need recommendation for a low power consumption cpu

Hello

what CPU would take minimum power...

i will try to write allot of information about what i am trying to accomplish

purpose for this BOX will be home storage server 24/7 turned on... with no monitor...
most of the time the server will be idle... so i would like it to take minimum power as possible...
no one will be working directly on it...
only network access to it... (to shared folders)

more information:
i will install Linux on it and my family will access mapped folders for pictures and other files...


cheap mobo
cheap cpu
green hdds 4x500GB + -


thanks for any help

If it's going to be on 24/7 it's best not to go with a cheap Motherboard, but to spend a little more money on a more reliable one. I'm going to have to go AMD on this one. This motherboard from MSI should be good enough

MSI K9A2GM-FIH AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G $88.96 with shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813130166

or go with this one from Gigabyte that has Solid state capacitors.
GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H $98.97 with shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128335

If those are too expensive for you then this board from ASRock mighnt do it for you. ASRock is a division of Asus with little to no frills basically.
ASRock ALiveNF6P-VSTA $53.24 with shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157125

The Gigabyte board has 6 SATA while the other two only have 4. That means that with the MSI or ASRock boards you will need to go PATA for your Optical Drive.

As for the CPU it entirely depends on how busy you think this system is going to be. If it's going to be heavily utilized and low power draw is your main concern then you should be fine with an AMD Sempron LE-1100 Sparta 1.9GH

$22.99 free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103197

But if you want a bit of CPU performance go with an Athlon 5000+ for 59.50 at newegg. If you expect alot of people to make heavy use of it at the same time then you way want to consider the 65W Phenom 9150, but that CPU will cost significantly more at $153.24 with shipping

Intel D945GCLF 1.6Ghz Atom Mini-ITX - OEM

20~34W

http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12147

remember that you can simply ask it to power down the hdd's when not in use, clock down the cpu when not in use and so on (not all cpu's can do this but you get the idea) use integrated graphics like amd 780g chipset which is really powerful but still low power, see article on here for it somewhere, not hard to find.

gigabyte has a nice mini-atx mobo with the 780g chipset on, find one of the lower end amd am2 cpu's and a 1stick 1gig ram module (less modules uses less power) so 1x1gig > 2x0.5gig ram sticks

find a GOOD quality psu with 80+ rating and you are set

also good quality hdd's but I guess you got that covered when you wrote green hdd's

if you really want low power linux server - find yourself a NSLU2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2

Mate of mine has one with file access, web server and streaming media server - all on a box using no more than a couple of watts...

While Intel's policy of pushing inefficient chipsets on low-power CPUs is retarded, I suspect that comparison would be substantially different with the new dual-core Atoms; 3-4 watts more power against a large increase in performance for anything that's multi-threaded (or multi-process) and not limited by the FSB.

Intel really is shooting itself in the ass with the Atom; they can't seem to decide whether they want to get into the low-power market or not, because they don't want to sell low-profit Atom systems to people who might otherwise have paid much more for a Core 2 Duo that would spend most of its time underclocked and idle.

Similarly, as the OP points out, while the Atom is a good choice for a low-power file server CPU, Intel have again crippled it by only providing two SATA channels.

What's 'ridiculous' about using a low-power CPU in a low-power server? Even with the crappy Intel chipset, a dual-core Atom with five 'green' hard drives would use less than 100W at full load... if Intel hadn't crippled it to two SATA ports.