This is how much power a Mini-ITX system consume

One of the main reasons why you would want to have a Mini File Server is to save on the electricity bill and environment. We’ve done some testing using a power consume meter:

Power Consume Meter

An ATX-computer with a powerful CPU and graphics card could draw hundres of watts - even on idle. Some graphics card consume even 100W even on their own. So how does it compare to the Mini File Server running the Mini-ITX motherboards? There’s also a post on how much money you save on the electricity bill.

Here are the results when running tests while idle, but not in sleep mode:

Mini File Server: 62W
Mini-ITX VIA EPIA EN12000EG, 5×3.5″ PATA/SATA harddrives, extra PCI-controller
At high load (using HeavyLoad that reads on all harddrives and 100% CPU), the consumtion went up 8W.

Mini File Server: 30W
Mini-ITX VIA EPIA M6000, 1×3.5″ PATA harddrive

Mini File Server: 40W
Mini-ITX Commell LV-667, Intel Core2Duo 1.83 GHz T5600, 2 GB DDR677, 1×3.5″ SATA harddrive

Normal Miditower: 100W
ATX ASUS P4T-E, Pentium4 2.2 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, 2 GB memory, 1×3.5″ PATA harddrive

20″ Widescreen Monitor: 40W
Philips Brilliance 20″ widescreen

Network Hub: 10W
3Com Office Connect Dual Speed Hub

Rule of thumb is that a VIA Mini-ITX motherboard in a case with a fan does not draw more than 25W, less than a lightbulb. Each harddrive will add on that. For example, Western Digital’s high performance drives WD Caviar SE16 has the following specifications:

Read/Write: 8.77 Watts
Idle: 8.40 Watts
Standby: 0.97 Watts
Sleep: 0.97 Watts

But if you go for their power saving WD Caviar GP models, you get:

Read/Write: 7.50 Watts
Idle: 4.0 Watts
Standby: 0.30 Watts
Sleep: 0.30 Watts

Also make sure to read the post on how much money you save on the electricity bill.

December 30, 2007 | Filed Under Blog

Prototype 4.0 available

Just before christmas we made the version 4.0 prototype. Some major improvements of the old version are:

Possible to add PCI / PCI-Express card. Not the biggest ones though since space is very limited. But our plan is to be able to fit any usual SATA PCI-card and some moderate graphics card.
Different colors. This time we made a prototype of four different colors and the front cover having the same color as the rest of the case
Testing air filter. Since the server will be on 24/7, you will get dust in it so we’re trying out a dust filter. However, this might stop the airflow a little bit and make the harddrives more hot. We will test this soon.
Better mounting for harddrives and other small changes to the actual mounting design

Here are some pictures: