My impossible build-small, quiet, low power, cheap, powerful

[bryanchicken]

Long time lurker/reader and 1st time poster here i'm afraid

I've read loads of the threads here on low wattage systems and i want to have a crack, but i'd like some advice please!

I'll start with the stuff i've already got. I want to make this build fairly cheap (£150 or less) so re-using this lot is a must i think:
PicoPSU+power brick
DDR3 RAM (up to 8gb if i move it around from other systems)
Storage (2.5" HDD or 32gb SSD available if i move hardware around. Probably go with the HDD tbh)
Case - M350 itx case.

Now, what i would like to achieve is a low idle power system. I have some software i wrote myself that acts as a wifi remote and it needs to be available all the time.
As that is a requirement i will also merge in PVR functionality (usb tuner which i already have, ignore for purposes of wattage) and downloader. I'm an eternal tinkerer though, so i want something with a decent amount of power (eg, not atom or zacate) as no doubt in 2 months time i'll have another usage scenario.
I'll probably be running a v. basic linux with virtualbox on top. I like this setup for various reasons which i won't go into here as i'm already waffling

First choice motherboard was the DH61DL. Intel clearly has the best power consumption and at circa £60 its a decent price too. However, nowhere (reputable) seems to have it in stock. Has it been discontinued?
So now i'm torn between the DH67CF (which is the board from the famous missingremote 14.5W system) and the MSI H61I-E35.
How different are my idle wattages likely be with these 2? Does the MSI open up any settings to reduce wattage over the Intel?
The MSI is about £30 cheaper. (I'm aware that i'm unlikely to ever make that money back in power savings btw)

Next is the CPU. From what i've read most the CPUs seem to idle about the same. However i want to go with one of the T versions as its in a small case and cooling will be difficult.
So, G630T vs 2100T vs 2120T? Is the added power of the i3 chips worth about £50?

It seems the 2100T comes with a smaller stock cooler. Is that also true for the 630T? That could be useful in the case i have, especially if i have any aspirations of using the HDD bracket. What is its noise like? I'm impressed by the stock cooler i got with my 1156 i3 if thats any use.
I'm sure i can rig up something regarding mounting my storage, but i'd rather not if possible.


Thanks for reading my essay, and thanks in advance for the advice!

[HFat]

How is it possible to tell you if such and such CPU is worth spending extra when you have no idea why you'd want it? Baseless opinions is all you'll get.
For what that's worth, the i3 CPUs give you HT and that transcoding feature among other things.

So now i'm torn between the DH67CF (which is the board from the famous missingremote 14.5W system) and the MSI H61I-E35.

The MSI could be nice but the Intel is a known quantity (to some extent anyway - was that measurement reliable?). 14.5W idle is nothing special by the way. Did they use an relatively inefficient power supply? At least it's not a bad power consumption.

So, G630T vs 2100T vs 2120T? Is the added power of the i3 chips worth about £50?

The T version don't seem to add a lot of value actually. Also see if the G5xx CPUs are available at a good price in your locale. I think there's a T version.

It seems the 2100T comes with a smaller stock cooler. Is that also true for the 630T?

Isn't it the G620T? Whatever. I bought one and it came with the low-profile cooler.

That cooler was OK (not SPCR-quiet) at low speeds but very loud at high speed. And the CPU is capable of getting quite hot.
So unless you can find a good aftermarket cooler that fits your case, the only point in spending for a CPU faster than the most basic dual-core is to get bursts of somewhat higher performance. That or the transcoding feature (but is it supported on Linux?). Because at continuous load, the stock fan will have to get very loud if you don't underclock.

Zacate and Atom are the most powerful CPUs with which you can get an SPCR-quiet system if you use the stock heatsink.
And Atom is so far as I know the only reasonable CPU that can possibly give you moderate temperatures in a M350 with an internal 2.5''.

[Abula]

First choice motherboard was the DH61DL. Intel clearly has the best power consumption and at circa £60 its a decent price too. However, nowhere (reputable) seems to have it in stock. Has it been discontinued?

I dont think its being discontinued right now, you can still find it on amazon, but maybe around where you live they might be out of stock. I build my mini mi build (chekc sig) around this mobo, really been good, i had no issues whatsoever, but i have read some reviews about it being picky with memory, so be careful and buy something that already been used on it. Another mobo to research is the DH61AG, you will probably waiste your picoPSU, but its another option you could build around, also has different layout that might or not be better for your M350.

So now i'm torn between the DH67CF (which is the board from the famous missingremote 14.5W system) and the MSI H61I-E35
The MSI is about £30 cheaper. (I'm aware that i'm unlikely to ever make that money back in power savings btw)

I would go intel, as you have my build 14W idle, and missing remote build 14.5W idle, so you can expect similar results. I have seen good comments about MSI power efficiency, but i yet to build on one to see how it compares to intel, but if you do pls post your results so we can see how it measures to intels mobos.

Next is the CPU. From what i've read most the CPUs seem to idle about the same. However i want to go with one of the T versions as its in a small case and cooling will be difficult.
So, G630T vs 2100T vs 2120T? Is the added power of the i3 chips worth about £50?

The only reason that i see for going with the T versions is for the lower profile cooler, all the T models have less tall cooler, that said, idk if its low enough for you to use the hdd bracket on the m350, as the new mobos have the cpu located next to pci bracket, making the cpu cooler not being fully to either edge, and the hdds brackets are placed on either side of he case with the edges of the fan holder being really close. Also not sure how will any SB cpu will manage on the cpu cooler alone on M350, i wanted to try but at the end to many things steer me away from the M350.

[HFat]

The non-T G620 may also come with the low-profile cooler actually. I don't know but it's what someone said if I recall correctly. Maybe all the Pentiums and Celerons have the low-profile cooler.

[bryanchicken]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I know the m350 will be a challenge, but i've already got it from a previous ion board build which broke.

I think I can rig the hdd without the bracket. If neither stock coolers fit with it then I'll consider a non-T. I'll need to find that out.

Yep, did mean 620t, but 630t is the same price anyway. I'll have a search for the 5xx series, thanks for the tip.

One other thing, I noticed on cpubenchmarks.net that the 2120t is slower than the 2100t. Is that right?

What sort of things do you use your 620t for HFat (if you don't mind me asking)? It was the lack of hyper threading when using VMs I was concerned about.

Thanks again

[HFat]

One other thing, I noticed on cpubenchmarks.net that the 2120t is slower than the 2100t. Is that right?

No. Random benchmarks are iffy at best.

What sort of things do you use your 620t for HFat (if you don't mind me asking)? It was the lack of hyper threading when using VMs I was concerned about.

It wasn't for my own use. I have no use for such a powerful CPU.
I'm writing this on a VM without HT. HT isn't particularly needed for VMs. I used VMs on single-cores without HT back in the day. There is a small performance gain in assigning cores to VMs in some cases but I don't think it works with HT's "virtual cores".

[bryanchicken]

Thanks HFat, much obliged.

Need to make some decisions now. If i go with the MSI i'll let you all know what sort of power usage i get. If i can get an intel for a decent price though i'll probably go down that route.

[bryanchicken]

Spent a bit more than I'd planned and went for the dh67cf and a 2120 (non-T).
The stock heatsink is actually pretty small, it's the fan and fan 'cage' that makes up the bulk of it. For anyone else that happens across this page it does not fit in the m350 with the HDD bracket.
Idling at 16W (my power meter doesn't do decimal places) which drops to 15W when the monitor is switched off.
That's with an onyx 32gb ssd (the cheapest one), 2x4gb ram.

Just gotta sort the heatsink. Might leave it in it's temporary state (HDD on the outside) til after Xmas and the get another case.

Installed ubuntu and it idled at 25W, 10W more than windows. Not very good, no wonder my laptops battery doesn't last long

[Vicotnik]

Installed ubuntu and it idled at 25W, 10W more than windows. Not very good, no wonder my laptops battery doesn't last long

I get slightly lower power consumption under Linux compared to Windows with my DH67CF system. On the system I was using before this one it was the other way around.

[bryanchicken]

That is strange.
What linux distro are you using and which version?
I installed ubuntu 11.10. I didn't faff around with any settings.

[Vicotnik]

The latest Xubuntu, upgraded from 11.04. Haven't done anything special with the settings. Hardware idle states are strange indeed, seems to be a lot of stuff like hardware X supports a low power state but reports to the OS that it doesn't, resulting in that one OS just forces it anyway, the other one not.

[bryanchicken]

had a request about how fitting cooler/bracket in this case and said i'd upload some photos. Sorry about the quality, phone camera i'm afraid. Hopefully you can get an idea from them anyway.

I believe this to be the non-low profile stock 1155 cooler btw.

So this shows the top view, just so you can see how much area the stock cooler takes up:


You can see with the HDD bracket in place that any cooler on this motherboard will need to be low enough to go underneath as there is an overlap:



As you can see, its a tight fit even without the bracket. The case lid does go on though



Side view of the bracket. It doesn't actually go on with the stock cooler in place, but its not far off. With this in mind i think if you wanted to use the bracket with a HDD (usually 9.5mm thick) then you'd need a cooler that was 11mm (at least) lower than the stock cooler to even have a chance:



So, up until now it had been sitting on my desk with the sata cables dangling out the top. As a regular HDD is not going to fit with that cooler i whacked a 32gb usb stick in the front ports and installed Ubuntu on it (you can't install windows on usb, easily). That makes for a very tidy and small system. Its not overly noisy, but its not "SPCR quiet" either.
I'm waiting for a 2.5" esata enclosure to arrive. I will experiment to see if i can mount it externally. I've got the wall mount ears on my M350 and that actually gives me some clearance underneath.

Oh, i sorted the Ubuntu power draw problem too. It turns out there is a bug in the kernel at the moment for sandybridge. I added this as a grub command line argument:
i915.i915_enable_rc6=1
That has sorted my power consumption, now down to 15W in Ubuntu. It comes with a warning of "possible graphical glitches" but i haven't seen any yet. This should be fixed in the next Ubuntu in april.


The machine is still out an accessible so if you want any other pics or have any questions then let me know!

Cheers,

[bryanchicken]

One thing that might also be of interest for other people considering this combination of motherboard and case:
The cable to connect the power switch to the motherboard header is not long enough. Luckily i sourced a separate cable from a an old case.

[Pappnaas]

Check this one out:

http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/cp ... ooler.html

i think it might work and be cheaper than another case.

[bryanchicken]

yep, seen that cooler before, but it don't think its short enough to get the bracket+hdd in still

Cheers

[ntavlas]

How about the Silverstone nt07?
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.p ... 62&area=en

I think there should be enough clearance for the hdd with this one. Noise at load could be an issue though it should be smoother than the stock fan.

reviewed here (lga775 version): http://www.silentpcreview.com/article976-page2.html

[Lucien]

The non-T G620 may also come with the low-profile cooler actually. I don't know but it's what someone said if I recall correctly. Maybe all the Pentiums and Celerons have the low-profile cooler.

I recently bought a G620 (non-T) for a project, it doesn't come with the M350-friendly low-profile cooler. Luckily I didn't need one then.

I've seen posts on other forums that indicated the G620T and 2100T do come with the low-profile cooler, but I can't confirm that personally.

Also, it's too late for the OP, but this thread from Hardforum shows someone building a low-profile into a M350.

[Abula]

The non-T G620 may also come with the low-profile cooler actually. I don't know but it's what someone said if I recall correctly. Maybe all the Pentiums and Celerons have the low-profile cooler.

I recently bought a G620 (non-T) for a project, it doesn't come with the M350-friendly low-profile cooler. Luckily I didn't need one then.

I've seen posts on other forums that indicated the G620T and 2100T do come with the low-profile cooler, but I can't confirm that personally.

Also, it's too late for the OP, but this thread from Hardforum shows someone building a low-profile into a M350.

Good find and thanks for sharing, i had my doubts the hdd bracket would clear the intel cpu cooler, but seems the low profile intels T version can...

[HFat]

I've seen posts on other forums that indicated the G620T and 2100T do come with the low-profile cooler, but I can't confirm that personally.

I can confirm the G620T comes with the low-profile cooler.
Sorry for the confusion about the non-T heatsink and thanks for setting that straight.

[Lucien]

It's good to get all this information together. Certainly helpful given how scarce info on "low end" parts is on the web.

Some other news, I read somewhere that Intel is ending (ended?) orders for the G620 and G620T this month. The article attributed this to the G630 and G630T.