Intel DH55TC vs. MSI H55M-E33 for lowest power consumption?

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XS Janus
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Intel DH55TC vs. MSI H55M-E33 for lowest power consumption?

Post by XS Janus » Sun Feb 07, 2010 7:53 am

Hi guys! I would appreciate any help you could offer on this matter!
I am not set on these two boards, and am opened to other suggestions. :)
The mobos are indended for a NAS server, I will build in the near future.

I see these two boards have the lowest power consumption!
Intel having a slight advantage.

What i'm curios is since MSI has underclocking and undervolting abilities in bios could that board go even lower than Intel board?
Anand said: "MSI continues in its dominance of idle/light load power saving performance by using buck controllers that support low switching speeds and allow phases to be turned off in light load conditions."

What are the extra features MSI offes that would make me chose it!

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3732&p=8
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... id=6&pg=12

MtnHermit
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Post by MtnHermit » Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:27 am

XS Janus wrote:What i'm curios is since MSI has underclocking and undervolting abilities in bios could that board go even lower than Intel board?
Unlikely. On my Gigabyte H55 MB I set the CPU voltage to 1.0V from the stock 1.2+V and got no power savings. It was explained to me that the Core i's all have sophisticated internal power saving circuitry (over 1-million transistors) such that undervolting is no longer useful. The CPU does that all internally and automatically.
Anand said: "MSI continues in its dominance of idle/light load power saving performance by using buck controllers that support low switching speeds and allow phases to be turned off in light load conditions."
I hadn't read that because I'd already purchased my Gigabyte H55 MB. I knew that voltage regulation was the root cause of Gigabyte's power draw, Anand just clarified the what and how.
What are the extra features MSI offes that would make me chose it!
Over clocking for sure, also voltage control.

If power savings is your goal, two things:
1. Don't ignore the PSU 80+ as a minimum
2. Consider an Atom D510, significant power savings relative to Core i, and much cheaper, $75 for the CPU and MB.

XS Janus
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Post by XS Janus » Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:23 am

Thanks for your answer!

Have you tried lowering the voltages on the mobo not concerning CPU?
I remember saving quite a bit on may Gigabyte G43 that way!
:D

tay
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Post by tay » Mon Feb 22, 2010 7:21 pm

I too am thinking of upgrading between the MSI and Intel H55 boards. If I got the intel board, I would be limited in overclocking, but it would be more stable. I am wondering if the improved stability is worth giving up the OC. It also is my hunch that the intel board supports hdmi bitstreaming (dont need) and possibly vt-d (with i5-6xx) which i may want in the future.

Gohan
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Post by Gohan » Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:49 am

I have the MSI E33 with a Core i3 530. Undervolting is limited to 1.1v on this board. That still allowed me to overclock to 3.5ghz @ 1.1v and still save 12w under load.

Not great, but worth having.

Fungi
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Post by Fungi » Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:14 am

Of power consumption reports of the i3 530/H55 combo systems I've seen, most of them perform excellent with MSI and Intel leading the pack. It varies depending on what you disable and unplug, but it looks like Intel has the *slight* advantage with power.

MtnHermit
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Post by MtnHermit » Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:50 am

Gohan wrote:I have the MSI E33 with a Core i3 530. Undervolting is limited to 1.1v on this board. That still allowed me to overclock to 3.5ghz @ 1.1v and still save 12w under load.
Did you see any idle power savings at 1.1v? On my Gigabyte H55 MB I could go a low as I wanted, except unstable at 0.975v and no idle power savings between 1.2v to 1.0v.

Tom's has a new 25W review posted today, they used a MSI MB too.

tay
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Post by tay » Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:08 pm

Gohan wrote:I have the MSI E33 with a Core i3 530. Undervolting is limited to 1.1v on this board. That still allowed me to overclock to 3.5ghz @ 1.1v and still save 12w under load.

Not great, but worth having.
Thanks for the info. How is the stability, STR/S3 sleep, USB, video, etc.

Gohan
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Post by Gohan » Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:20 pm

MtnHermit wrote:
Gohan wrote:I have the MSI E33 with a Core i3 530. Undervolting is limited to 1.1v on this board. That still allowed me to overclock to 3.5ghz @ 1.1v and still save 12w under load.
Did you see any idle power savings at 1.1v? On my Gigabyte H55 MB I could go a low as I wanted, except unstable at 0.975v and no idle power savings between 1.2v to 1.0v.

Tom's has a new 25W review posted today, they used a MSI MB too.
no idle savings as I still have EIST enabled

Gohan
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Post by Gohan » Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:23 pm

tay wrote:
Gohan wrote:I have the MSI E33 with a Core i3 530. Undervolting is limited to 1.1v on this board. That still allowed me to overclock to 3.5ghz @ 1.1v and still save 12w under load.

Not great, but worth having.
Thanks for the info. How is the stability, STR/S3 sleep, USB, video, etc.
General stability seem fine. I don't however use any of the ACPI suspend features so couldn't comment on the stability aspect.

truckid
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Wake from S3 bug

Post by truckid » Tue Mar 02, 2010 4:51 am

Was about to purchase the MSI H55M-E33 myself, but have read about issues with the MB not being able to wake from S3 Sleep. May be worth waiting for a Bios fix.

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic ... msg1018306

tay
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Re: Wake from S3 bug

Post by tay » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:58 pm

Thanks for the info, that board is out as I need proper S3 suspend. I can't believe after 10 years, they still don't get this right. I hear that the Gigabyte boards have problems with AHCI mode, so those 2 brands are out.
truckid wrote:Was about to purchase the MSI H55M-E33 myself, but have read about issues with the MB not being able to wake from S3 Sleep. May be worth waiting for a Bios fix.

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic ... msg1018306

Bobert
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Post by Bobert » Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:28 pm

I put together MSI H55M-E33 + i3 530 with 4GB (2x2GB) 1.5v rated Corsair RAM, oldish NEC DVD-RW drive (IDE), Samsung EcoGreen 1TB, and my idle power consumption with an overpowered VX450 Corsair PSU was consistently 32w. When I would step away for 5 minutes or so it would dip to 31w and occasionally 30w. Everything is stock with zero tweaking. I ended up RMAing the board because of a video issue so I can't tinker with it at this moment, however I'm pleased with the power consumption from initial testing. I think with a modded Dell RM112 PSU power consumption should dip easily into the mid 20's (if the PSU ends up being compatible). With an SSD I suppose low 20's will be no problem. BTW S3 didn't seem to be an issue using Win7 Ultimate, and the fan control is excellent with this board for anyone wondering. Using the latest Speedfan it worked like a charm.

tirannosaurorex
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Post by tirannosaurorex » Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:29 am

Good morning
I write from Italy and translation with google
Very interesting.
I am also interested in saving energy

ntavlas
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Post by ntavlas » Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:15 am

Msi have made some very efficient boards lately consistently outperforming Asus, Gigabyte etc. Intel still has the edge though, their no frills approach pays off in this regard. For a NAS the Intel board makes more sense IMO (less is more).

quest_for_silence
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Post by quest_for_silence » Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:34 am

tirannosaurorex wrote:Good morning
I write from Italy and translation with google
Very interesting.
I am also interested in saving energy

OT: for italians only

Benvenuto su SPCR.

Se posso, due piccole note soltanto.

Se capisci l'inglese per come - con l'ausilio di GTraduttore - lo scrivi, personalmente ho qualche timore che tu possa aver equivocato questo confronto di opinioni sulle Intel DH55TC ed MSI H55M-E33.

Se invece intendevi solo fare una presentazione, hai purtroppo sbagliato il posto dove farla: forse dovresti prestare maggiore attenzione circa l'uso corretto dei webforum, specie quelli in lingua inglese, per non andare palesemente in off topic, peggiorando così il rateo s/r dei thread.

In ogni caso, come detto in principio, benvenuto, e grazie della tua pazienza.

Ciao, Luca

/OT

tutu
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Post by tutu » Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:32 am

Old topic I know - but I read in a review the Intel board was due a BIOS update to add overclocking support. Did they ever do this and does it include undervolt/underclock?

Also, how far can you underclock/undervolt the MSI?

tutu
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Post by tutu » Wed Aug 18, 2010 1:40 am

How is the DH57DD for power consumption in comparison to DH55?

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/m ... erview.htm

piglover
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Post by piglover » Sun Aug 22, 2010 11:10 am

tutu wrote:How is the DH57DD for power consumption in comparison to DH55?

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/m ... erview.htm
In theory, it shouldn't be much different at all. Maybe 1W more tops for the differences in the chipset. Other than the chipset the DH57DD and two mATX DH55s are pretty much identical. Intel didn't even choose to expose the H57s extra PCIe lanes on the DH57DD (would have been nice to make one of the PCIe x1 slots an x4 - the chipset certainly supports it).

I have one sitting on my bench right now. DH57DD, G6950 CPU, big Shuriken w/fan, 8GB Corsair 1333 DDR3 memory, Seagate Momentus 500GB laptop drive, PicoPSU160 with the 12.5A power brick, Win7 ultimate. Disabled the useless stuff in the Bios - Com ports and the 1394 controller. Measured at the wall using Kill-a-watt: 20W idle, 27-32W under light desktop load, 69W stress test using prime95.

tutu
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Post by tutu » Sun Aug 29, 2010 7:20 am

Did you ever try OC the DH57DD or DH55? You can adjust the BCLK only - but will that OC the GPU as well or will it be OK with an external GPU?

I'm not looking for a major OC - a i3 at about 3.5GHz would be nice.

I wouldn't mind either the Intel or the MSI - but I would like the lowest idle with OC ability possible?

Out of interest - can either the Intel or MSI support 1.25v ddr3?

I am leaning towards the MSI now. I did get ready to order the DH57DD but it's out of stock everywhere!!!

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