OSDev.org

I was helping a friend design a computer case that he could fabricate for a project, and it got me thinking about what I would do for a future computer purchase. The idea I had was to have a low profile, relatively silent and energy efficient but general purpose embedded device.
Long story short, I decided to ditch the x86 for an ARM SoC, and I decided on a series of components to go with it.

• Mainboard SoC: Marvell's OpenRD-Client. (No enclosure obviously.)
  Case: SilverstoneTek Milo ML02
  Internal USB Hub: Rosewill RHUB-310R (Optional, depending on mainboard.)
  Local Secondary Storage: Transcend 8GB SDHC card
  SATA Drive 1: WD Scorpio Blue 80 GB SATA HDD
  SATA Drive 2: Samsung 8x SATA Internal DVD-RW Slim, Black
  Wifi: Dlink DWA-556
  Bluetooth: Cirago BTA-6210 USB Class 1

I expect it's also going to end up as a mod project for multiple reasons. I don't think the OpenRD-Client model follows the ATX spec for mounting. It also has to do with the fact that so far I have not found an SoC that includes at least two SATA ports, basic stereo audio, Wifi/Bluetooth, and sane power management. I've found ones that mix and match some of those, but not one that exclusively has all of those and runs an modern ARM core. The OpenRD board also gives an MPEG TS decoder, so I could use the device as a router and also stream a DVD video to my main computer, while pumping the audio into my amplifier. (Sansui QRX-3000 biatches!) I think it would be neat to have a device that could serve so many different purposes, especially once I'm into my own bachelor suite. Router, media center, code repository, and a uPNP server with bluetooth/wifi, and all dead silent and low power.

What are your thoughts?

well it wouldn't be dead silent. HDDs and DVD drives make noise lol

If you can find a cheap enough SSD for your primary disk, that might be more effective and efficient than the SATA disks (in terms of power usage and noise).

Apart from that, it sounds pretty good. What's it like in terms of cost?

earlz wrote:well it wouldn't be dead silent. HDDs and DVD drives make noise lol

Only when they're spun up and in use. Keep in mind there's an SD Card port onboard. I plan to set the core operating system onto that and keep the SATA storage for network storage.

pcmattman wrote:If you can find a cheap enough SSD for your primary disk, that might be more effective and efficient than the SATA disks (in terms of power usage and noise).

Apart from that, it sounds pretty good. What's it like in terms of cost?

To be honest I've looked into SSDs, and they aren't woth the effort. I had looked into Intel's X-25M, but for storage size vs. price the standard SATA disk proves a better choice, I think.

syntropy wrote:

pcmattman wrote:If you can find a cheap enough SSD for your primary disk, that might be more effective and efficient than the SATA disks (in terms of power usage and noise).

Apart from that, it sounds pretty good. What's it like in terms of cost?

To be honest I've looked into SSDs, and they aren't woth the effort. I had looked into Intel's X-25M, but for storage size vs. price the standard SATA disk proves a better choice, I think.

if all you care about is size:price, then hdds are better. SSDs have quite a few advantages though if you can afford them. That SSD beat the Velociraptor(fastest consumer hdd) in write speed like 3x and in read speed over 20x. Also with SSDs you have more stability in say laptops or other moving applications; there is no worries of hitting a bump too hard and damaging your fragile spinning hdd.

earlz wrote:

syntropy wrote:

pcmattman wrote:If you can find a cheap enough SSD for your primary disk, that might be more effective and efficient than the SATA disks (in terms of power usage and noise).

Apart from that, it sounds pretty good. What's it like in terms of cost?

To be honest I've looked into SSDs, and they aren't woth the effort. I had looked into Intel's X-25M, but for storage size vs. price the standard SATA disk proves a better choice, I think.

if all you care about is size:price, then hdds are better. SSDs have quite a few advantages though if you can afford them. That SSD beat the Velociraptor(fastest consumer hdd) in write speed like 3x and in read speed over 20x. Also with SSDs you have more stability in say laptops or other moving applications; there is no worries of hitting a bump too hard and damaging your fragile spinning hdd.

Yes of course. I'm definitely going to be offroading with a wireless media server. Frankly, besides the 'no moving parts' I have yet to see any real advantages to SSD that wasn't laboratory-tested-fanboyfaggin-market-bling statistics. A few rough benefits on sequential read speed really doesn't matter all that much to me, and I can't really afford to go throwing money out on hardware that is that finicky.

"You can have ZOMGFASTZORZ read and write speed!" (Only sequentially. Break the sequence and you get worse performance than IDE.)

"But you don't have any moving parts and it's dead quiet." (Really, does 'no moving parts' help one sleep at night? We've had moving parts for more than forty years without issues, and modern drives are almost silent anyway.)

"And their even CHEAPER and SAFER now." (Oh, yeah you know, 128GB at $400+ or 750GB at $60. Safer? After how many full disk rewrites would you like to test that?)

It's just not worth it in the long run.

No, random read and write speeds[of the intel drive] also beat out the velociraptor (not by much though) and I would trust my files on a SSD than an HDD anyday. The only worry you have with SSDs is EMP bombs (which hdds would also suffer from)

your right though, I don't consider it worth investment right now unless I had a lot of extra money that I didn't know what to buy with. But according to what I read(which compared about all consumer SSDs on the market) Intel's SSDs are the only faster ones, with one from Sandisk being faster only in certain situations and then some other SSDs using a certain controller being horrendously slower than any HDD.