VIA adds Barebone NAS / Server

[iwod]

I cant wait for their 4Bay version.
Finally a true Barebone NAS. That is Low power and powerful.

Edit: Wait, External PSU, Need to buy SSD or CF to bootUp?
And Longer then other NAS...

I think i will pass.

 

[9lives]

I'd be interested to see how this thing performs.

I have a 1.2GHz C7 based NAS running at the moment. I'm using an EPIA board with built-in gigabit ethernet. Performance is absolutely terrible.

The gigabit LAN seems to be limited to about 30MB/sec, even in artificial tests (iperf etc). I have checked all the settings including jumbo frames. Other machines on the same network can easily hit over 100MB/sec in the same tests and manage 60-70MB/sec regularly with file transfers from SATA HDDs.

The C7 is also amazingly slow. In TrueCrypt it only manages 15MB/sec with assembly code optimised AES, where as a Duron 1.2 hits 35MB/sec.

The on-board video is next to useless. In theory it supports high definition playback with hardware acceleration, but in reality the only thing that actually supports this is an ancient patched version of mplayer for Linux. Certainly no Windows/DXVA support. The CPU is of course far too slow.

Worse still, there seems to be a driver bug where the drive randomly changes into a strange screen mode that my monitor cannot display on boot. Checking the BIOS the video output mysteriously changes from CRT to LCD (even with a CRT attached) and the only way to get it working again is to change the setting back and boot Windows in VGA mode.

I'm going to replace it with either a new socket AM2 system or an old Pentium III 1.3GHz.

 

[zedpol]

I'll 2nd that. I have a little barebone NAS system based off of the c7 at 1ghz and the thing is agonizingly slow. I get real world transfer rates of about 4mb/s. Sometimes i wonder if i have a bunk hard drive.

 

[thiggins]

I'll be getting a review unit. But not until January.

 

[9lives]

I forgot to mention the most important benchmark. I get around 15MB/sec average for file transfers with SMB. Doesn't seem to matter if it's a SATA drive, PATA drive or USB.

Via boards are really expensive too. At least Atom is cheap, and apparently it performs.

To be honest AMD's 690g (or the newer 740/780/790) might be the best option. Up to six SATA ports on-board and capable of idling at around 30W with a good PSU, probably lower with a DC-DC one. Best of all you can get 30W idle with a good dual core CPU (either a low power one or for a watt or two more a performance one like an X2 4200/5000) or a really low cost Sempron (<£15).

Sure, a Via board might beat that by maybe 5-10W (although in real world tests people report around 35W for a 1.5GHz PicoITX board!) but any saving in power will take decades to recover due to the increased initial hardware cost.