Low power, fanless/passive server - possible?

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elleana

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This is mostly a thought experiment at the moment, but am interested to see if its possible. A search for the above terms didn't yield many interesting threads so am posting up to pick brains.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
It will mainly serve as a web server, but likely only for low volume usage. It would be on 24/7, obviously. I am wondering if it is possible to be totally passive and fanless, so it has zero noise footprint. I don't need storage as I have a separate WHS box.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
About $500 would be good, but nothing hard and fast.

3) Where do you live?
Outside of the good old US of A, but newegg is fine for pricing purposes.

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Mini-itx case + board, low power chip, DC PSU, 2.5" HDD.

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
I have lots of DDR2 RAM lying around, but that's about it I think.

6) Will you be overclocking?
Hell no.

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Not needed - it will run headlesss.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Uhm this is a tough one. If my interest is sufficiently stoked, as soon as next week. Otherwise, it could be never.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Onboard. Dual lan might be interesting, but do they even make that for mini-itx?

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
No, but planning to install some flavor of linux or other to try out.
 
An Eden VIA Mini-ITX may be sufficient fo ryour purposes too. There are VIA Mini-ITX boards with dual NICs. Eden boards are completely passively cooled.
 
Fanless PSU as well? The Silverstone Nightjar PSU is the best passive PSU but is ATX.

Considering I'm running my WHS with 1 900rpm exhaust fan (Noctua P12 w/ ULNA) at the back with 4? hard drives, a lower power system cooled passively is entirely within reason.
 
Hmm, Eden sounds like it would fit the bill. Not really familiar with Via chips though - what sort of processing power would they have? Something akin to a lowend Celeron perhaps? I'll probably get a low power system so a 80W or 120W DC PSU will do.

How much sound does a 900 RPM fan make?
 
elleana said:
Hmm, Eden sounds like it would fit the bill. Not really familiar with Via chips though - what sort of processing power would they have? Something akin to a lowend Celeron perhaps? I'll probably get a low power system so a 80W or 120W DC PSU will do.
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The C7 VIA chips (most Eden boards, IIRC, C3 was phased out a while ago) are somewhat akin to low-end Intel chips, yes. Think of them as Duron chips compared to the K7s of the time. They're definitely no slugs, though, beating the **** out P4 Celerons :p

I'd say that C7 is somewhat akin to an Athlon (XP) CPU.

How much sound does a 900 RPM fan make?
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Depends on the size. If 4 cm, still a fair bit, if 12 cm, I doubt you'd even hear the air moving :)
 
elleana said:
How much sound does a 900 RPM fan make?
Click to expand...

You'll likely find that 900rpm with a 120mm is too noisy if all your other parts are quiet. It's just that most systems are quite noisy so even a 900rpm fan seems quiet.

But I suggest you get a fan controller and adjust it yourself based on your hearing - you'll likely find that 650 to 825rpm or so is acceptable with a 120mm+ fan in a truely quiet system. You might be able to get away with 900rpm in a quiet system, but I doubt it.
 
echn111 said:
You'll likely find that 900rpm with a 120mm is too noisy if all your other parts are quiet. It's just that most systems are quite noisy so even a 900rpm fan seems quiet.

But I suggest you get a fan controller and adjust it yourself based on your hearing - you'll likely find that 650 to 825rpm or so is acceptable with a 120mm+ fan in a truely quiet system. You might be able to get away with 900rpm in a quiet system, but I doubt it.
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Basic rule is that no fan at 100% is truly silent, but at 50% you'd be hard pressed to hear it even if it's spinning on its own in a silent room. At least that's my experience :)
 
Thanks for all the advice everyone :)

Addendum question - assuming cost and HDD space is not an issue (as I mentioned, I have a separate WHS box) would it make sense to get a 30/60GB SSD? Being solid state they are silent right? Also, there shouldn't be any heat concerns, or am I missing something?
 
It would make sense if you don't mind reading up on tweaks, maintenance and setup of your SSD. Yes, they are silent and cool-running. Check out the SSD articles on Anandtech and the OCZ subforums for the Vertex SSDs.
 
It's been a while since I have last considered a HDD to be 'noisy' or hot-running. Especially with a 2.5" (laptop) HDD there should be absolutely no noise or heat concerns. These are a lot cheaper than a comparably sized SSD as well. You can get 60 GB 2.5" HDDs for peanuts now.
 
You can also look into undervolting and underclocking something like a Conroe-L (Core 2 Duo-based Celeron with only one core, stock TDP 35w, should underclock and undervolt well). The Atom and C7 should both be fine as well.
 
While 2.5" HDDs are cheap, they're also very slow. But if you don't need the speed of the SSD, then by all means, skip it -- they're still a bit new and not quite yet ready for mainstream.
 
enginurd said:
While 2.5" HDDs are cheap, they're also very slow. But if you don't need the speed of the SSD, then by all means, skip it -- they're still a bit new and not quite yet ready for mainstream.
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Slow is relative. Until you get to the more expensive SSDs, a HDD will still win on sequential transfer and write rates and only lag behind with short random reads and of course seek times. Even in enterprise environments the use of SSDs is hardly a certainty, people still choosing there for HDDs over SSDs except for some niche applications (like DB query buffers).
 
Elledan said:
Slow is relative. Until you get to the more expensive SSDs, a HDD will still win on sequential transfer and write rates and only lag behind with short random reads and of course seek times. ...
Click to expand...

And of course, cheap is relative, too. :p IMO, there are no cheap SSDs worth considering, due to their stuttering issues (jmicron controllers). Stick to the OCZ Vertex, Patriot TorqX, Super Talent Ultra Drive ME, and G.Skill Falcon (all Inidilinx controllers) -- or, of course, the Intel or new Samsungs.

Again, assuming cost and HDD space are not issues, yes, an SSD would make sense, IMO anyway.

HDTune benchmarks: avg transfer speed, acess time
$55 - HTS721010G9SA00 100GB: ~40MB/s, 15.5ms
$70 - WD6400AAKS 640GB: ~92MB/s, 15.3ms
$150 - OCZ Vertex 30GB: ~224MB/s, 0.1ms
 
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