Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Energy Efficient Atom Based File Station and Net surfing PC

PhotobucketWith the recent increase in electricity billing charges, I decided to built a new machine to serve the purpose of 24/7 downloading, internet surfing, file sharing, web based application hosting energy efficient PC. Talking about energy efficient with processing power that capable enough for full time downloading and internet surfing, I immediately think of the Intel Atom processor.

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What is Intel Atom? Intel Atom is Intel's smallest chip. It is built with the world's smallest transistors. As Intel's smallest and lowest power processor, the Intel® Atom™ processor enables the latest Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and another new category of devices for the internet called netbooks and nettops. Intel® Atom™ processors were newly designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel® Atom™ processors pack an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm², making them Intel's smallest and lowest power processors. All this while delivering the power and performance you need for full Internet capabilities.


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There are numerous of Intel Atom motherboard and processor combo available around the market, after some survey and budget tinkering, I decided to opt for the Intel D945GCLF2D, Intel Atom processor 330 Dual Core set. The main reason I opted for the this was due to the cheaper price tag compared to other same solutions and also I do not need HDMI and the better 9300GS VGA from the Nvidia ION platform.

To further emphasizing the power saving capabilities of the Intel Atom 330 platform, I come across some articles over the Internet with experiment done to calculate the exact power consumption comparing Atom 330 and E8500.

According to the article, they compare a E8500 @ 3.16GHz on Asus P5E3 Premium system with Atom 330 @ 1.6GHz on Intel D945GCLF2, listed below are the data of the experiment,

The main advantage the Atom 330 has is low power consumption - supposedly it has a maximum total power draw of 8W.

Here is some experimental data:
· E8500 @ 3.16GHz on Asus P5E3 Premium: 92W idle, 118W loaded
· Atom 330 @ 1.6GHz on Intel D945GCLF2: 41W idle, 45W loaded
It looks like going to full load from idling at the desktop the Atom 330 only used 4W more - so the 8W TDP figure is quite believable.

Let's say it is being deployed as File Server/Download Server for 24h/day, it would idling most of the time. So let's calculate how much power would be used in a year.
24h/day * 365 days = 8760 hours

Atom 330 @ 41W * 8760 hours = 359,160 W/hr = 359.16kWhr
E8500 @ 92W * 8760 hours = 805,920 W/hr = 805.92kWhr

Now let's say we pay $0.10/kWhr
Atom 330 would use $35.91 in electricity running for a year
E8500 would use $80.59 in electricity running for a year.

Now let's say we are in a place that charges $0.25/kWhr
Atom 330: $89.79 for a year
E8500: $201.48 for a year

Where electricity is expensive, a small Atom 330 based home server would save the cost of the motherboard in less than a year!


The file-station will be installed with Windows XP Professional SP3 O/S with IIS hosting capabilities. The downloading and file sharing task will be supported by suitable software. The system spec is as following:

- Intel BOXD945GCLF2D Intel Atom processor 330
- 2GB Team Elite DDR2 800
- Intel GMA950 Onboard Display
- Built in Audio
- Western Digital 200GB SATA HDD
- Cooler Master 350W PSU
- Lian Li PC-A6010 casing (a bit weird with ITX mobo on an ATX casing)


With this system setup, I can enjoy 24/7 downloading, file sharing in a fairly low running cost with processing power that capable enough to take the job.



Reference: Neoseeker Intel D945GCLF2 & Atom 330 Review

1 comment:

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