1080P, RAID, PCI-E, low power: What mobo/cpu combo?

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:16 am

I want to buy a nice mobo and cpu with some other people. Unfortunately, we all have our demands on what the system will be able to do:
low power consumption when idle: less then 50watt, my goal is 35 watt or less (even if I have to undervolt/underclock the cpu).
Being able to play 1080P (HDCP encoded).
Gbit network
raid with 4 drives

We think it will be the Asus M3N78-CM with the X2 4050E or 4850E
But... I don't know the energy-consumption of this combo without hard- or optical drive...
Maybe you have some other suggestions?

defaultluser · Post by **defaultluser** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 9:51 pm

robnas wrote:I want to buy a nice mobo and cpu with some other people. Unfortunately, we all have our demands on what the system will be able to do:
low power consumption when idle: less then 50watt, my goal is 35 watt or less (even if I have to undervolt/underclock the cpu).
Being able to play 1080P (HDCP encoded).
Gbit network
raid with 4 drives

We think it will be the Asus M3N78-CM with the X2 4050E or 4850E
But... I don't know the energy-consumption of this combo without hard- or optical drive...
Maybe you have some other suggestions?

I think the AMD route is an excellent idea, especially since Intel's x4500HD has trouble with Bluray playback.

Well, here is a review of a Jetway 8200-based board:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/0 ... ini-itx/11

The video performance is good, but not as good as the 780G. The reviewer noted that high-quality filtering could not be turned on for the 8200 when playing back HD video, but you could turn them on with the 780G.

The downside of the 780G is, of course, about 10w higher power consumption. It's your choice which is more important to you.

Greg F. · Post by **Greg F.** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 10:48 pm

If I were going to do a HTPC today I would do it with this board and cpu:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131348

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116072

These are the ASUS P5N7A-VM 9300 chipset and the Intel Wolfdale E5200.

I just think that it is overall a better way to go today. IMHO. Actually I will wait for Gigabyte's or Biostar's version.
Isn't there an issue with 24fps working smoothly on the 780G?

defaultluser · Post by **defaultluser** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 7:07 am

Yeah, the above is not a bad suggestion at all. I actually went Wolfdale when I upgraded my system, but then again I wasn't held captive by the need for IGP.

The GeForce 9300 finally gives you a good IGP choice on Intel, and now that Wolfdale has dropped below $100, it's a good deal. The AMD system could be a little cheaper, but that's up to you.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 5:03 pm

35W is tough. It may be possible on AMD with heavy undervolting/clocking. It is possible on the intel board mini-itx DG45FC but you have to use commercial software for hardware acceleration since the spec is non-standard and closed. (But if you are playing HDCP-encoded material you will probably use one of the standard commercial players anyway.) On any matx intel board you won't get 35W.

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:56 am

35w shouldn't be that hard with an AMD system (we are talking idle, anyways), with a good PSU and a 2.5" HD. Just check the mobo-test articles on this site. So it is also easy with DG45FC? The way I understood it the mobo chipset makes sub-50w hard, but maybe I've not found all the references? Any links? as I am also looking for a low power solution.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 5:48 am

Tobias wrote:So it is also easy with DG45FC? The way I understood it the mobo chipset makes sub-50w hard, but maybe I've not found all the references? Any links? as I am also looking for a low power solution.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article869-page5.html
and with an E5200 you can shave off a few more watts.

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:09 am

If you want an efficient PSU at 50 W or less, you should use a PicoPSU. I don't think any PSU has better efficiency at power that low.

50 W should be possible with the Intel DG45FC motherboard and E5200 if you go the Intel route - of course depending on what your peripherals are (HDD, sound cards, etc). I think you will weigh in at slightly more than 50 W idle with the ASUS 9300 board with minimum hardware attached (of course this assumes a PicoPSU and only one HDD).

As for your wishes for raid with four drive. You'll find most 3.5" drives use about 8 W idle. So with four drive ideling, you're looking at 32 W for the drives alone. Plus if you want a discrete Raid controller, that's probably another 10-20 W (just a guess). I think either you have to decide to use less drive (perhaps only one larger 1 TB drive, no?) or you need to accept a higher wattage - probably 80 W idle or so, which is actually pretty sweet for a 4 drives raid configuration when you think about it.

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:03 pm

Raiding 2.5" harddrives will shave alot of power consumption. Then again, there is the question of how much space you really need:)

JoeWPgh · Post by **JoeWPgh** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:44 pm

Right now, I'm playing with J&W's 780 Mini ITX

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId ... 80G-SP128M

I'm running it, an AMD 4850e, 2 2.5 HDD's, 2 GB RAM and an LG 'Super Multi Blue' off a 120w Pico. Idle after Vista settles in is @36 ~ 38 watts. About double that when watching Blu-ray @ 1080p. I'm guessing most 780g boards would be similar.

What I need now is a case for it. I'm thinking of building a tiny box to hang it from the monitor's VESA screws and running the BD from an external eSATA box. But that's up in the air. I'm also thinking I might want to build something funky for it.

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 2:52 am

The/my main argument of choice is idle power.
It should be around 30/40 watts with this:
mobo/cpu, an OCZ Core 32GB hdd and 2GB of ram.
It has to play 1080P without struggles. I'm not very familier with playing HD-media, so maybe I'm a bit of a nutcase concerning that.
Raid is also required, also Gbit network (but that shouldn't be so difficult).

I also was thinking of a Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H, but there are the troubles.....
So it will be an 8200 chipset, an 9300 chipset, or a 780G chipset (until now).
But I really need references: Tests with low power rigs...

Point is: it will be used for at least 5 years. Every 10watt idle it uses extra, means â‚¬1,50 per month (or $2) extra. In 5 years, it is â‚¬90 (about $120).

I really appreciate your help, because good information or references are scarce....

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 4:06 am

Then you should check out the reviews of the 740G and 780G chipsets. These has been tried by various users as well with similar results.

If you are going to run the system 24/7 you really should concider using 2.5" drives as that will lower idle power draw alot, depending on how many drives you use.

Personally, I'd go with the Gigabyte 740G board which was tested by MikeC with a 4850e cpu for lowest possible idle power. It doesn't have the fancy inbuilt video decoder of the 780G chipset, but the cpu has more than enough power to decode efficiently and only draw a couple of watts more while doing it.

Oh, have you looked at the reports of stuttering when using some SSD drives as system drives? As I have understood it, the consensus is that a to small cache paired with the bad random write perfomance of these drives makes the entire system slow down. If I don't remember wrong, the OCZ Core was sadly affected by this as well as the V2. You should check this up, though, before you go ahead with this:)

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 8:46 am

robnas wrote: But I really need references: Tests with low power rigs

I don't have a RAID setup, but you can extrapolate from my actual running system to suit your config:

mobo: Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI (780G based, 1GbE NIC)
cpu: BE2350, underclocked and undervolted with CrystalCPUID
mem: 2x1GB
fans: 1 stock 70mm CPU fan; 1 80mm case fan
HDD: 3.5", 1TB WD Green Power
ODD: none
other USB devices: IR receiver, Bluetooth dongle, RF keyboard/mouse adapter
Idle power: 28W-29W typical. I've seen it as low as 26W.

If you use a 2.5" HDD you can probably lower the power consumption by another 3W or so.

Greg F. · Post by **Greg F.** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 10:48 am

Frank, does a system like this play the Spiderman Blueray trailer? Or the 50fmps opening of the Beijing Olympics that is found as a torrent?

I know some of these cooler underclocked systems seem to rise to the occasion, but I have never determined exactly how that is. I am guessing it has more to do with the software than hardware. ffds, CoreAVC and such. If you read the AVS forums it seems just about all systems have some type of problem or another. Even the 4670 card as been mentioned as having snyc problems with video/audio. I'll bet that is how it was set up.
The OP specifically mentioned 1080P. My 8200 will play BP trailers, but can have trouble with 1080i; Jaggies and stutters depending on the actual video. I night need a Toliman, but don't want to pay as much for that as Wolfdale. The 780G boards seem to be mentioned as having some problems with Blue Ray. I think I read where the 790G cured that to a large extent.
So my bottom line is: none of these seem perfect unless you are an expert at setting them up. And there is more to it than just Cool Runnings.

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 9:55 pm

Greg F. wrote:I know some of these cooler underclocked systems seem to rise to the occasion, but I have never determined exactly how that is. I am guessing it has more to do with the software than hardware.

The reason is very simple: The IGP does most of the heavy lifting. It also helps to have the right software to take advantage of the hardware acceleration. In other words, software-only decoders won't see any benefits at all.

For playback I use PowerDVD7 which supports ATI's Avivo HD hardware acceleration. To give you an idea of how much work is performed by the 780G's IGP (3200HD), here are some CPU utilization and power consumption figures for my system that's underclocked/undervolted to 1.0GHz idle and capped at 1.4GHz:

Blu-ray movie playback from disc using external USB BR drive:
- 1080p VC1 encoding: 25-40% CPU; 43W @ 1.4GHz
- 1080p H.264 encoding: 40-60% CPU; 44W @ 1.4Ghz

Video playback from file:
- 1080p H.264 enoding (high bitrate, ~30mbps): 8-20% CPU; 39W @ 1GHz (yes, 1GHz!)

Intel's G45 also puts in respectable performance when it works. But it has some issues due to immature BIOS and driver that make it less appealing than the 780G. See the G45 thread here if you want the details.

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:15 am

Does the Asus M3A78-EMH have less problems with HDMI than the Gigabyte 780G board? Or is that a specific 780G problem?

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 5:58 am

I never noticed any problem with HDMI. What sorts of problem is the Gigabyte having?

My system is connected to an HDMI 1.2 compliant HDTV. The output resolution is 1920x1080p. Both audio and video work perfectly. Since I can play Blu-Ray from disc, I'm guessing HDCP is working, too.

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:05 pm

frank2003 wrote:Since I can play Blu-Ray from disc, I'm guessing HDCP is working, too.

Doesn't have to...if HDCP isn't working the video-stream is downgraded to 720P. But probably it works.
this googled query gave some hits...

Until now my choice is (still) the Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI in combination with the AMD 4850e.

Anyone some arguments?

JoeWPgh · Post by **JoeWPgh** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:28 pm

robnas wrote:
frank2003 wrote:Since I can play Blu-Ray from disc, I'm guessing HDCP is working, too.
Doesn't have to...if HDCP isn't working the video-stream is downgraded to 720P. But probably it works.

Not necessarily. I've just had a couple 780g boards 'lose' their HDCP. Blu-Ray playback was blocked, not down-ressed by both PDVD and TMT. How did these boards lose their HDCP at the same time? I haven't a clue, as I had made no tweaks or adjustments. A Vista auto upgrade upset the apple cart, perhaps?

robnas wrote:Until now my choice is (still) the Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI in combination with the AMD 4850e.

Anyone some arguments?

I can't speak to the Asus, but I'm very happy with the 4850e.

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:20 pm

could i better get the 5600+ or the 4850e?
I can't find energy consumption when idle nor the effect of HT2000 instead of HT1000...

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 12:23 pm

I've ordered the Asus M3a78- EMH HDMI with an AMD 4850e, and an pico-psu (120 watt). Whene I have everything up and running, I will post some results.

robnas · Post by **robnas** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 2:30 am

It's long ago, but I still want to post results:

I chose the AMD 4850+, but with an Asus M3N78 Pro, because of better reviews.

Result:
At its lowest point, 30 watts idling. It runs Vista, the only problem I have now is buzzing of the 750GB GP disk from WD.
At random points it buzzes loudly, and making a sound as if it's spinning up. My system doesn't respond (properly) when doing that.

So I'm thinking of getting an Samsung F1 instead of this noisy fella...

1080P, RAID, PCI-E, low power: What mobo/cpu combo?

1080P, RAID, PCI-E, low power: What mobo/cpu combo?

Re: 1080P, RAID, PCI-E, low power: What mobo/cpu combo?