The Mac Mini challenge

[Gohan]

Hi, I currently use a 2009 mac mini with the following:

Core 2 Duo 2ghz
4Gb DDR-3
500GB 2.5â€

[hybrid2d4x4]

The new Mac Mini achieves its low power footprint by using exclusively laptop components (which is a half the reason it's so expensive relative to what you could assemble yourself to hit the same performance targets).

I would guess that the very best you can hope to achieve using a desktop cpu/mobo/ram is an idle in the high 20s/low 30s. So unless you're pretty flexible on the wattage numbers, your only way of matching the mini is to buy the cheapest laptop you can find that matches the specs, open it up, take out the mobo and put it into a "PC" chassis. Given the Apple markup, this is probably possible to do on a budget similar to the cost of the mini, plus you get a bonus screen left over that you can probably find other uses for...

[bonestonne]

ION?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/158764/h ... tform.html

[hybrid2d4x4]

^ I thought of that too, but the Atom and VIA don't come close to the C2D's

[QuietOC]

Now this idles between 18-22w, goes up to around 30w under load.

I’m looking to build a second windows system with a similar power footprint.

What I’m looking at is performance on a par with the mac mini. So it needs to be 2Ghz + with either a 9400 or HD 3200 IGP.

You need to find a power supply that is very efficient at 20 to 30W loads. This pretty much rules out all standard ATX power supplies. You will probably need a PicoPSU and a very efficient 12V power brick. Or just save the money to pay the power bills caused by the less efficient power supply.

The standard Geforce 9300/9400 chipset seems to idle around 20W all by itself. Most LGA775 desktop chipsets are >10W idle all by themselves, so Intel is probably out of the question.

My $150 Sempron LE-1250 / 740G system at 1.6GHz @ 0.784V is about 17W DC at idle (maybe a couple watts more at full load). An undervolted Athlon X2 wil require more power and you would need more like 2.4GHz Athlon X2 to match a 2GHz Core 2 Duo. Get an Athlon X2 4850e and do some Cool'n'Quiet tweaking with CrystalCPUID.

The other hard thing is finding a 780G motherboard that is efficient with low wattage CPUs. Ideally you would want a 2 phase VRM designed to only handle low wattage CPUs, but nearly all the 780G motherboards are now designed to handle 125W CPUs. If you don't need HD decoding, you could get by with a 760G motherboard.

[Trav1s]

I spent some time pondering this challenge yesterday and from my perspective, it will not happen.

If I went down the Intel road I would consider the e2200 or e5200. Not sure on the mobo to meet your requirements.

I wondered about the move to AMD...

[NeilBlanchard]

Meta-comment: you say that you are "New to the quite quiet PC thing" ?

[moontan]

have you tried windows vista or windows 7 on the new mac mini? and if so were you able to play and 1080p mkv's with hardware acceleration.

New mac mini looks like it good be a great windows htpc. I know its expensive but the nvidia ion's will be probably cost a lot more than they are guessing atm.