Well, I’m down to 10 days before my Windows Home Server trial installation expires, and as promised I’ve had a go at running the box with the graphics card removed. Actually, I also removed the TV tuner card that was still in there from when the box used to perform its Media Center duties.
The box booted, however the HDD was still spinning a few minutes later, then the box rebooted itself. Then the same thing happened again, then on the third (or possibly fourth) reboot everything settled down and now seems to be running normally.
So what’s the power draw with the two cards removed?
Prior to taking the cards out the machine was running at 102 watts (whilst the lower specified Biostar box was running around 90 watts).
The Shuttle box now also runs at about 90 watts, so a decent saving of about 10 watts (or 10%) so I’d get an extra couple of hours a day for free on the electricity bill, or about 3 days a month. Worthwhile.
As a matter of interest, unplugging the power from the DVD re-writer drive drops this to 89 watts, but to be honest the meter I’m using isn’t likely to be that accurate.
The other point to note is that there is only room for 3 HDD inside the box, and this will up the power requirements a little. I’ll investigate this more later, but I reckon that if I install the OS on the 500Gb drive from the Ubuntu machine, then use a 25oGb for the second drive and either another 25oGb or 160Gb drive for the third (depending what I can salvage) then I should be good to go. This also depends somewhat on me getting the stuff off the old Ubuntu installation first. It’s on the to-do list.
Hmmmm, I wonder if I can force another drive in somehow.
(I’ve just had a look and possibly if I mount the drives vertically. Or have one outside the case – risky considering its intended location. We’ll see – perhaps the BIOS won’t allow it….)
Stay tuned.
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