Building an energy efficient, low power WHS.

[DELTAsnake]

I want to move all my shared documents, music, movies ect. off my power hungry gaming rig onto an energy efficient, low power, Windows Home Server. Since nobody is yet selling them in my country I've decided to give building one a go.

This is a first for me, while I've built a few high power gaming rigs, I've never built a energy efficient, low power rig. What CPU's, Chipset's, Videocard's and Hard Drives are best to use in an energy efficient, low power rig that will be running WHS?

Oh, and will waiting for 45nm Intel CPU's save me much power? I really want this system to save me as much electricity as possible.

Thank You in advance

 

[akhilles]

A few things:

Get a PSU that's 25% more than required wattage. Its efficiency rating should be 80%+.

Get a Hitachi P7K500 hard disk:

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.e6b513c73a0b7518e8284977eac4f0a0/

Get a case with good cooling with 120mm in & out like the Antec Solo. Use only the rear fan at low speed.

I might get flamed for saying this: get an AMD AM2 CPU & AM2 all-in-one mobo with onboard video.

I'll let others to chime in.

 

[einstein4pres]

akhilles is correct. Get a high efficiency power supply that is rated around twice what you expect the system to idle at, as that is the most efficient point. Of course, make sure to cover full load as well. You might check out the Antec EarthWatts 380, which is one of the lowest capacity 80+ cert. power supplies.

Regarding hard drives, buy one with a low idle power.

I'd suggest the AMD low power processor and a 690g chipset mobo w/ integrated graphics.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103204