New hardware is needed

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#1

Hello friends,

now it’s getting serious, a new server is needed.

Since my old installation from the NS is getting on in years, I have to invest again.

Motherboard: Supermicro A2SDi-HLN4F - 4C (C3558 - 16W)
RAM:         2x 32GB DDR4 ECC
HDD:         2x WD Red SA500
             2x WD Red 2.5" 1TB (stock)

The aim is to keep the power consumption <20W and to get by without a fan :wink:

Installation should take place virtually on a ProxMox basis.

The firewall has now been outsourced to an external computer.

AMD GX-415GA SOC
 4GB RAM
 128GB M SATA HDD

OPNSense (DHCP, DNS, FireWall, dynDNS, if necessary HA proxy and proxy)
Power consumption ~12 watts

I’m a bit sad to say goodbye to my old hardware - for years (~8 years - since April 2015 NethServer) without any major problems.

ASROCK J1900 - miniITX
 8GB RAM
 32GB SSD (system)
 2x 1TB (/var)

Power consumption ~16 watts

I hope I haven’t forgotten to order anything - the excitement is rising!

Advice and comments are always welcome

Gerald

#2

WD Red and not WD Red plus?
Are you aware if your 2.5" hdd drives will not have Shingled Magnetic Recording?

The SuperMicro mainboard is used?

#3

The board is newly ordered.
I installed a similar one from ASROCK for a friend and it runs wonderfully.

The WD Red disks are from the current hardware set. Let’s see when I will (have to) replace the hard drives.

#4

With a 5-year CPU…
Anyway, a considerable upgrade for calc power

#5

yes, can understand you.

The requirement was to keep the power consumption as low as possible and to achieve an acceptable working speed.
I haven’t found a reasonable configuration that is similarly power consuming and affordable.
Almost not - but then the main memory was the limiting element.
And it is used in the home environment - family server (data storage, e-mail, small website)
There are 6 clients on the network and three DVB-S receivers and the other fuss is all manageable :wink:

I can still change, but what would you recommend?

#6

Can’t really suggest something “better” for you.

Intel killing the Atom series substantially killed the “cheap server platforms”. Fun fact, during 2020 updated version of C3558, C3558R, has been released. Same node (14nm), +0.2ghz, +0.266 GT ram speed, +1W TDP. Architecture is Apollo Lake, first refinement of 14nm technology (codename Goldmont).
An higher spec with a more modern architecture (Tremont, 10nm) is available, Atom P5921B. No TDP on tech data, faster and more RAM still with ECC, 8c8t.
But as my research goes, no product with this thing seems to be available.

Geode AMD family has been “superseded” by Ryzen V, Ryzen R. Which currently seems not appearing into low consumption mainboards. Ryzen Embedded R1600 seems to have so really nice feature set, but… found nowhere.

The recent silicon and chip shortage did not allow improved generations of embedded/low consumption (x64) CPUs. They exists. Question is: there’s profit margin enough to make these buddies appear on market? I don’t know.

The upgrade from J1900 is anyway important.
Faster, better (ECC) and more RAM. As Benchmark says, +110% CPU power with an increase of 30% on single thread, 4 times L2 Cache, PCIe 3.0 instead of 2.0, at cost of only 6W of TDP.
With identical software setup, believe me, boost will shine even without the SSD upgrade.

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#7

Yeah, it’s hard to find something decent right now.

Especially when you look at the energy consumption - electricity is not cheaper and a small CPU is sufficient for 95% of the tasks.
And my house control with Homeassistant on the Raspberry will also die, should run as a VM under Proxmox, are ~6W again.

What I would be interested in now, what use are the others here?

Does everyone have a potent server?
How are the other machines equipped?

#8

Hi

For my online cloud environment. Proxmox PVE:

Bildschirmfoto 2022-05-02 um 18.53.44
Bildschirmfoto 2022-05-02 um 18.53.441950×662 129 KB

All NVME Storage.

PBS:

Bildschirmfoto 2022-05-02 um 18.55.33
Bildschirmfoto 2022-05-02 um 18.55.332446×604 125 KB

Also all NVME Storage.
Maybe the CPU is a bit oversized…

:slight_smile:

My 2 cents
Andy

#9

Ryzen 5 3600 is 4x atom C3558 power consumption.

#10

@pike

This is cloud - I do not pay per KW in this cloud. Besides which, It’s in Finnland, less coal power if any…

The only power issue I may be concerned is if the CPU doesn’t have enough… :slight_smile:

My 2 cents
Andy

#11

I’m working on my own Proxmox cluster to this state–it’s going to be a slow, and expensive, proposition.

1 Like