Interesting read

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:19 am

Okay, saw this on ZD net. It's amazing to me how many "professionals" just dont' get it.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=755

First off, he's using 2 completely different motherboards, different integrated graphics. Second, he neglects to realize to truely achieve his goal of low power, he should use a notbook hard drive. Third: ever think of a pico psu?

He's really into some stuff he doesn't understand.

Interesting premise I suppose.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:46 am

This actually seems reasonable to me, mostly because it wasnt written by some cock-jockey over at Toms.

He wasnt trying to make the lowest power PC using common components, he was "trying to build the ultimate low-power PC using commodity components". "Ultimate" does not include laptop drives, even 7200rpm ones get thrashed performance wise, and he wasnt going to use an even lower powered single core CPU.

Likewise a PICO PSU is hardly commodity, and not cost effective for years, due to the high cost.

My only complaint is a pretty big one, it doesnt look like he actually turned CnQ on, otherwise his Idle power usage on the AMD system should be about 45W (at a guess).

Andy

Sizzle · Post by **Sizzle** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:14 am

andyb wrote:"Ultimate" does not include laptop drives, even 7200rpm ones get thrashed performance wise, and he wasnt going to use an even lower powered single core CPU.

Andy

The new 7K200 series Hitachi's are about as fast as the last gen 500 and 250 gig 3.5 drives, nothing to scoff at.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:54 pm

andyb wrote: Likewise a PICO PSU is hardly commodity, and not cost effective for years, due to the high cost.

If you can get your max draw under 80W, the appropriate PicoPSU solution is < $100. Isn't that the same price as a good ATX PSU? PicoPSU may not be priced well on a per Watt basis, but it is reasonably priced overall. It's one of things that is either useful to you or it isn't -- if it is, the price is quite reasonable. I certainly wouldn't buy one just to save 5W, but if I wanted SFF too, the overall solution would be compelling.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:54 am

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSearch ... owAll=true

The SS S12-330W would land in at $90 including taxes, not a lot really, but if you need the extra cooling the PSU offers, or are using the included "quiet" fan as the only cooling fan in the system this becomes quite a good deal, but at the cost of space.

When I have looked at a PICO PSU + 120W Power brick my figure was far higher, Â£62 inc VAT if you only need 80W. If price wasnt a factor then the PICO PSU system could be really good for many users, but as efficiency and cool running (external power brick) are the advantages and I dont know what efficiency power brick I would end up with I dont know how much (if any) power I would be saving.

Andy

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:07 am

if it's all about power saving the Antec Earthwatts is even cheaper and v. efficient at low loads.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 6:22 am

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSearch ... owAll=true

Cheaper at Â£30 inc vat for the 380W version, never took the info in when I read the review though, will have to re-read it.

Andy

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:04 pm

andyb wrote:http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?strSearch ... owAll=true

The SS S12-330W would land in at $90 including taxes, not a lot really, but if you need the extra cooling the PSU offers, or are using the included "quiet" fan as the only cooling fan in the system this becomes quite a good deal, but at the cost of space.

When I have looked at a PICO PSU + 120W Power brick my figure was far higher, Â£62 inc VAT if you only need 80W. If price wasnt a factor then the PICO PSU system could be really good for many users, but as efficiency and cool running (external power brick) are the advantages and I dont know what efficiency power brick I would end up with I dont know how much (if any) power I would be saving.

Andy

Well, this is why geography remains pertinent to the relevance of an answer. PicoPSU + 6.6A (~80W) brick is < $80 from mini-box.com. Going up to a 100W brick only adds $10, but that brick is not fanless. Meanwhile, Newegg sells what looks like a rebranded version of the Pico + 100W brick combo for $80. Clearly, there is no economic disincentive to use a PIco for those of us in the US. Anyway, the combined efficiency of Pico + brick should be 85% or better (95% for Pico X something similar for the brick). That's at least 10% better than most good ATX PSU for applications where the draw is < 80W (this is very far from the utilization sweet spot of a 300+W PSU). So, what does 10% get you when the DC draw is so low? Not much, I'd say. Maybe 10W, but probably more like 5W. I wouldn't buy the Pico just to save 5W, but like I said; the real advantage is the form factor, not the power savings.

seemingly.random · Post by **seemingly.random** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 8:46 pm

Curious about this author's results.

I have a pc with similar components - abit nf-m2, amd5600, samsung500, dvd, 2-1gb ddr2-800 (the author doesn't specify the size), Seasonic300II - and get 43w at idle, 115 load using a kill-a-watt.

Although a little different, I also tested a gigabyte G965 (draws more w according to the author), e6600, seagate320, dvd, 2-1gb 800 ddr2, Earthwatts380 build and recorded 56w/92w.

Both were at 'stock' freq. settings, have three case fans and use the AC FreezerPro64 hst.

First exposure to this author but it does seem that he leans towards Intel which in itself is not a problem but fudgy results are.

Didn't realize that there was a 'magic 50w marker'.

But then maybe I'm parsing unnecessarily.

andyb wrote:it doesnt look like he actually turned CnQ on,

I tried it without CnQ and the idle usage was 15w higher.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:46 pm

jaganath wrote:if it's all about power saving the Antec Earthwatts is even cheaper and v. efficient at low loads.

And the Fortran Green is even a bit less $ and about equal efficiency.

The Pico Psu may eventually have competition at under $60...a price point where it can sell some volume.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:40 am

If he is trying to get under 50W, why is he not using a notebook HD? I found ~8-10 drop by moving to a notebook hard drive. Slightly slower performance, but since the system is idle 95% of the day, it was no big deal. I have configured from 42W - 47W depending on the config of the week.

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 11:09 am

Why isn't he using a MoDT system? A T7600-based system will beat the pants off of anything he suggested.

Hell, if he doesn't care about 64-bit, he probably could have gone with a (much cheaper) T2500 Core Duo.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 6:11 pm

derekva wrote:Why isn't he using a MoDT system?

Itâ€™s questionable whether MODT even classifies as a commodity part these days due to limited availability.

What stood out for me was how impressive the G0 C2D undervolted; 63W under load at 2GHz 1.0V is excellent.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:52 am

wow, my 2.5" drives in a desktop system are BEYOND ultimate. who knew?

You dont seriously believe what you wrote do you? its not that far of a stretch to use mobile components for a low draw system, since thats what mobile componenets are designed for, low power application.

Any hard drive, be it a 15k 3.5" scsi, or a 5400rpm 2.5" sata notebook drive have horrible latency compared to the rest of the system. They are both bad, and you want to optimize your system so they are swapped to as rarely as possible.

You make a system with 128mb of ram on winxp, so that you can isolate the hard drives to be accessed as much as possible, and i guarentee you it will be unbearably slow no matter what hard drive you use.

Hard drive performance is a mute point. ALL hard drive performance sucks ass. The things a notebook hard drive does have on a desktop drive though is less vibration, less noise, less heat, less power consumption. All of which are way more important than how fast they are.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 4:22 am

I couldn't agree more. I know I took a performance hit moving from 7200RPM 3.5" to 5400RPM 2.5", but the power savings was worth it. It was almost a 20% reduction in power consumption at idle (~52W to ~42W).

I notice the difference when I boot up, but once windows loads, with 2GB of memory the system is pretty snappy.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:38 am

I think the price is the heated point to the MODT concept. 2.5' small capacity HDDs are cheap, so it's ok for me. But mobile CPUs & Mainboards are usually expensive, difficult to get one. Besides, nowadays desktop CPUs & MBs are easier to undervolt than before. In fact, i've assembled an AMD AM2 3000+ for P2P usage, with 3 3.5' HDDs. CPU undervolted to 1G @ 0.85V, I got a decent idle power draw, 50W. Minus 2 HDDs, I guess it's something between 35W and 40W.

I guess Desktop CPU & MB plus Mobile HDD, we can get a economical, power-saving system.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 10:07 am

Re: notebook hard drives
You can get below 50W idle using a regular desktop hard drive with a fast system albeit with integrated graphics.
If the aim is 50W idle, as it is in the article, you may as well use a regular drive for the cost and performance and reliability. Unless you want discrete graphics; then you may have to use a notebook drive to stay within 50W although even then you might just make it with a regular drive.

Of course notebook drives are easier to silence but silence wasn't the aim of the article. And these days you can make regular 3.5" drives very quiet.

Interesting read

Interesting read

For that matter...