What's the physically smallest/low power WINDOWS server hardware ?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

spyrule

Active Member
Hey guys,

Havn't had time to get caught up on home server hardware lately, so bare with my questioning here if you can.

I'm looking to run a VERY small windows server (I intend to run ONLY AD/DNS/DHCP from this server). I will NOT be used for storage or any other type of services.

I'm hoping the device is as tiny as possible, and as ultra low power as possible. It does not need wireless or tons of hard drive space, etc. Hell, if I can run it on a USB key, I'm cool with that.

Can someone suggest a very small setup that will run Server 2012 comfortably ?

I'm hoping to keep the total cost under $350 if possible.

I already have an ESXi server and a Xpenology NAS, so storage and other horsepower is covered for other service when I need it. I'm just finding that running a single host ESXi box with my DC existing on it, doesn't work well for recovery reasons (power outtages longer than my UPS can handle).

suggestions/questions are welcome.

Cheers,

Spyrule
 

pyro_

Active Member
Oct 4, 2013
747
165
43
Couple of possibilities would be:

ECS Liva
Zotac BI320
Intel bay trail nuc

There are a couple of threads on here for the first two and they can generally be found for around 200$ or possibly less on sale. Newegg offers the BI320 as a barebones for around 120$ and I have seen the intel nuc as a barebones unit for 125$
 

Arm

New Member
Aug 26, 2014
1
0
1
46
Afternoon,

I picked up a little box made by LIVA a couple months ago to use for XBMC in my living room. It runs windows 8 (with classic shell) and XBMC quite nicely. I was pleasantly surprised.

The unit has 2GB of ram, and has a (slow) 32GB SSD chip soldered to the mainboard. I got it from newegg for about $115 during a sale a couple months ago:

ECS LIVA 2GB DDR3L RAM installed Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System - Newegg.com

LIVA makes a newer unit with 4GB of ram, 64GB of disk space, and I heard it includes a windows 8 license. Currently the price gap between the two (at least on newegg) is quite small. If you have time to wait, I'd bet you can get a good deal on the older 2GB units again in the future.

As a side note, these units require some assembly. They make it sound easy, but attaching the tiny coax cables for the bluetooth and wireless networking is really not for the faint of heart. I got lucky and didn't break them, but it sounds like quite a few people have. In addition, the BIOS is EFI only. I struggled to get anything to install before settling on windows 8.

Good luck!
 

spyrule

Active Member
Thanks for the info guys... I've felt the pain of some EFI bios's. My NAS has a royally annoying BIOS, primarily because after each reboot it wants to change the boot order of my external card slots (I run my NAS OS from an SD card).
It took me a good week of playing with the settings to finally figure out how to get it to stop switching boot order. Turns out I had to disable ALL the other ports.

As for assembly, that's not a major problem for me. I've done years of electronics as a side hobby, so I'm quite comfortable with small wiring.

So far, I might go with the Zotac, only because I can pick them up locally in stock (I hate waiting for delivery of items up here in Canada)...
 

spyrule

Active Member

pyro_

Active Member
Oct 4, 2013
747
165
43
Ya I can understand the hating to wait part so use canada computers and ncix as well myself when I don't want/can't wait

The brix would probably work for what you want as well
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113

pyro_

Active Member
Oct 4, 2013
747
165
43
Ya unfortunately not available up here other than the esc Liva, unlike in the US where most of them are available as barebones
 

HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
290
52
28
47
I run Server 2012R2 on a BayTrail NUC (the DN2820). A single 4GB DIMM, and a 320GB HDD, and it runs it fine. I use it for DHCP/DNS/WDS. Works perfectly and only uses 8W peak. The RAM and HDD were leftovers from laptop upgrades, so the machine really only cost a total of £90.
 

Dev_Mgr

Active Member
Sep 20, 2014
133
48
28
Texas
I'm running a NUC (DC3217IYE) in the livingroom as an HTPC with Windows 8.1. I enabled hyper-v on it and then installed 2008 R2 on a VM (the VMware VCSA 5.5 isn't a big fan of 2012 R2). I have this htpc running 24x7 for the VM, but I don't know how much/little power it actually uses.
 

HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
290
52
28
47
I don't know how much/little power it actually uses.
I have the i5 Haswell NUC as well, and with a mSATA 64GB and 2x2GB DIMMs, and it peaks at 12W during boot, uses sub 8W when idling. Add another 0.5watt if you've got the wifi card still in there.

Really the NUCs use nothing. Brilliant little machines.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Hey guys,

Havn't had time to get caught up on home server hardware lately, so bare with my questioning here if you can.

I'm looking to run a VERY small windows server (I intend to run ONLY AD/DNS/DHCP from this server). I will NOT be used for storage or any other type of services.

I'm hoping the device is as tiny as possible, and as ultra low power as possible. It does not need wireless or tons of hard drive space, etc. Hell, if I can run it on a USB key, I'm cool with that.

Can someone suggest a very small setup that will run Server 2012 comfortably ?

I'm hoping to keep the total cost under $350 if possible.

I already have an ESXi server and a Xpenology NAS, so storage and other horsepower is covered for other service when I need it. I'm just finding that running a single host ESXi box with my DC existing on it, doesn't work well for recovery reasons (power outtages longer than my UPS can handle).

suggestions/questions are welcome.

Cheers,

Spyrule
I'm planning to pick up a Zobox pico as my on-boat server. See http://www.zotac.com/en/z-zone/zbox-pico.html. It's palm size, $200, includes Windows 8.1, and draws 2.2 watts.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patrick

HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
290
52
28
47
I'm planning to pick up a Zobox pico as my on-boat server. See ZBOX pico: ZOTAC - It's time to play!. It's palm size, $200, includes Windows 8.1, and draws 2.2 watts.
I call BS on the 2.2W thing. The specs aren't much different to the BayTail NUC, and it draws closer to 8W. There's no way in this earth that a PC with 2GB RAM, a wifi card, Atom CPU and storage will ever use 2.2W unless it's in some power saving mode. If it does actually use 2.2W, it's probably underclocked, and will run like crap.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
43
Michigan, USA
I call BS on the 2.2W thing. The specs aren't much different to the BayTail NUC, and it draws closer to 8W. There's no way in this earth that a PC with 2GB RAM, a wifi card, Atom CPU and storage will ever use 2.2W unless it's in some power saving mode. If it does actually use 2.2W, it's probably underclocked, and will run like crap.
This review also mentions 2.2 watts for average power consumption. Seems like it's even lower powered than the recent batch of Bay Trail tablets. Perfect for an HTPC or Steam streaming client though.
 

lmk

Member
Dec 11, 2013
128
20
18
Apparently it is a tablet SoC - quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F processor clocked at 1.33GHz
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patrick

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I call BS on the 2.2W thing. The specs aren't much different to the BayTail NUC, and it draws closer to 8W. There's no way in this earth that a PC with 2GB RAM, a wifi card, Atom CPU and storage will ever use 2.2W unless it's in some power saving mode. If it does actually use 2.2W, it's probably underclocked, and will run like crap.
I'd be happy with eight watts! I currently use an older Mac Mini as my boat server, and it draws more like 80 watts.

And so while I would not be surprised to see actual consumption above 2.2 watts, which is the misleading "SDP" specification from Intel, something between 3.5 and 5 watts seems likely (with wifi disabled since it's a server) , and would be a big improvement over to the old Mac Mini.

BTW, this boat "server" needs almost no horsepower. It gathers data from the NMEA2000 network and runs a tiny web UI that I use to monitor and control the boat systems. I actually hope that it is "underclocked" to save power.
 
Last edited: