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I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:42 am
by mgiammarco
Hello,
I would like to wait for a reasonable priced baytrail or avoton motherboard but now I have to quickly buy something that:

- needs around 10watts. A finished product, not 10watts the cpu and then you discovery that with motherboard and psu it uses 30watts.
- where I can install 8gb or 16gb ddr3 ram, possibly ECC
- cpu power is appreciated but price has to be low (500$ for an avoton is out of question)

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

Mario

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 4:47 am
by Abula
Im not sure this is will fit what you are looking, but check SPCR did a review on it and idle less than 10W, Haswell comes to NUC, gigabyte also has some.

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:22 am
by mgiammarco
Ops I forgot the obvious...
Anyway idle power is better than I hoped.
Unfortunately price is a bit high.
Is there a thing like this with lower price?

Thanks,
Mario

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 5:49 am
by boost
Listed in descending order of CPU power and price I found three barebones with ultrabook components like the NUC:
Intel NUC Kit D34010WYK
Gigabyte Brix with Intel 4th generation Core (Haswell)
Zotac ZBOX ID18

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:13 am
by mgiammarco
Thank you again for your detailed reply.

I am reading all reviews of current nuc and previous generation nuc.

I cannot find reviews (that shows idle power) of haswell brix and zbox id18.

I want to be sure that brix is really power efficient like intel nuc.

But I almost sold for a nuc.

Thanks,
Mario

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 1:46 am
by boost
Power consumption for Haswell Brix is very similar to Intel NUC.
Zotac Zbox ID18 is such an inexpensive system that uses 2.5" disk instead of mSata, I think power draw would be 1-2W higher in idle and up to 4W higher load.
You will only get the lowest idle numbers with careful caonfiguration. Intel NUC only accepts 1.35V SO-DIMMs, Gigabyte doesn't like those and uses 1.5V SO-DIMMs. You need a mSATA drive with low idle power consumption, like Samsung or Intel models. And to use Haswell's low power idle states you need Windows 8.

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 8:53 am
by fuugu
Hey what do you plan to use the system for?

Also have you taken into account monitor power consumption?

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 9:00 am
by xan_user
16gb ddr3 ram, possibly ECC
I dont think you are going to see many options (if any) around 10 watts with ECC. . .
what do you need the ECC for?

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:44 am
by mgiammarco
I will use it as a server. If you keep it on 24h/24 after some time it hangs due to memory errors.
So, if I can choose, I will choose ECC.

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2014 3:24 pm
by toronado455
mgiammarco wrote:I will use it as a server. If you keep it on 24h/24 after some time it hangs due to memory errors.
So, if I can choose, I will choose ECC.
Would it be possible to have a cron job that reboots periodically to clear out the RAM? Might be a cheap solution? ECC is only supported with server boards, right?

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 5:58 am
by FrankL
toronado455 wrote:
mgiammarco wrote:I will use it as a server. If you keep it on 24h/24 after some time it hangs due to memory errors.
So, if I can choose, I will choose ECC.
Would it be possible to have a cron job that reboots periodically to clear out the RAM? Might be a cheap solution? ECC is only supported with server boards, right?
Memory errors are caused by cosmic radiation, and are independent of a server's uptime.

Keep in mind that it's not necessarily that likely that you will get these memory errors with non-ECC RAM. It depends on your elevation, and some other factors (even how the RAM is oriented can have an effect according to a study that I read not too long ago, as it might increase or decrease the intersection volume with cosmic radiation).

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 12:33 pm
by toronado455
FrankL wrote:
toronado455 wrote:
mgiammarco wrote:I will use it as a server. If you keep it on 24h/24 after some time it hangs due to memory errors.
So, if I can choose, I will choose ECC.
Would it be possible to have a cron job that reboots periodically to clear out the RAM? Might be a cheap solution? ECC is only supported with server boards, right?
Memory errors are caused by cosmic radiation, and are independent of a server's uptime.

Keep in mind that it's not necessarily that likely that you will get these memory errors with non-ECC RAM. It depends on your elevation, and some other factors (even how the RAM is oriented can have an effect according to a study that I read not too long ago, as it might increase or decrease the intersection volume with cosmic radiation).
Wow, I didn't know that. Would a RAM heatsink made of lead help? :D

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 4:47 am
by MikeC
FYI, I've been using one of our sample NUCs as an audio PC (running JRiver) for ~3 months, and it is on 24/7, I don't put it to sleep, as the power draw is so minuscule (~9W). I think there's 8GB RAM in there, non ECC, which I think the NUC does not support anyway -- and it has never frozen.

I also run at least one or 2 other PCs 24/7 w/o sleep mode; they don't use ECC memory & they never freeze either.

Re: I need a prebuilt system around 10watts

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:12 am
by HFat
And I use non-ECC RAM in (unimportant) servers which never freeze.
There are also people on this forum who use their non-ECC computers for distributed computing... no doubt they rarely freeze.
But then I've also used non-ECC RAM in servers which have frozen (or worse) a good deal more often than more expensive servers. I have one long-retired server in mind in particular. The cause might not have been the RAM: when you're using unreliable hardware, many components can act up.

RAM errors do not cause freezing in particular. They can cause all sorts of problems.

What the study I've seen actually says is that the main cause of RAM errors is not cosmic rays (as many believe) but bad RAM modules. Something many of us have experienced I assume.
Some RAM modules go bad over time and ECC can both give warning (if your setup supports that) and keep the problem at bay, at least for a while.

Whatever the details, symptoms of many problems (not just RAM errors) are going to show up when your computer massages a lot of data one way or the other. Generally speaking, the more the computer does, the more likely it is you're going to experience rare types of errors.
And you're of course more likely to see errors if you are actively looking for them or if whatever you're doing can't handle small errors.
Having a computer up 24/7 does increase the likelyhood of some problems showing up of course (but mitigates other risks). But it's not the same thing as giving it a significant and sustained load.