DIY NAS board better than the Intel D945GCLF2?

[bigclaw]

The D945GCLF2 board seems to have solved one large problem of the original board reviewed on this site--the lack of onboard gigabit Ethernet. However, it seems that it still uses the power-hungry 945GC chipset that can consume up to 25W alone in power usage.

Any better integrated boards out there for a DIY NAS?

 

[bigclaw]

To answer my own question, this new board from MSI could be interesting. It uses the Atom N270 1.6GHz processor and the (mobile) 945GSE chipset. The former has a TDP of 2W, and the latter 6W!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/MSI-Intros-the-Atom-N270-Based-IM-945GSE-Mobo-94333.shtml

Of course the downside is pricing. It would be a lot more expensive than the Intel board. However, it definitely moves in the right direction, and I hope to see more products like this in the future to drive costs down.

 

[MoralDelima]

If I were rolling my own DIY box I'd be going with this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131228

4x GigE LAN ports + Link Aggregation = win.

 

[bliko]

To answer my own question, this new board from MSI could be interesting. It uses the Atom N270 1.6GHz processor and the (mobile) 945GSE chipset. The former has a TDP of 2W, and the latter 6W!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/MSI-Intros-the-Atom-N270-Based-IM-945GSE-Mobo-94333.shtml

Of course the downside is pricing. It would be a lot more expensive than the Intel board. However, it definitely moves in the right direction, and I hope to see more products like this in the future to drive costs down.

Would have to agree...was looking at this board myself.

However, i wish they could use a pcie slot so that a decent raid card can be used. The next problem is finding a tiny chassis which has space to fit a raid-card in

 

[bigclaw]

That server board looks like a killer!

I guess I need to qualify the "better" part before I instigate a flame war. I would like a board that matches or surpasses the performance of the current off-the-shelf home NAS solutions while keeping the power consumption as low as possible. Since it's home-made with a "real" OS, it has the added advantage of being able to provide *unabridged* functionality such as BT, UPnP, eMule, etc.

The MSI Atom N270/945GSE board seems to be a winner in all these regards, except price I guess.