Home server - August 2012

By Koen Crijns,

The home server. It's subject to heated debate on Hardware.Info. Opinions differ widely on subjects like the necessity for keeping the design compact, the advantage of hot-swap bays, acceptable energy consumption, how much CPU power is needed, what type of storage and so on. It's safe to say that the "ideal home server" does not exist, because its intended use differs widely among our readers.

This doesn't mean that we can't provide a good guide to effective home servers. There are two options, either you buy one off-the-shelf or you build one yourself. While there are a number of pre-assembled home servers available that have advantages in terms of compact design and price-performance ratio, the seasoned Hardware.Info reader of course prefers building one themselves. Our guide will focus finding the right balance between energy consumption, affordability and expandability.

Power usage is essential. A NAS with two disks uses no more than 35W, and an Atom-based PC can easily stay under 50W as well. Both of these solutions lack the all-important aspect of expandability, so we are more flexible in how much power can be used. Our recommended configuration uses between 55W and 65W. You can achieve lower energy consumption, but at a significant trade-off in terms of processor power and upgrading options. A compromise in other words, like with all our recommended systems (except for the Ultimate PC of course).

The system we recommend will cost around £330, which is barely more than an off-the-shelf home server. The advantages of our system are obvious: more SATA ports, more space for expansion, more options for upgrading the CPU and RAM, and even the possibility of adding more storage controllers. And last but not least, you get to choose the operating system.

This home server is perfectly suited for making back-ups, streaming media, and it has enough power to act as a basic server for FTP or your photo albums for example.

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Configuration

Processor - AMD A4-3300

A home server needs to be able to make daily back-ups, download independently and for example run a basic web server with photo albums. None of this is very complex. The choice of an Intel Atom or AMD E-350 seems obvious, but we prefer the Athlon A4-3300.

This processor has a number of advantages. First off it's faster than an Atom or E-x50 CPU. More importantly, you won't be limited to a particular motherboard brand with its inherent limitations. This CPU will work on any Socket-FM1 motherboard. The AMD Athlon A4-3300 is energy efficient as well.

Specifications Test results

CPU cooler - Boxed cooler

To save some money we are not going to use a separate CPU cooler. However, if your home server will be located somewhere where you can clearly hear it, then it might be worth replacing the standard cooler by a more silent cooler such as the Scythe Big Shuriken.

Memory module - Kingston ValueRam 4GB DDR3-1333 CL9

You have to keep energy consumption as low as possible for a home server since it will be turned on almost constantly. That is why we are using a single 4 GB module. It doesn't take advantage of the dual channel memory controller, but it does save 5 watts.

We prefer 4 GB over 2 GB because it doesn't cost a lot more plus it leaves more capacity for when you want to run more applications on the server. The integrated graphics card also doesn't have its own RAM so it will use some of it as well.

Specifications Test results

Motherboard - ASRock A75M-HVS

We recommend a A75M-HVS for the home server. This Micro-ATX board has six SATA600 connectors, more than enough for future needs. The four USB 3.0 ports make quick transfer of files possible. It has a gigabit network chip.

Specifications Test results

Graphics card -

Technically speaking you don't need a graphics card for a home server, but it's practical for installation and diagnostics. The onboard ATI Radeon 6410D is more than enough for these purposes.

Hard disk/SSD - 2x Samsung Spinpoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB

Back-ups and media collections require space, and considering current hard disk prices we recommend two 2 TB disks. If you use Linux FreeNAS as OS you can put these in RAID1 (mirror). If you prefer Windows Home Server, you can manually determine which files need to be duplicated. The motherboard we are using supports RAID0+1 and RAID5, so you can add more hard drives. We prefer two of the Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2 TB drives.

Specifications Test results

Optical drive - No optical drive

As an optical drive will use 5-10W easily even when not in use, we leave this one out. Use an old one for installation if you need to, but leave it out after that.

Case - Bitfenix Merc Alpha

The Bitfenix Merc Alpha is a very solid and compact computer chassis that is also apt for an affordable home server. You could also get the Beta version which has two fewer fans, but is identical otherwise.

Specifications Test results

Power supply - Be quiet! Pure Power L7 300W

Our measurements determined that having a PSU with way too much unused capacity is wasteful, even if it's a very energy-efficient PSU. That's why we are using a 300W Be Quiet Power L7 PSU, it has enough margin for future upgrades but uses less than a 400W model.

We also considered using a PicoPSU, but decided against it for the following reasons. We couldn't properly mount it in this chassis, but more importantly it didn't save us anything in terms of energy consumption. A 80W PicoPSU didn't draw less power than the BeQuiet 300W PSU, plus you have much less room to expand in the future. The higher-capacity models (up to 150W) are not recommended due to their voltage stability and efficiency, if you for example want to install four hard drives in the future.

Specifications Test results

Configuration overview		Price
Processors	AMD A4-3300	£36.52
CPU coolers	Boxed cooler	-
Memory modules	Kingston ValueRam 4GB DDR3-1333 CL9	£28.18
Motherboards	ASRock A75M-HVS	£43.79
Graphics cards		-
Hard disks/SSDs	2x Samsung Spinpoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB	£207.74
Optical drives	No optical drive	-
Cases	Bitfenix Merc Alpha	£32.99
Power supplies	Be quiet! Pure Power L7 300W	£39.11
Add as wish list	Average total price:	£388.33