Atom N2600, any opinions?

[Stu1983]

I'm looking at building something relatively cheap and cheerful for running sabnzbd, sickbeard and couchpotato.
My main requirement is that the box will use very little power as it'll be on 24/7

I have a 75 megabit internet connection but I'm not bothered about maxing it out. Anywhere around 5 megabytes download would be fantastic.

I've been looking a the Atom N2600, it a low powered (3.5w) dual core 1.6ghz. There are quite a few 2nd hand netbooks that have this processor for around £130. I like the idea that I can set it in my network cabinet out of the way and it is self contained so if something needs tweaking I can lift it out and take to the armchair to fix... it's also got built in battery backup

I'm just wondering if anyone else is has had any experience with this processor or similar spec?

Currently I'm running all 3 on a Raspberry Pi but after over a year I'm giving up on it, when it works it works pretty well around 1.5 megabyte download which I'm happy enough with as most things download overnight anyway. The problem is when it decides to stop working I lose multiple days trying to get to the bottom of where it went wrong and the CouchPotato v2 has always really struggled on the PI. After recently moving house the USB drive on the Pi has corrupted and I've no interest in setting it up again.

Any other alternative low powered devices out there? Doesn't have to be quite as low as the N2600 anything that averages under 20w would be fine.

Thanks

[sander]

First a check:
"I have a 75mb internet connection but I'm not bothered about maxing it out. Anywhere around 5mb would be fantastic."
"well around 1.5mb"

Aren't you mixing up bits (b, lower case) and Bytes (B, upper case)?

Second: on low-spec hardware on a high-speed connection, you're better off with NZBget

Third: I wouldn't pay 130 GBP for a second hand Atom netbook.

[Stu1983]

First: thanks, I have updated the original post with correct use of bits and bytes

Second: I looked at NZBget when I first got the Pi but didn't find it made much difference to speed... not enough to justify the complicated setup

Third: What would recommend for similar money with my requirements?

[sander]

A netbook is OK, but I wouldn't pay 130 GBP for a second hand one. I just checked, and you can buy a netbook with a screen defect for 50 Euro. Just temporarily connect a screen to set it up, and it should be OK for your nework cabinet

No difference between SABnzbd and NZBget on a netbook/low-spec-CPU on a 75 Mbps link? Strange. I will test this weekend with my netbook on my 300/300 Mbps FttH link.

[sander]

Results:

Hardware: Netbook with Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz (single core, multithreaded), 1GB RAM, Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop.

Result: 6,4 MB/s, so about 64 Mbps.

Speed is bit wobbly:

Code: Select all

2013-09-06 23:11:26,670::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 6616678.45404
2013-09-06 23:11:31,670::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 8123270.99099
2013-09-06 23:11:37,109::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 6564946.71043
2013-09-06 23:11:42,131::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 7484467.8763
2013-09-06 23:11:47,132::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 8630118.69524
2013-09-06 23:11:52,336::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 7366800.04864
2013-09-06 23:11:58,232::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 6807495.12002
2013-09-06 23:12:03,285::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 6857365.56764
2013-09-06 23:12:08,286::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 5092844.83073
2013-09-06 23:12:13,552::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 5453454.67745
2013-09-06 23:12:18,556::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 7532990.06129
2013-09-06 23:12:23,559::DEBUG::[bpsmeter:253] bps: 6955568.34735

The CPU looks quite loaded:


FWIW: on my i3 Core laptop (with 100 MBps internface, so not GigE), I get 10.5 MB/s

HTH

[Stu1983]

Thanks for the stats.

I found an old Samsung Q1 in one of my drawers at work. It has a 'Celeron M ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) 353' @ 900 MHz with a gig of ram... really wasn't expecting much from it but I just averaged 4.2MB on a 5gig file through SabNZBd... took it longer to extract than download... 18.5 mins to download versus 24 mins to extract but I'm happy enough with that.

I forgot that the subscription I have with my newserver (tweaknews) has me capped at about 6MB/s (50mb/s) anyway so the old Celeron is doing alright... and it's free

Just checked it power consumption and its averaging 15 Watts so not bad either.

Still fancy giving the N2600 ago sometime but I'll save my money for now.