I have been thinking about this for a while, at the moment i am running a 600 watt PC 24/7 for the weather station, with the processor running (well, regular peaking) at around 90% (this is running Webcam Software, WD x2, Weatherlink, Graph Weather, PC-Wetterstation, Nexstorm), now i have taken an interest in these mini-itx Boxes, they run at about 60 watts granted less powerful but would do the job nicely, and at just 12cm x 12cm i could place anywhere, they also have no fans to worry about. It would be using alot less power (in fact less than a laptop plugged in), produce no noise, very small so can be placed anywhere in the house with the vp console and fanless.
Im quite capable when it comes to computers and electronics etc, but i have never really looked into low cost builds like this, i was also thinking that instead of a HDD of plugging in a solid state flash drive or something to run the system on, possibly a basic Linux.?
I am keen to hear off anyone who invested in one of these mini-itx PC’s,like what hardware arrangment you have , OS used etc, as i may well build myself one in the new year .
I used to run WD on one of these mini-itx boxes but I have now given up on it. Mine was an 800mhz processor but it simply was not man enough for the job, this processor actually benchmarks as quite an old PIII cpu. If you decide on one of these check out the benchmarks and make sure you get something which benchmarks at something like a 2ghz P4 or AMD equivalent especially considering what you run. I was never able to get mine stable and I did not run any webcam or nextstorm, only WD and MySQL. I ran mine on W2K BTW. Now I run it on a 2ghz AMD box it runs like a train.
I know I am running on the limit with my noisy 5yo box with a new 80GB (faster) HDD and 1GB DDR (well that’s old now… ) and XP SP2. My bottleneck before was FTP update speed as I have a lot of webcam data being uploaded - animated gifs, and Wunderground webcam all at 640 x 480 etc. Plus most of the basic WD webpage gifs…
At 1.1 GHz Duron,it is the bottom limit for speed… and I have had many WD crashes and XP crashes too. It seems stable now, but I would not run 2xWD on here, it runs while browsing or Media files are running,but only just. Yes, a 2GHz machine would be minimum for comfort and peace of mind YMMV.
Indeed, i realise that i wouldnt be able to run as much on it, but trying to look at vastly reducing power used - It just seems a waste using a ott system when i would use just 10% of the same power. I have seen some rather nice low power cpu’s for mini itx systems, i think i need to look at around 1.5 ghz to run the software i need and 512 mb. I was also looking at getting that system which allows you to control the box from another pc by using its Keyboard, Monitor etc.
I use a Belkin KVM switch (which also switches sound) to control currently 3 PCs. I know you can do it with software but I like the flexibility of having a real keyboard for BIOS etc. I do also use TightVNC for remote control but mainly for getting snapshots of windows for use on the forum. I do also set it up for real remote access when I’m away.
I did some time ago and it was peaking in periods of 5-10 seconds about every 20 seconds of around 90% of total wattage input, the cycle i should imagine was WD and mainly the WD webcam software encoding the latest streams.
Ah yes a KVM switch thats what it was, would be very handy having the ITX sitting on the desktop and being able to control it and my main pc.
I use a mini-ITX PC for my weather PC, and have been over two years now. I’m using a VIA EPIA Nehemiah M10000G 1GHz motherboard with 1 Gb of RAM, and it chuggs along quite nicely running XP Pro. Mind you I don’t do anything other than WD on it, no web cams etc so it copes well. There are other faster mini-ITX boards out now, so perhaps a faster one would be better.
Coupled with a KVM switch to my main PC it all works very well.
There seems to be a discussion here about 2 sorts of power…1. The actual power consumption that the PC consumes from the supply and…2. the power of the PC to do tasks…
I have found using a supply socket meter (they are available from Maplins etc) that running 2 PCs (1 x dual core Intel and 2nd an AMD sempron 2800) that the consumed power from the mains supply is around 300 Watts with both TFT monitors running plus external HDs etc…this reduces to about the 250W mark with TFTs off. Neither are less than a year old and both use standard DDR memory. I would assume that a modern PC with dual core and DDR2 would actually be a more efficient user of mains power and would be around the 100W mark (without the screen/TFT)… Additionally, a recent mini ATX with perhaps a single HD and optical device would would easily cope with WD and video crunching…
Thanks a great deal I find its always best to ask people using the system before going any further.
Yes Munro theres the power (cps) then power (watts), my pc at the moment has 4 hdds in raid config so they are all constantly working, 5 fans, very hot running P4, then theres the high end graphics card, 3 pci cards - the list goes on. I feel it would be much more sensible to have a ‘light’ system just to tick over recording weather data, it will never be used as anything else.
So i guess now its time to collect the shrapnel together and look for a mini itx mobo to start with.
Would it be better to run a light Linux OS rather than Windows, in order to reserve resources?
Docbee, i have a VP2 and a 1 wire station, shame really as that looks like the sort of system im after.
Carterlake im Intrigued as to your server idea, so your weather data is logged in the same pc that people get routed to when they access your site, how many people can view your site before it struggles?
I was thinking of trying one of the Walmart $199 mini ITX PC’s to run WD (under Windows 2000) since it has a very low power consumption processor. But yesterday I saw a review where it stated the idling power consumption was 60 watts, that’s more than the 2GHz pentium 4 PC’s that I use now :?
Some real power measurements I made a while ago are here.
That sounds odd - 60W is above the rated max output of some mini-ITX power supplies. Of course there are things that aren’t directly affected by the CPU/chipset, like HDD and optical drive power consumption. No matter how green you make the CPU itself, these other power demands are still there. So good ITX designs typically use carefully selected laptop rather than desktop components to minimise supplementary power drain. Presumably the 60W figure didn’t include screen power?
“mini” ?? Looks like a full-size desktop machine…I was thinking this to be very basic and small, very small, footprint. Back when I was running seti they had computers the size of a deck of cards and I thought this was along similar idea.
) and XP SP2. My bottleneck before was FTP update speed as I have a lot of webcam data being uploaded - animated gifs, and Wunderground webcam all at 640 x 480 etc. Plus most of the basic WD webpage gifs…
I find its always best to ask people using the system before going any further.