I want to build a media server to record TV and serve videos to a number of OSMC clients around the house. I already have an ATX case that I want to use and a whole bundle of hard drives.
I’m stuck in finding an ATX motherboard that will use little power so that I can leave it on 24/7. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. A server motherboard with remote management would be good.
I’m thinking of using TrueNAS Scale with Jellyfin and NextPVR. I’ve been using TrueNAS Core for sometime which I like. I’m also using NextPVR which again I like. However, I have no experience of TrueNAS Scale with Jellyfin or NextPVR.
The primary reason for wanting to use TrueNAS Scale is for ZFS.
You seem a bit confused, TrueNAS Core already uses ZFS so not sure what you’re trying to solve by switching and power consumption of a motherboard is negligible compared to over components. If you want remote management, look up IPMI or possibly Intel vPro but it will be expensive in general and compatible hardware will be limited.
I’m not at all confused. Maybe I didn’t explain well enough.
The box I’m running TrueNAS Core on isn’t capable of housing the number of disks I need and is currently only a file server.
The new box will be a media server with TV tuner cards that I can’t fit in the current box.
I understand that the motherboard is not what consumes the power but it is the component that I am struggling to find. There are a number of ITX and MicroATX motherboards that do what I want but I can’t find an ATX board.
There are ITX and MicroATX boards that have embedded CPU’s that look great but my case doesn’t support those. I want to use the ATX case I have because it houses 9 3.5" disks and can fit the tuner cards I have. Plus I like the case.
I was hoping to find an ATX version of the ITX/MicroATX boards but there doesn’t seem to be any.
When it comes to low power Intel/AMD CPU’s in an ATX format motherboard I am lost as to what is available, especially here in the UK.
I also don’t know how things have improved in terms of power consumption in the last few years.
I understand that the motherboard is not what consumes the power but it is the component that I am struggling to find. There are a number of ITX and MicroATX motherboards that do what I want but I can’t find an ATX board.
You shoehorned yourself into corner by preselecting (consumer like J4125?) embedded cpu as primary criterion. These CPU might have minimal TDP, but they are also weak, old and lack many hardware offloading features that are present even in the cheapest 25-35W consumer cpus.
Building plaform around this will likely paradoxically lead to higher power consumption, since all modern cpu have power states and use race to idle approach to lowering operating power. Weak cpu like this will be running at full power way longer than cheapest i3 or ryzen 3 cpu.
These CPU are cheap, anemic even both in computing power and expandability, so designing ATX board for them does not make sense. All those connectivity that could be potentially installed on full form factor could not be used anyway, since celerons et etcera have crippled memory configuration and pcie connectivity by design.
People who are looking at these primarily care for small form factor, so thats second strike agains this design. Why design something nobody would want?
Finding ATX board is easy. Finding ATX board that sips power? As long its reasonably modern and you choose components wisely, also easy. There is not that much variability there anyway.
Nothing else can be written withou further hard information:
What do you have now and why is it not sufficient?
What is desired end use, in detail?
What is minimal acceptable configuration, peripheral wise?
What kind of power consumption you think you can get out of it?
In running a bunch of spinning rust plates, you are using a SAS/SATA bus adapter(s), right?
Mainboard would NOT near a worrypoint, to power budgeting [the attached components are]
Modern processor power can be tame, WHILE, still being viable with instructions/IPC
You can run say, an i3/i5 [LGA1700], to get the job done. T-variant being smidge more frugal
ASRock N100M is a Micro ATX board with an embedded N100 CPU. It has QSV, which is great for serving videos while sipping power. It may not be very suitable for ZFS, though, given the limitation of 1x DDR4 and the lack of ECC.
Another bigger issue is that availability is even more limited than their ITX version.
In this case, going with a non-F i3 or i5 would be a better idea. Intel platform typically idles at a pretty low power and has a very good media engine. That, or a Ryzen PRO APUs (especially 5650G) can be a good choice too if ECC is a requirement.
I haven’t shoehorned myself into anything. Embedded CPU is NOT a criteria. The only criteria I have is that the solution fits into an ATX case because I have this and the hard drives already.
try x99 thats what my old htpc/server is. you will get all the pcie lanes, and many slots. raid card will give you many drives. when you want capture cards, sata drives and more 10gbe? i wouldnt worry about power, your gonna use some, but it works great. x299 also. normal boards cant handle a ton of stuff, id do x299 if you want to be current, x99 can only do windows 10, and linux. well hope it helps.
Then there is no issue finding the board, you just have start looking! Almost any modern ATX board is suitable for stated use. Only limiting factor is OoBe controller, which limits selection slightly.
Board itself is an irrelevant powerwise, once you factor in power consumption of cpu and peripherals. Only wrong move from idle power consideration would be going for full server platform like EPYC system. I have 16C32T second gen Epyc supermicro atx board with 128GB of ram with idle power around 75-80W.
Most of that power is probably IO chipset and memory subsystem. About 60W delta from 8C UCFF ryzen 4750g system. That system has almost no extendability at all.
Out of band controller is also irrelevant power wise, since bog standard asmedia on older supermicro boards consumes between 0,5-4W of power.