[LUNI] Hardware help/advice...

[Tim Wielgos]

Have you seen AMD's line of low-power chips? 

See here:  http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/25/green_machine/




Andrew Close wrote:
> hi all,
>
> i've been outta the hardware game for a bit now.  just not up 2 date
> on the latest and greatest boards and chips, so i was hoping i could
> get some help/advice from the collective.  :)
>
> my main goal is that i'd prefer to be as conservative as possible with
> my power consumption.  i would like to be a green geek. ;)
>
> i'm currently looking to build two machines.
> the first will sit in a closet in the basement and will be mainly a
> file-server.  the second will be a secondary use desktop.
>
> the file-server will be a LAMP (not necessarily PHP) machine with RAID
> and NFS/SAMBA used mainly for multimedia storage (NAS): central music
> repository, video storage, digital photo repository, etc.  it doesn't
> really need to be a high-powered (CPU-wise) machine since it will be
> doing mainly storage and file serving.  this machine won't be doing
> any actual display of its content, only serving.
>
> the desktop machine will be used (secondary to my beloved powerbook ;)
> for general development and other interests.  for this machine i'd
> prefer something powerful enough to use VMWare or Zen to allow for
> multiple instances of Linux to run so i can play with many
> environments and experiment with different distros and server setups.
>
> i'm thinking software RAID will be good enough for my current needs,
> so extra cards and cheap onboard controllers aren't necessary.
> onboard video is definitely fine for the file-server since it will
> rarely be hooked up to a monitor.  it will most likely be fine for the
> workstation as well since i don't plan on gaming or doing high end
> graphics work with it.
> would something like the VIA-C7 or StrongARM processors work for the
> file server?  or do i need a little more power for software RAID?
> for the desktop i figured i'd go with an Intel Yonah or equivalent AMD
> dual-core processor.  aside from being dual core i know nothing about
> either of them. :)  i don't really care whether they are 32 bit or 64
> bit at this point.  by the time there is enough mainstream software
> that is really in need of 64 bit processing i'll probably just buy new
> hardware.  of course, that may be extremely naive, but i did say i'm a
> bit ignorant on the subject. :)
>
> so i guess the main hardware recommendations i'm looking for are
> mobo/proc and power supply combos that would fit my needs as outlined
> above.
> am i missing anything?  any other suggestions?
> thanks a bunch
>
> andy