low power machine suggestions?

clockworks · 07-23-2004, 05:26 PM

i want an extremely cheap linux machine to run sshd, samba, cups, nfs, ftp. my main concern is power usage since it will be running all day (but with little to no load at all). are there any processors or motherboards that emphasize low power usage and also work well with linux?

thanks for the input.

mritch · 07-23-2004, 05:53 PM

if it's a modern (~98) motherboard and supports at least apm (look out for whitelists/ acpi is better and i would recommend it) it will work to shut it down when inactive. be sure to get a motherboard and network card that can wake up on lan activity.
for the system an old machine (~200MHz) will do it. if you have multiple disks put the primary system+swap on one smaller disk (~800M) - and spin the others (data) down when they are not in use.

sl mritch.

auditek747 · 07-23-2004, 05:58 PM

Computers don't really use much juice, especially if you administer
remotely and don't use a monitor.
I know alot of the cheapo computers you get at the store have wee
power supplys in them. Just about everything is built in to the mother
board. I imagine srtipped down they're pretty light on power usage.
(no accellerated video and what not)