I wanted to have a small Linux server at home that can help in a couple of things.
- Plex media server
- A backup server
- A Web server
Desired Specification
Low cost
This is more like a hobby project so I wanted to keep the cost really low - like, below $200.
Less power consuming
This server will be up 24/7 all year long. So even 1 watt-hour of power usage translates to 24 x 365 = 8760 watt-hour or 8.76 kWh. The server will just be idle doing nothing for most of the time. Therefore one of the main consideration was that the power consumption when idling should be really low.
Powerful enough
Since it is going to host Plex media server, it has to be powerful enough to transcode at least one video at 1080p for one device at a time. The other two use cases are not that CPU intensive. Plex website suggests that,
Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark scores are a good guideline for a requirement: 1080p/10Mbps: 2000 PassMark and 720p/4Mbps: 1500 PassMark
Compact size
This is just my preference. I wanted it small enough to fit in the entertainment cabinet so that if I needed a monitor for this server, I can simply plug an HDMI cable from the TV. Also, placing in there helps in keeping all the wiring organised along with the PlayStation, TV, and others.
Part Picking
Processor
When talking performance per dollar, I always feel that AMD is much better than Intel. This CPU has the perfect specs I've been looking for. I was also looking at Intel J1900 and Intel N3700. Though they seem to consume less power they were not powerful enough and expensive than AMD. I went with AMD Athlon 5350 which had the CPU Passmark of 2575 which is more than enough horsepower to convert and stream one movie in FullHD. When I bought this in October 2016, it cost me $34.99 but when I look at the price now, it's somewhere around $75. Wow. The TDP for this one is 25W, but it is going to be idle most of the time. The average power consumption should be very less than that.
Mother Board
I didn't have many specifications on this one. All I wanted was some USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port (need it once in a while), Integrated Ethernet card, some SATA 3 ports (for possible future hard disk), UEFI, and of course, compatibility to the AMD Athlon 5350. Asrock AM1B fit the bill. Best part: this board cost just $34.99 in newegg.com.
Memory
Didn't think much about memory. I just went with a good rated and reviewed DDR3 memory stick in Amazon. 4 GB is more than needed for Linux for our use-case.
Hard Disk
Here's where I spent more time in deciding things. Do I really need a hard disk? Or even an SSD for that matter? Can I just go with a thumb drive? Ubuntu Server might need about 6-7GB and all the software packages I need might not even make up to 1GB. So for the operating system and the software installed, 32GB is way more than enough. All my data is going to be in an external portable hard drive anyway, which I already use it with my MacBook. When considering the power consumption, a teeny tiny thumb drive must consume less power than an SSD or a hard drive. So I went with a server without a hard drive and used a thumb drive instead.
Case
Antec Mini-ITX was the case of my choice after going through a million cases in Amazon. I originally thought either the motherboard or the CPU might be the costliest in this list but to my surprise, this thing cost me $67.29. It was a little crampy inside as I assembled, but once done it was a really small cute server. The full mesh on the side keeps the electronics cool and it helps to save some power.
Outcome
Based on these considerations I landed on the below list of components.
- AMD Athlon 5350
- ASRock AM1B-ITX
- Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB DDR3
- SanDisk Ultra Fit 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive
- Antec Mini-ITX Case ISK110-VESA
- No Hard drive.
I managed to find these components and the total cost came up to a mere $167.48. True story.
Performance
After installation of Plex and other software, the computer performed just fine. I was able to stream FullHD 1080p movies to my AppleTV with no issues. Storage utilisation was under 25% on the 32GB thumb drive. Memory usage was also just fine - no swap usage and therefore no paging.
Now coming to the next important consideration, power consumption, it performed exceptionally well.
After a little bit of tuning, it was able to idle at 15.4 Watts. When watching movies at 1080p, the power consumption was around 23 Watts.
- Powerful for Plex - Achieved
- Low cost - Achieved
- Low Power - Achieved
Yay.
I will describe the software stack and power tuning in a different post.