Cute efficient server with WAF

[ThijssjihT]

I wanted to share my server setup with you.

My requirements are simple:

• energy efficient
• WAF. My internet connection is in the living room for some reason, so it is where my router and server will be. My wife should not object to having this server in a corner of the living room.
• Built to last
• Expandable
• Not crazy expensive

I got a cooler master silencio s400 limited sakura edition case. Quiet, and cute. Wife approved.

It has 3 new seagate NAS drives at the moment. I will add more when I have budget.

I choose an intel i3 7100 cpu. It is very efficient, cheap, and the first generation with multiple advanced C-states for idle power reduction. I think 2 cores will be enough for me. It is in an ASUS H110M-A/M.2 motherboard (uatx is generally most power efficient, and it has multiple sata ports, and expandability through pci-e if really needed).

I choose a big tower cooler. It cools better, so the fan can spin slower. This will make the NAS quieter and again, it saves on power. I have one fan installed in the back of the case. It spins too fast and it is too loud. I will try to slow it down at a later moment,

I have a single stick of 8GB 2133MHz RAM. I believe capacity is more important than bandwidth in NAS applications, and 1 stick is more energy efficient than 2, and it leaves me the possibility to add another stick in the future.

The boot drive is an NVMe MMC flash drive. Speed is comparable to SD cards, but it saves energy compared to regular SSD’s. I reused it from an upgraded steam deck. It got a big and proper SSD.

Power consumption is low, and regular ATX power supplies are less efficient in low power. The PSU’s designed for low power available are no-brand cheap crap that I don’t trust. So I went for a pico-psu with external 12 V power brick. The PSU is mounted directly in the ATX24p header.

I 3D-printed a bracket for the power brick plug

In the pictures, the NAS is not in its permanent location, but temporarily set-up at the teleV for installation. Installation is failing for now, but that is for another topic.

Would love to hear your feedback, compliments are nice, but other feedback is also welcome.

[Dylan]

Nice. Sounds like you really thought about your deployment. Only thing I'd consider is bumping that RAM up to 16GB. ZFS is a RAM hungry filesystem.

Good luck!