Impressed by a Celeron!

"Impressed by a Celeron" <--- not really something you hear every day, eh?

I had a requirement for a small dev server at home. I wanted to leave it running 24/7, but didn't want it to suck down a lot of power nor spend a lot of money. After a bit of research, it came down to either an AMD A-series processor or a modern Intel Celeron. I chose the Celeron over the AMD processor as Intel appears to be pushing this particular series of Celeron as being very Linux-compatible, and I previously had a poor experience under Linux with an AMD board powered by an E-350 processor.

The build:

ECS Elitegroup Motherboard with quad-core Celeron J1900 Mini ITX DDR3 1333  - $73.99

Crucial 8GB Single DDR3 1333 MT/s (PC3-10600) CL9 SODIMM 204-Pin - $74.84

Transcend Information 64GB SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive TS64GSSD340 - $53.99

Sentey Mini ITX SS5-2514 Slim Flex Computer Case w/ Power Supply BCP450-OI /USB, Audio / Support SSD / 60MM FAN INCLUDED / INCLUDES VERTICAL STAND / S - $39.99

TOTAL: $242.81

The components: 



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The drive sits in this little tray, which then sits over the power supply:



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Motherboard... no fan required, and SO-DIMM slot is horizontal.



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The case's leads for the front panel buttons and LEDs are extremely long... I really don't know why.



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Fully assembled: 



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20.8 watts at idle on 120.9v power:



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25.2 watts on 120.9v power while running stress --cpu 16:



For everything I have asked this system do to thus far, this CPU has been more than adequate. I'm very impressed by how little power this is using and still having a very usable system. It's taken Intel like 15 years, but it looks like they finally made a Celeron that doesn't completely suck.

Yeah, the power-to-performance on these new Celeron's (and atoms) are pretty impressive considering the pricetag. What's the intended usage if i might ask?

20 Watts at idle from a regular psu is impressive.

Hook up a PicoPSU and it will likely drop to 13W or so.

Intel's newer generation lines are pretty powerful even with low power consumption. The Celeron line is no powerhouse, but they're still pretty decent for their power consumption. The Atom CPUs are supposed to be even LOWER power consumption with decent performance. I remember I once replaced a system streaming video (live transcoding with Flash media Live Encoder). An old Dimension 3000 with an OLD Celeron. Somehow, it actually did fairly well. 

I switched to use ivy celeron on my desktop when I realized my i7 was idle almost whole time but setup used over 100w . now celeron uses around 30w with complete build price less than new i7 cpu alone. Plus I use 2-3 vms in virtual box with no signs of slow desktop performance.

I never liked running cables through heatsinks but aside from that it looks good. Also +1 for the PicoPSU for MiniITX boxes.

I put a Celerson G1820 in my four 4TB Freenas/Plex mini-itx box and it's doing a perfect job. Great proc for $50.

I hope to see more builds of cheap/affordable/different computing rigs like this...  $250 computer.

Purely a development environment server?  Does that CPU support common virtualization?

Kalam said:

I put a Celerson G1820 in my four 4TB Freenas/Plex mini-itx box and it's doing a perfect job. Great proc for $50.

Click to expand...

Do you do on the fly transcoding with Plex on that box?

I've got a Core i5 which starts to sputter at about 4-5 simultaneous transcoding streams.   (unRAID)

datarealm said:

Do you do on the fly transcoding with Plex on that box?

I've got a Core i5 which starts to sputter at about 4-5 simultaneous transcoding streams.   (unRAID)

Click to expand...

Yes. I only ever have 1-2 people using it at once so I've never noticed any issues.

I like the new Celeron Quad CPUs too.

VPSBoard doesn't alert me when someone writes in my thread, so these are a bit delayed...

blergh said:

Yeah, the power-to-performance on these new Celeron's (and atoms) are pretty impressive considering the pricetag. What's the intended usage if i might ask?

Click to expand...

Internal development system... I could have used a VPS but I would kinda rather avoid being at someone else's mercy. I don't like VirtualBox et al either, so, cheap and low on power consumption were the requirements

Magiobiwan said:

Intel's newer generation lines are pretty powerful even with low power consumption. The Celeron line is no powerhouse, but they're still pretty decent for their power consumption. The Atom CPUs are supposed to be even LOWER power consumption with decent performance. I remember I once replaced a system streaming video (live transcoding with Flash media Live Encoder). An old Dimension 3000 with an OLD Celeron. Somehow, it actually did fairly well. 

Click to expand...

I did look at those, especially the new 8-core Atoms, but didn't like the price on them. I might use them for production

KuJoe said:

I never liked running cables through heatsinks but aside from that it looks good. Also +1 for the PicoPSU for MiniITX boxes.

Click to expand...

Having actually witnessed an AMD processor in the early 2000's get hot enough to melt wires that were touching the heatsink, you'd think that I wouldn't run wires through heat sinks... but OCD tends to be overpowering. I'm sure someday it'll bite me in the ass.

drmike said:

I hope to see more builds of cheap/affordable/different computing rigs like this...  $250 computer.

Purely a development environment server?  Does that CPU support common virtualization?

Click to expand...

It does indeed have the virtualization extensions on the CPU... I don't know how well it would do at that, though. I'm sure we'll see Celeron-powered servers on the LE market soon.

Damian said:

VPSBoard doesn't alert me when someone writes in my thread, so these are a bit delayed...

Click to expand...

Howdy!  This can be taken care this way!



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