High power, low power PC

Reaper

When I say "idle" I really mean minimal use of the CPU/GPU. I often work from home in which case all I'm doing is writing documents or Remote Desktop to a work PC. Neither demands much of the machine.

It just seems an expensive waste of power (in addition to the expense of buying the thing in the first place in the first place) to draw lots of current while doing mundane tasks. But I still want a high spec machine to play about with in the evening.

I want the best of both worlds, and the technology seems to be more or less there to achieve it. Shame there doesn't seem to be a PC manufacturer out there who is willing to save me the trouble of building it myself.

savemoney

Reaper the Nvidia GTX260 is a fast card I have it on my quad core running at 1920x1200 on a Dell 24" monitor I can play

Grid
Brothers in Arms - Hell's Highway
Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization

In full detail in the games above tried a few others too and it rocks

I got a really fast, very quiet system, almost silent and it isnt a kick !!!! Quad core 2.4 mhz (not even over clocked)

Reaper

Yes, savemoney. The setup you have sounds pretty much what I was after. I think I'll go for a Duo because they use less power than Quad and in practice sound just as fast for most tasks (though I'm sure that will change in the future as software is written to make better use of Quads).

Apart from that I'd copy your system. I'll go for an Asus GTX260 as you say that works better with the motherboard.

Did you build it yourself?

Sam_G_3

Poppycat wrote: »

... heat will be a major factor...

Just aim a big fan to the bottom of the laptop, problem solved.

:rotfl:

savemoney

Applications and some of the latest games do make use of multi cores, probably not as much as it could be, a dual core 2 would be fine for gaming

This is my setup. The case whilst big is very quite. Both the case and the cpu has a very large but low rev fan in it

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=14308055&postcount=47

I got the system from scan

There is some new Nvdia GTx260 cards coming out with have more cores

PROLIANT

Modern Pentium-Class CPU's and motherboards consume only what they need in terms of "power", the faster and harder a CPU operates and the associated hardware with it, the more current is drawn from the power supply unit hence "more power" is needed to drive the system, if your machine is only web browsing et al, then it will consume less "power" than if you were playing Halo or Soldier of fortune. Hardware like your hard-disk will take a constant current from the PSU as the motor spins at a constant speed, on the other hand your DVD writer will consume very little current until it starts reading/writing DVD's, so you could have a large 1KW PSU and if the PC only needs 350W of power then that is all it will use.

savemoney

Modern graphics cards consume a lot more power then before too when playing games, hence why they need direct link to the psu now and not drawn power from the motherboard.

The Asus board I have draws power down when not need to various components on the motherboard in several phases.

I went for a 620w branded psu as its much more critical now to have a steady and reliable power for the latest cards, plus its energy efficient and a module to keep cables to a minimum and keep case tidy and aid air flow, plus the case has cable management

Really pleased with my system and running Vista64, I have tried loads of games/applications many 32bit and it works fine its solid.

flashy

you could just look at the energy saving CPU's, i looked a while back at building a high spec PC, and settled with an AMD64 Dual Core, energy efficient 65w version, uses much less energy than the core 2 duo and is quicker in cpu charts.

The new motherboards use 4 pin fans, thermo controlled fans themselves manage the speed of the fan, and thus saves energy. The motherboard just has to support PWM Fan connectors.

Make sure you choose the right PSU, a £20 500w psu will be useless, spen at least £50 on a PSU or settle for a lesser power model, e.g. 400W.

Unelss your running lots of hard drives and fans, a 400W would be more than enough for the latest spec PC's with graphics even.

Reaper

flashy wrote: »

AMD64 Dual Core, energy efficient 65w version, uses much less energy than the core 2 duo and is quicker in cpu charts.

The problem is finding the figures. Finding TDP power figures is easy enough but they only tell you what happens when the component is under heavy load, they don't say how well it scales down. The E8600 I was wondering about is also rated at 65w TDP which is the same as the one you suggest. But how can I tell how well each one steps down?

Maybe I am on the wrong track and everything steps down well to very low power when not needed. But my guess is that they are not all equally good at it (* see below). For example the fact Asus feels the need to produce a board that specialises in reducing power when not required suggests to me that some motherboards are better at it than others. I assume the same applies to CPUs, graphics cards etc. The trouble is there seem to be no figures out there, just the largely irrelevant "TDP".

Ah well. I'll just have to make a best guess at it. I'll probably use savemoney's spec as a starting point (thanks for the link) and make adjustments from there.

In the meantime should any of you stumble across a chart showing minimum power use of PC components then do please let me know!

Thanks for your help everybody.

* EDIT: I have now found this chart showing considerable differences between graphics cards at idle. Now I just have to find charts for all the other components!

flashy

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/190861-10-power-consumption-chart

Some charts there, I went for the AMD64 because it was half the price of an Intel and it would run Virtual machines with ease. I used to be a firm believer that Intel were more powerful, but AMD wipe the floor with Intel in many ways nowadays, price and temperature for two.