike

    I would tend to think AMD Phenom II X3 710 for an enthusiast server with the 4850e and 5050e right behind. I have an AMD 2350BE low power CPU in the HTPC that does well.

    For mainstream, the Atom 330 dual core is very interesting, much more so than the 270 single core. A very low power dual core celeron would be a candidate (64 bit of course).

    I am just not secure in using a single core chip going forward. For a NAS system, sure. But the potential in a true server to include a backup and multimedia server coupled with the roots of WHS being WS200x, it just screams for more than one core.

    The moment you lock into an underpowered platform you are stuck. With PCs, buy with some headroom, as much as you feel comfy with. That way when the next cool plug-in takes more CPU cycles, you have them available.

    Cost is not too much an issue as the processor would be $10-120, memory is dirt cheap, the cost is really in the drives and even that isn’t bad. With the recession, we can have some very good price points.

  • http://www.hodgkinshistory.com/ Mike

    Oh, of course there are several cool mobile CPU candidates – hard to get them and a compatible mobo for the enthusiast though. Cool deal Aaron above found.

  • Dave

    Went a bit overboard on my shuttle K45…
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2x 2,66Ghz + 2GB

    If you want a media beast I would recommend that processor :-)

  • https://technocore.homeserver.com/ Drashna

    There is no such thing as the “best processor” because it really depends on what you want out of your server. Some people want low power consumption. Some don’t care about power consumption and want “more power!”.

    Personally, I would love to throw a Core i7 Extreme into a new server!

  • http://www.texashomeserver.com ben

    Just another view, but some folks have mentioned they want 64 bit processors, since they do not want to pay more when Vail is a reality.

    Ben

  • browned

    Intel Q6600 – runs WHS + 4 to 8 Virtual Machines 24/7. Now that is saving me power over my old setup.

  • Jasok2

    Originally Posted By DaveWent a bit overboard on my shuttle K45…
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2x 2,66Ghz + 2GB

    If you want a media beast I would recommend that processor :-)

    I did the same, though i think i could get away with an atom dual core in the next home server i build.

  • http://alexpummer.com Alex Pummer

    Got my WHS built on a Atom 230 with 2 WD 1 TB Green Drives. Love it. Its been very reliable with no problems so far.. I have done complete computers restores with it already when my Workstation MB died during a Brown-Out..
    If interested just check out my site, did a three post work up on building it. Used a MSI Wind, with a slight modification to the case with a cutting laser.. :D

  • http://www.ezlan.net Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

    The OP question is very general.

    So,in general.

    As simple rule the Intel ATOM is the best solution for WHS since it takes the least energy and it can be installed in a small form factor cases.

    It might not be a Good solution if One installs on the WHS an application that does heavy CPU crunching on the WHS itself.

    Example, if one has a Ripping and Encoding audio and Video programs on the WHS using the WHS CPU.

    There are few server applications like Exchange and large SQL Data bases that need Agile computers however they are Not a factor in WHS (since it would Run on it).

    Otherwise installing a None Network related application on a server is considered a No No among pros.

  • Andrew

    Since cost is no object (ha), I have a custom mini-atx mobo with an L2400 (1.66MHz, 2MB cache, Core Duo). The TDP is 15W and at typical load, the draw of the system is ~25W. It is an industrial pc that is completely fanles and has a single 2.5″ SATA drive.

  • Josh

    I built an AMD 64 x2 4000+ 2.1GHz processor with 2GB of RAM. Each person has their own requirements for a server and the above requirements would far surpass what any normal user would need but find myself always needing more RAM and more cores.

    I wish I would have built a Quad core server with minimum of 4GB of RAM. I find myself running out of horsepower when trying to transcode multiple videos at the same time. I also see my RAM dipping under 500 megs multiple times a day so my recomendation is that if you are a normal user. Wait till the 32nm dual-core chips come out or build something with Atom processor to save on power. Recommend 2 gb of RAM for the normal user and 4gb+ for the power user.

  • moggy cattermolle

    running a test rig from old parts for now

    old full tower case
    asus P4SD-LA stingray MB from an old Hp Pavilion a250n
    P4 2.6 with 2Gb ddr 400
    started out with 120 maxtor barracuda and last night upgraded to a hitachi deskstar 500Gb sata $60 cash

    I am having great success with this setup
    but will build a faster system for it soon and add 2 1.5Gb drives
    and a new case

    I have utorrent installed on it with rss feeds for auto downloads
    and miro running 24/7 as well
    my media center is playing movies and tv shows 24/7 . and 2 friends logging to test it . no noticeable slow downs yet .

    great job micosoft .

    undecided on a new Cpu right now .
    ether a AMD Phenom X4 9650 or the Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200

  • Inglix

    The Intel e5200 is objectively the best cpu hands down. It idles at 2w and only uses 30w under a full load. That’s less than the AND 2.1ghz 35w AM2 uses. 2.5ghz core 2 power for $73 shipped isn’t bad considering the 4850e/5050e are $60.

    Combine it with the Intel DG45FC Mini-ITX board and you have a 35w system. A 740g system with a 4850e uses 4w less at idle but at full load it uses 28w more, comparable with the new 65w Intel quads.

    If no transcoding or heavy cpu tasks are needed then an Atom platform is the best for power efficiency. The Atom 330 version of the MSI IM-945GC uses under 20w at full load and has 4 sata ports, double what other Atom boards have.

  • Mike

    Originally Posted By DaveWent a bit overboard on my shuttle K45…
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2x 2,66Ghz + 2GB

    If you want a media beast I would recommend that processor :-)

    How on earth do you keep that cool? I just have an E2180 in my K45 and the fans are annoyingly loud and even still do not keep the chip very cool at all! I’ve had a bear of a time trying to find a 3rd party cooler that would actually fit in the K45.

  • Peter

    Using an Intel Celeron 440 2.0GHz. I did consider an Atom but didn’t find a suitable MoBo at the time. The MoBo I did use is a Gigabyte EP35-DS3 with Intel P35 Chipset. I have two analogue tv cards on board and two harddisks. The total runs at 70-80 Watts which is a bit more than I’d like it to be. System is cooled by the PSU fan and the CPU fan only.

  • firewater88

    I’m using older Xeon processors, 2 Prestonia chips in my WHS. 4 cores total, and plenty of power for what I need currently. The one downfall is the 37/86 watts used, low/high respectively. But I can’t complain as I only have around $200 in the build. My next build (when this one dies) will be a lower power unit, and who knows what will be out at that point- I am an intel fan, personaly.
    The nice trade off though is that I can now shut off my desktop which ran 24/7 to serve my mobile phone and record TV and share printers. With the server, it now takes all those tasks and a network printer helps. So I save power by keeping the desktop off (big power sucker).

  • Kyle B

    The e5200 is the best deal for the price. It’s hard to find an intel dual core for less than this. On newegg they are only 72 bucks with free shipping. You will not find more power for the money.

  • Pat Pucker

    I mainly use my WHS as a server (funny that). It runs headless, serves files, streams media and runs sheduled back-ups, nothing clever., I’ve got a PC for that! Because of that I find the atom absolutley perfect. Only thing I would (and did) change is the northbridge cooler, now runs a passive “twin towers” cooler (can’t remember the brand), with no problems whatsoever. Made a big difference on noise levels. There’s “only a gig” of ram and two WD green power HDs. The whole thing’s incredibly quite, in-obtrusive and most importantly low power.

  • Clevertelly

    I went for a real beast with a Quad Core Q6600 as my latest upgrade as we tend to stream to multiple locations peaking during evenings. It will happily power multiple HD 1080 streams but my overriding comment is that it is only as good as the parts you pair with it and as I have found by trial and error, a good quality psu should be the first priority.

  • Nathan D

    I currently run a Q6600, 4GB’s Ram on a quad GigE motherboard for WHS. I think clock speed is superior to cares in WHS (I have tried both).
    I agree with Kyle B above: the 5200 is an incredible deal right now. I have seen it for $65 shipped.

  • Mark

    currently celeron 430, soon to be core 2 quad Q9550. Will start running VM’s so need some more power. Also the current proc just sometimes loaded to the max… But for simple out of the box homeserver tasks it was sufficient and also rather energy efficient (The reason I bought it)!

  • moon_t

    I’m using a BE-2300 Athlon x2, low powered and enough poke to handle additional apps that I run on the server. A number of people here appear to be using the newer AMD energy efficient dual cores also, which going by my core should also be an excellent choice for WHS. Basically I’d recommend, multiple core and low energy combination, the greener the better :)

  • Paul

    I’m running Core2 E2160 – 1.8Ghz, and a gigabyte motherboard, works well for me and the price was right for both the processor and motherboard, recently went to 2 gigs of ram this has made a big improvement in performance.

  • lobotomy

    i used a via C7 prossesor.
    This type is very energiefriendly.
    My server uses in full load 45 watts and in idle mode somewhere around 20 watts.

    i think the via chip gets to less attention in serverworld.
    in my server wit 4 disk it works just fine.
    It even handels my usenet downloads with SABnzbd installed as a service.
    even when SABnzbd is parring and rarring, it works fine.

    so i guess a Via C7 prossesor is an option.

  • http://www.hodgkinshistory.com/ Mike

    For the power user: http://www.neqx.com/product.asp?pf_id=SYS945, just pop in your Core i7, a few WD20EADS and your WHS disk

  • Gram

    I’ve taken a slightly different direction with my Home Server, I considered the Atom, though you never know what’s around the corner, hence I went for a Q9400S (65w) & 2TB of Disk. The server currently runs the (Free) Hyper-V with WHS virtualised, plus one or 2 other OS’, runs like a dream and I can change the number of CPU Core’s WHS uses when I need to. Still a work in progress.

  • http://www.hodgkinshistory.com/ Mike

    Gram, that is an interesting setup – could you elaborate a bit more? Hyper-V core still seems to need WS2008 as a parent OS – are you using WHS as the parent OS?

  • Triplefun

    After a lot of research I started 6 months ago with an e7200 which worked well for everything but H.264 transcoding (peaking 70% with stuttering). Just bought an e8600 which will hopefully last a few years.

  • Mike

    I have just installed WHS in VMWare ESXi (the free version of their Enterprise Hypervisor). Personally I would choose ESX over Hyper-V because of maturity and supported operating systems … Hyper-V does have a free version available also but I found that it could only be managed from a vista client and not XP so that would not have worked so well for me …

    I am using this processor for ESXi because it is a compromise between power and energy consumption, plus it only cost me $100 a while ago (I expect it is much cheaper now): AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz

  • Aarondough

    @firewater88 – What kind of app are you using to serv your mobile phone? The server runs that app ok?

  • Dougie Fresh

    This thread shows just how versatile the AMD 4850e and 5050e are. Everyone’s talking about using them for a low power server coupled with I am going to be using the 5050e and 780GX to build a media PC, which while not needing lots of horsepower still needs to deal with HD codecs. The dual-core atoms look really compelling for WHS, esp. if you can find one couple with a low-powered NB. I thought I’d read though recently something about a possible Atom that has the graphics processor integrated into the CPU?!

    Another CPU that looks very interesting is the AMD Phenom X4 9350e – it’s quad-core 2.0GHz 65W TDP. It’s pricey though and my concern was that, despite being quad-core, it’s still 2GHz so if certain aspects of my HTPC couldn’t take advantage of multi-cores it’d be slow.

    Then you need a nice case and PSU. The Antec Mini P-180 looks like a winner with 6 3.5″ drive bays in uATX form (if you’re going the AMD/uATX mobo route). I haven’t found a great mITX case yet that isn’t expensive (like the Chenbro reviewed somewhere here) and that can hold 4+ drives. Someone needs to make a big case that holds little mobos :-) .

    Fun!

  • patwestlake

    For future proofing and overall performance, the 5050e / 740G seems the best bet. The atoms, 230 or 330, are fine if all you want to do is serve files (and if that’s all you DO want to do, then fine, thats a choice favoured by Tranquil). However, If you later decide to go slightly higher powered, whether it’s transcoding, ripping or anything on-the-fly, the atoms will start to wheeze. Atom 330 @ £79 vs the 5050e + MA74GM-SH @ £95 = no contest. I’m prepared to pay EON the very few extra bucks (£30 per year?) rather than have to build a new server…..

  • http://www.popcultureshock.com Mitchell Hennessy

    I went with a Pentium Dual Core E2200 (2.2GHz) with 2GBs of RAM. Nice balance of (relatively) low power and media crunching ability. I installed more fans than necessary to ensure it would stay cool, and, as a result, it’s louder than what most of you would probalby deem acceptable, but it’s installed in a study room and you can barely hear it in the same room with the TV on. I might actually stick another 2GBs of RAM now that I’ve installed some VMs in Virtual Server. Currently, I’ve only tested streaming video while running Windows 7 in Virual Server on the WHS.

  • ashw

    I find running a £400 laptop with external drives attached works well, power footprint is low, it’s quiet, the cpu clock is variable so increases when i’m transcoding via tversity to my xbox, and gigabit ethernet + usb2 / firewire external drives are plenty fast. The only real drawback is that is isn’t pretty, so have the whole thing hidden in a cupboard. oh, and free UPS!

  • Dan

    Hi, I have just installed it as a Hyper V guest on an Dell T105 running a Opteron. It is dual core x64 bit running Win Server 2008 as host. It has only been up for a week, but put the guest at only 384M and use two USB drives that have 350 vhd drives on them. Working fine so far for light music, photo and backup about 5 machines.

  • kikkegek

    My Self-build WHS:
    Idot VIA PC2500 motherboard
    onboard CPU: VIA C7-D 1,5 GHz
    memory: 512 DDR
    HD: 750 GB Samsung Spinpoint Sata-150
    case: Aopen H340H
    Add-Ins: uTorrent, LightsOut, Advanced Admin Console

    Power consmpution:
    IDLE: 37 Watts (hard drive spinning)
    FULL THROTTLE: 49 Watts

  • pupils

    I went for cheap upfront (for testing): Dell 260GX with a 2.4GHz P4, 768MB RAM and 2 HDD’s.

    Performance has met all my expectations. Except for realtime transcoding of video (served to my PS3, which I do with my always-on desktop), it’s great for backups, file sharing and the usual WHS functions.

    I’m ready for Phase 2, with a smaller and lower-power machine but I can’t bring myself to spend the money. This hardware does almost everything I need.

  • KS

    I’ve recently upgraded my Atom 330 to Shuttle SG33G5 Quad Core Q6700 2.66 GHz (8mb Cache) + 4 GB DDR2. It sits beside my TV and serves as Multimedia as well as Home Server. I can watch multimedia thru TV as this has HDMI and same time Home Server does its job serving 6 of my family computers. I’ve added some multimedia application to accomodate multimedia job. Because it’s a Quad core it’s trouble free and big room for future 64 bit home server. It costs me less than CAD 550 as I was able to use my old HDD from Atom 330. I’m a multitask I like this very much.

  • http://www.armedflorida.com cabldawg

    I running WHS on a retired HP DL140 G3 from a former client. It has dual Xeon 2.8 in it and 4gb of RAM. I am only running 2 80gb Maxtor drives in it for now, but added a USB 2.0 controller and a WD 500gb external HD to expand storage. I will be replacing the 80gb internal drives soon, although I haven’t decided with what just yet.

    My cost……$0 :)

  • K S

    Is it possible setup to Auto Mirror in WHS ? Just in case one fail simply add anotherone

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