Building home server from salvaged components

[insomnarium]

Hi guys!

I am currently working on a project for a home server that will be used for storage, DLNA streaming and 24/7 download/upload. I am on a budget right now so I won't buy a new rig just for that, but anyway I want to make this from some old components I have laying around and ones I salvaged from friends of mine. These are the components I got:

- AMD Athlon XP 2400+
- Gigabyte GA-7VA
- nVidia GeForce 5200FX
- 1 GB RAM
- a few hard drives, 1,5 TB in total

The main problem I am dealing with is the power consumption. How much will underclock help? I was thinking about underclocking CPU from 2 GHz to 1,2 GHz or something... How low can I go with voltages? Suggestions?

 

[NeverBackDown]

To be honest dude that rig will get by... barely! I say sell as much of it as you can and go buy an AMD Apu with a cheap motherboard with 2-4gb of ram and a decent psu. Obviously keep the drives and find a cheap case.

Hopefully this is possible but if not then i would say up the ram to at least 2gb. Underclocking is something you got to figure out yourself as we don't know how your cpu will cope with voltages. Why not try to keep the 2ghz but find the lowest possible volts it will run on? I wouldn't try stress testing it too much as the hardware is very old but put it through its paces.

 

[insomnarium]

I agree with you, the rig is old. I was thinking about APU or Intel Atom, but there we come to another problem - all those HDDs I have are ATA, and new boards only have SATA ports or in best case just one ATA port instead of two, so I would need to get a new SATA HDD too.

Anyway, Linux works great on this rig, especially with stock CPU frequency of 2 GHz, but I gotta admit, I still doesn't feel comfortable as Windows, except file sharing which is simple and ingenious (but I don't need much more, except from Plex server and remote desktop). Windows XP works fine when I tweak which services I need, but I am not sure will it get worse over time. I never tried FreeNAS before, but I should check how it works and what does it have to offer, maybe it will suite my needs perfectly.

I will definitely have to get a new rig in some time, but for now I have to go with this one. It's my first home server build, and in some way, it will be an experiment to see how home server works, what can I use it for (I am aware that my appetites will grow over time for backup, maybe home cloud...) and the most important, I will use it to gain some practical knowledge about home servers.

Oh, and about voltages testing, what should be my starting point (that will work for sure) since stock voltage is 1.65 V? Or should I start with lowering the voltage by 0.05 V steps and do stress test every time to find lowest voltage that works?

 

[tinytomlogan]

My 2012 home server sits at about 90w pretty much 24/7

easily find the specs in the YT vid

 

[NeverBackDown]

I agree with you, the rig is old. I was thinking about APU or Intel Atom, but there we come to another problem - all those HDDs I have are ATA, and new boards only have SATA ports or in best case just one ATA port instead of two, so I would need to get a new SATA HDD too.

Anyway, Linux works great on this rig, especially with stock CPU frequency of 2 GHz, but I gotta admit, I still doesn't feel comfortable as Windows, except file sharing which is simple and ingenious (but I don't need much more, except from Plex server and remote desktop). Windows XP works fine when I tweak which services I need, but I am not sure will it get worse over time. I never tried FreeNAS before, but I should check how it works and what does it have to offer, maybe it will suite my needs perfectly.

I will definitely have to get a new rig in some time, but for now I have to go with this one. It's my first home server build, and in some way, it will be an experiment to see how home server works, what can I use it for (I am aware that my appetites will grow over time for backup, maybe home cloud...) and the most important, I will use it to gain some practical knowledge about home servers.

Oh, and about voltages testing, what should be my starting point (that will work for sure) since stock voltage is 1.65 V? Or should I start with lowering the voltage by 0.05 V steps and do stress test every time to find lowest voltage that works?

In this case since it's expieremental then stick with the rig and see if you like a home server.

Yes drop the volts by .05 and stress test but i still recommend not stressing too hard and to add 1gb of ram or 512mb if possible.

 

[insomnarium]

My 2012 home server sits at about 90w pretty much 24/7

easily find the specs in the YT vid

I know, Tom, that video is the main reason I decided to make a home server too. :-D

But your server is based on a new architecture , 32 nm if i remember well... My old Athlon is 0.13 um so I expect it to draw at least double more electricity. I will experiment with a voltage a bit, and let you know as soon as I get some positive results. And I will stick another 512 mb, since ram is never too much... ;-)

 

[insomnarium]

Hey, guys, it's me again!

Tested everything and it works like a charm. Voltage is 1.5 V, and it's running just fine. I decided get myself Intel Atom soon, so it does not matter much. I am running FreeNAS 8 at the moment.

The only thing that bothers me about the rig is that PSU is a bit loud. I am building a controller that will read temperature from a sensor (it will be placed inside PSU), and adjust fan speed according to temperature. I was thinking about 6V for low temperature, 9V for moderate temperature and 12V for high temperature, but what is considered to be a high temperature for PSU? Is 85 c enough?