Low-Power, Silent Home Server Build
20 Jul 2011
Recently, I decided I needed a home server to be left switched on 24/7. I wanted to use it both as a media (music & video), web, ssh and samba server, and a torrent client. It had to be a low-powered PC, because I have to pay my electricity bills every month. It also had to be as silent as possible, because nobody loves a deep humming in the background during a romantic dinner. After consulting with the wonderful folks at silentpcreview.com, I ended up with this configuration:
- Motherboard: ASUS AT3IONT-I, 125€
- Mini ITX format
- Nvidia ION
- Dual Core Atom 330
- Case: Lian Li PC Q08, 22 x 27 x 34 cm, 90€
- RAM: Corsair 2Gb XMS3 DDR3, 24€
- Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Green - 2 Tb - SATA II - 64 Mo Cache, 78€
- Power unit: Seasonic X-Series Fanless - 400W, 80 Plus Gold, 144€
- Total: 461€
(Notice the fanless motherboard and power unit)
As for the power consumption... 29W! That number made my day when I first plugged my wattmeter to my server :D
Finally, here is the software stack that I use:
- My beloved Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS, because this is a headless server that needs stability before all things. I tried out Ubuntu 11.04 and it made a few impressive crashes right after the first install.
- Apache HTTP Server, because it's the only web server I feel confident I can handle.
- Subsonic, which is the only decent music streaming server I have tried.
- rTorrent inside a screen. Yes, I download stuff.