Kaliko Systems Limited
Make a Low-Power Media Server
Current Media Server
My current media server uses a standard Intel Atom integrated processor and motherboard in a Hiper Media low-profile case with a Hauppauge Digital TV card. In the photo above I removed the TV card between the PSU and the motherboard, to show the construction more clearly. As I purchased the Atom motherboard (D945GCLF) about a year ago, it has the single core Atom 230 processor, but it is surprisingly quick with Windows XP. I considered that 2 chips on the motherboard ran a little hotter than I wanted, so added the 2 hand-made U-shaped aluminium heatsinks seen above and to the left of the fan. These are glued onto the edges of the chip tops with heatsink paste in the middle. The supplied fan cooled the graphics chip very well, but was too noisy, so I now run it at 7 volts, which makes it much quieter and it is only a little hotter. This modification is simple to do; search the Web for "7 volt fan". The motherboard is a tight fit in this case, but by removing the fan screws (not needed) the fan is now a little below the case top.
The current functions of the media server are:
- SlimCenter (previously called SlimServer) for the 2 hardware Squeezeboxes around the house.
- Video Server for the small PCs (and their attached TVs) around the house.
- General file server.
- Bit-Torrent Client/Server.
- Digital TV capture (for TV programs I want long term).
- Power control for the attached external hard drive enclosures.
The server has a small internal 3.5-inch hard drive (under the DVD drive) for Windows, but the media is on the external USB2 enclosure drives. These enclosures are switched on and off as needed by a standard commercial relay board controlled from the server over a USB cable. This help keeps average power consumption low. Two typical USB enclosures, one for SATA (left) and one for IDE (right) drives are shown below.
As a major requirement for this server is a low whole-life cost, I use the additional option of leaving the server unbooted most of the time. I configured it to boot when it receives a Wake-on-LAN packet. The Squeezeboxes support this Wake-on-LAN very well, as they send a Wake-on-LAN packet to the server when their remote control power button is pressed. Further, it is relatively simple to add a menu item to the Slimserver to allow the Squeezebox remote control to also turn the server off. The small PCs that act as the Video Players around the house are configured to have start menu options that can boot the media server (using the free Windows utility "wakeup.exe") and use VNC to turn it off.
The Atom media server uses 7 watts before booting and about 35 watts when booted. The external hard drives when on are typically 15 watts each, but most of the time none are on. The relay board is USB powered, but for one relay on it only uses about 1 watt.
What about the future.