Low Power Servers & Desktops?

dhart asks: "Does anyone make low power servers or desktop computers? Couldn't this be accomplished with commodity parts designed for portable PCs. Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly, with the added benefit of smaller and cheaper UPS and AC units in a server setting. If the demand for these units increased, it could lower the cost of energy efficient parts and, by association, the portable computers that drive the technology."

Comments

Mobile Processors

[SEWilco]

Well, you can get boards which use the laptop-designed mobile processors. An easy one to search for is "Tillamook" -- search for that along with words such as "motherboard", "VGA", "ISA", "PCI" (to filter out non-computer references).

Some are single-board computers which may require that your computer case use PC/104 or passive ISA/PCI bus designs.

Laptops

[Xunker]

Regarding servers: I was thinking myself this question a while ago, myself - the most logical choice being a laptop as the server.

• Benefits:
• Low Power
  
• Very Low heat (little or no active cooling required)
  
• variable power savng states (the machine can throttle it's processor usage dependent on how much it is being used).
  
• Small (can fit in a closet)
  
• Built-in battery backup
  
• Can be found cheap, if you buy one with a broken screen. (just plug in an external monitor, and only turn it on when you need it)
  

• Drawbacks
• Sometimes are Proprietary (i.e. memory)
  
• CPUs are Seldom upgradable (unless it's a Powerbook :) )
  
• Mobile CPUs are usually slightly slower than desktop CPUs or the same MHZ
  
• Mobile technology is usually 1-2 generations behind desktop machines (we have 1.2ghz processors on the desktop and 700mhz mobile CPUs have only recently appeared)
  
• Software support may be lacking for some models (Especially Linux, BSD or NT4)
  
• Expandability can be low - they don't make PCMCIA RAID controllers.
  

In my case, I could probaly pick up a used p233 laptop with a busted screen for only a few hundred, buy two PCMCIA ethernet cards, drop Linux, *bsd (or even NT4 or Win2k) on it and it could do all my web serving and firewalling/NATing.