The X-400 efficiency at sandy bridge loads, while not great, still seems better than most. But as you say, the Kingwin is a step better again.

It is actually quite hard to get efficiency figures on ATX power supplies for the current standard idle operating points. I've just set up a i5-2400 on a H61M/U3S3 mobo, with WD green 2TB, and an Antec SU-380 power supply (in NSK-3400). It draws 37W on idle from the wall. The test review here only g...

I've just set up a system with i5-2500K, Asus P8Z68-V and Asus GTX560Ti. I've put in a Corsair HX650 and am happy with it. The noise from the PSU fan is low and audible if you put your head close to it, but less than the stock CPU cooler on the i5. I specced the HX650 with a mind to handling two gra...

Good question. I've always assumed the 3-pin motherboard headers worked by placing the PWM driver on the motherboard - essentially implementing a simple Buck converter. That would be cheaper to implement than D/A conversion and linear power amp. I'd be surprised if they were dumping much heat to reg...

Thanks for the input. I've ordered the H61 board to give it a go. That was a good tip about the G series pentiums too. It's a bit late for me though, as I've already ordered the i5, but looking at it now, the cheaper ones do look a good option. Interesting looking in that article how the idle power ...

I'm about to set up an i5-2400 PC and looking at using the ASRock H61M/U3S3, which is about half the price of a H67 board for me, and seems to have all the features. By virtue of the H61 chipset though, the SATA3 controller is an external chip. I'm wondering are there likely to be any drawbacks on t...

There's also something strange about their idle tests. They say that cool n quiet is enabled, but they are getting system draw of around 67 Watts?!!! I have the same motherboard and similar configuration, and am getting 49 Watts with the Athlon 4800 Brisbane. Surely that thermaltake power supply the...

tgdrums1990 wrote:Since I don't see a video card listed

Isn't that what the PX8800GTS is? (apart from a heater) People seem to be reporting the fans on them being fairly quiet, but the main challenge to expel all the heat when it's working.

It's going to depend a bit on usage. For silence and efficiency in a computer for most tasks like word processing & office applications, web browsing, media, programming, image editing and similar - the best bet at the moment is to go for integrated graphics and athlon processor (athlon for lower id...

The extra 4 pins are for voltages already on the 20pins for extra current capability. They are usually connected together together with the others, and so should work fine with a 20-pin supply. There is a possibility some boards may not, but I do have a M2A-VM running on a 20-pin supply.

It'd have to be in there with a chance. The Intel chipset is fairly heavy on power at idle, but with C2D doesn't peak very high under load. I'd estimate the idle usage at the power supply output at 9W per hard disk plus 35W for the rest - making about 70W. Then C2D idle/full load differential is 20 ...

The Brisbane and L2S C2D desktop chips themselves seem to draw about the same at idle (ie, virtually nothing) - but the issue really comes down to the motherboard consumption - and all evidence I've seen puts the C2D chipset consumption well above the athlon one. The M2A-VM is a fairly safe choice. ...

From an efficiency and heat point of view, I wouldn't expect much from a generic power supply. A system with an inefficient supply over an efficient one can draw 60W from the mains rather than 45W - as an example. Also, you have a 90nm athlon specified. That is the old series, and the newer 65nm ser...

For power supply I prefer to use a normal PSU (with fan). The 80+ power supplies look interesting, but usually they are only 80+ with a load of at least 20%. So my best guess is I should look for an 80+ PSU with a low power rating (since 20% of 380W is less than 20% of 600W)? The PSU is a big area ...

There are times where undervolting doesn't do a lot for you. Most PCs are idle-bound and the standard athlons idle at 1.1V / 1GHz under cool n quiet. There's a thread active at the moment that's saying the CPU itself draws aroud 4W at this point. (.95/1.1)^2=75% - meaning you save 1W - maybe 1.5 onc...

mcoleg wrote:johno, are there any way to actually record the power consumption as opposed to just eyeballing it like when using a kill-a-watt?

Some of the "watts up" meter models have data logging capability http://www.wattsupmeters.com/

The total system draw is a good measure, with the "watts up", "kill a watt" or similar. Though then you need to know the power supply efficiency to know what the PSU output is. The other approach is to use a clamp-type current meter on the psu output. It's a bit messy, and you have to measure each v...

Somehow it looks harder than I thought it would be. One thing that isn't clear from the linked posts is whether solution with just mountvol /D and hdparm -Y is enough to keep the drive stopped, or whether you still need to apply the other things to stop windows starting it up again.

Prior to the fan swap, was the Earthwatts significantly louder than the seasonic?

Even if the modern hardware isn't supported with Win NT, wouldn't you be able to emulate older hardware under the virtual machine? It is encouraging to see the desktop motherboards getting closer to the mobile boards. That's more the case with AMD than Intel though. There are still efficiency proble...

Rated. Means nothing. Current harddrives are rates 300 mbyte/s. No hard drive comes close to half that. And the guy suggesting mobile Intel chips were giving you good advice. I am the happy owner of a T2300 based machine and the CPU cooler is (do not laugh!) is a Zalman 3100... The reason it means ...

I need to figure out how to monitor temperatures in Linux. gkrellm The underlying tool is lm-sensors . sensors-detect scans for the needed modules, and the sensors command will display the current values. For automatic fan control, there is fancontrol , and the associated config utility pwmconfig ....

Maybe not the clear blue sky, but there still seems a considerable gap. In system power usage AMD has been well ahead at idle, but behind at full load. This vcore tweak should help the full-load side. It's also good PR, in that people seem to latch onto the maximum power specification and use that a...

If you want to keep your ide drives, the MSI k9vgm-v has 2 channels, and everything, including video and audio, works with Ubuntu 7.04. It has a passively cooled via chipset, and the northbridge feels just slightly warm to the touch. I need to figure out how to monitor temperatures in Linux. It has...

Watch those model codes. ADD and ADO also appear on the old 90nm chips. Check with: http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/ http://fab51.com/cpu/guide/opn-64-e.html Don't expect too much in the way of wonders with the new chips. The current series already drop down to 1.1V automatically at idle und...

The NeoHE is a better power supply - after all, it costs as much the whole NSK3400 including the SU380. Having said that, the efficiency is about the same (70% into 40W output), so heat loading is about the same too. The SU380 comes with a louder fan, which in a very quiet room you can hear up until...

Is that 3600+ Brisbane or Windsor? Brisbane. Same as the 4800+ I was surprised as I somehow expected the 3600 to use less power at idle, but on testing found it was a bit more. On looking at it, at idle the both run the same clock speed(1GHz) and vcore(1.1V), so they probably should generate the sa...

Wow. Lots of questions. As a reference, the system I've just set up is pretty much what El Jefe has just suggested: Athlon X2 4800+ Brisbane 65nm (DD code) ASUS M2A-VM HDMI motherboard (onboard DVI graphics) 2GB 667 Kingston RAM Pioneer 212 SATA DVD-RW WD3200AAKS 320GB SATA hard disk Antec NSK-3400 ...

yes, 250W is the whole system, but contrast that against the typical 50W to 60W idle for a modern mid-range system out of commodity parts with onboard graphics (or 20W for a laptop). Then add in a extra graphics card and a few hard disks, and there's a whole lot more cooling that has to happen. With...

I just saw some power consumption figures on that a system with that motherboard in it at http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2954 and 250 Watts idle! That's a lot of power to try and get out of the case in a quiet manner. While there's a lot of things you can do to help, have you explored ...