Last week I ordered the new low power Intel Atom powered motherboard, the D945GSEJT. It is a fanless, ultra low profile "half-height" (less than 2 cm high!) mini-ITX motherboard. I used it to build a Windows Home Server with 1GB of SDRAM and a Western Digital 1TB hard drive. The whole thing draws from 12-16 watts when idle which it truly amazing compared to anything else out there including HP's low powered LX195 (which draws 26W).
Here is my shopping list:
- Intel D945GSEJT (from mini-box.com)- $118
- 12V power brick - $19
- DDR2 667 laptop memory – $11
- Western Digital green 640GB hard drive (optionally 1TB) - $69
- Windows Home Server System Builders DVD - $93
Total build cost (minus a case, but including the OS) is $311. So as you can see, this will run you slightly more than the FX195 build that had a few weeks ago, but still under the $399 MSRP of HP's LX195. Plus (and this is a BIG PLUS) at 14 watts, it draws almost HALF that of the LX195.
Notes/caveats:
- I built the whole thing on the bench and have yet to decide on a case, but I wanted to get these photos and build instructions out ASAP. Obviously, I would recommend that you do your build in a suitable case.
- A traditional power supply is not needed, making this system completely silent (well except for a spinning hard drive). It uses a an external 12V "power brick.
- I was observing power fluctuations of between 12 and 16 watts. I chose 14W as an average.
- You could probably get away with the lower wattage 2A power brick, but I already had a 5W adapter on hand.
That said, here's how to build yourself a great little low cost/low power WHS!!
- We will be installing the OS from a USB stick, so first make a bootable WHS USB stick from instructions here.
- Next "borrow" a monitor and USB keyboard and mouse and plug them into the mainboard. (Note: we won't be needing them after the build).
- Insert the laptop SDRAM.
- Attach the SATA power connector to the main board
- Attach the SATA data cable to the mainboard
- Attach the SATA power and data cables to the drive
- Plug in the 12V power adapter
- Now after I tell you about this next step, I want you to forget that you ever heard it from me. Because I didn't built up my unit in a case (i.e. on the bench) I didn't have a momentary switch handy. Therefore, to turn on the computer, I use a screwdriver to momentarily short the power pins together. The power switch normally connects to the two pins marked with red (see photo insert below).
- After the tedious hour long OS install and there you have it, you will have yourself one lean mean fighting machine, um… one of the lowest powered Windows Home Servers that you can buy!
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22 comments:
Thanks for buying that motherboard and doing a quick build! I think that will be the motherboard for me for my next WHS machine. Any chance you'll pick a nice case and complete the build?
@kegobeer - People seems to be going nuts over this case. It supports one or two (with optional bracket) 2.5 drives, although I don't know it it will hold a 3.5 drive. I bet one 3.5 drive would fit if you fabricated a proper bracket.
You could also take the SATA port to ESATA and use an external enclosure for your HDD(S) couldn't you. Then not limited on number of drives?
@MichaelO - Unfortunately, no. In order to hook up multiple drives to a single SATA connection, the controller must support port multiplication (PM).
What you COULD do is drop in a PCI eSATA adapter that supports PM and you would be good as gold.
@Donavon - That's the case I was looking at, too. The pictures don't show much, so I'm not sure if the added height of the 3.5" drive would interfere with the motherboard. Do you think if the case can hold 40mm fans, a 3.5" drive should be ok?
Got my GSEJT WHServer up and running last monday, Im loving this thing. What kind of temps are you looking at? myn idles at about 30-35C and under load its about 35-42C thats with the 60mm case fan on.
I have been testing my GSEJT with on my dining table without a case. In idle mode (displaying Ubuntu desktop) the ambient tamperature shown in the bios is 42 and the processor temperature is 62. The ICH chip is too hot to leave your finger on and so is the chip below the GMCH and Processor. I want to run this board without a case fan, but not sure if a 350 case will give good enough ventilation, any views?
Has anyone got any recommendations for a case that I can put this board into. I really would like to have 2 x 3.5inch hds but there seems to be a real lack of suitable cases. They either seem to either have the space for 1 or 4 hard drives :(
You may find an AOpen S180 suitable. I have no personal experience with it.
http://usa.aopen.com/products_detail.aspx?Auno=2657
Great spot Chris, I've been looking for ages and hadn't come across it. Just need to try and find a supplier in the UK :)
I built my WHS with the D945GSEJT this weekend. I used the Winsis Wi-01 Mini-ITX case with the power supply removed and a 1TB green WD 3.5" SATA hard drive. I disabled the case fan because it's a bit too loud for my taste, and I haven't had any problems with heat so far. It's tucked in my open air audio cabinet, and my air temp is kept at around 78 degrees F. With the p/s removed, I think I could put another 3.5" drive in that spot. Overall, I'm loving this board and my setup!
Hi Metaman, do you know this case: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1797/a_cupid_3_mini_itx_htpc_chassis/index.html ? I bought this one to build a NAS with 3x 3,5" HDDs (without CD/DVD-Drive). It's a little bit smaller then the Aopen one.
Maybe this could be an opportunity for a near silent, totally stealth, under the desk computer.
Screw all parts as you see them under your desk with no case. Maybe zip ties or something to secure hard drives. To move the desk, just unplug network and power cords.
Inspired by my previous post, I have created and documented my wall mounted computer. With mine, we did it for a buddie's IPCop firewall at his house, but this could be done and possibly even easier without the need for an addon NIC for WHS. See the guide here:
http://chuckscoolreviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-build-wall-mounted-computer.html
has anyone used this board with more than 1 hard drive? I plan on plugging 1 drive (the system drive) into the onboard SATA, then plug 4 matching drives into a controller card in the PCI slot. What size power brick should I use, and how would I plug each of the HDDs into said brick? Would the onboard molex connector support the current needed for 5 drives?
Will this motherboard and processor run iTunes on XP so I can use it as a jukebox thru my home entertainment system? Or is it not powerful enough? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!
Donovan West,
Do you have any network/file copy stats for the new board?
I'm interesting in this board as the basis for a NAS box.
Ta
Didja ever get a case for this masterpiece?
I have my D945GSEJT running ubuntu 10.04 into a Morex T-1610 Mini-ITX Case, fan-less.
I have a 42" LCD TV plugged into RGB port and 1080p resolution for movies, TorrentFlux for downloads, Samba, Webmin, SSH, Squid, Openvpn
I live in Brazil where the temperature usually is 30C, very hot town.
But we have the winter for while and i've never had problems with the D945GSEJT yet,
I want to see in January when the temperature comes to 35C or more...
where do you get vga drivers for D945GSEJT to the whs ? Without the gfx driver i cant get it to sleep :(
intels gfx drivers dont work on the whs
Brian,
After much struggle, I figured out how to get it to sleep. Disc install doesn't work, but go to device manager and click manual install and point to CD (if on D or copied to the server) D:\Drivers\Software\Drivers\Video\32bit\14.32.4.4926\graphics
WHS finds the Intel drivers and now WHS will sleep. Still doesn't hibernate, but Sleep is good!
I built a similar machine but using an Intel D525MW board with 60w Pico-PSU, 2TB WD Caviar Green. No DVD drive as I used a flash drive to perform the install. Uses about 18 or 19w.
My case is an M350 from mini-box.com. A 2.5" ssd would fit inside but not my 3.5" drive so I just set it on top. Keeps things cooler as well since I am not using any kind of fan.
I can't get the drive to sleep which might lower the wattage to the 13w range so am considering putting in a small SSD boot drive. I assume the 2TB drive would be able to sleep if it wasn't the boot drive.
I don't let the whole machine sleep because it is also used for showing weather data / slideshow during the day.
At first I got a blue screen every time I tried to install WHS v1. Once I changed the SATA mode to IDE, it worked like a charm.
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