Just thought I'd post this, I'm excited with my new CPU / motherboard combo that I got Saturday.

Microcenter B&M 60 miles from my house- I made a prigrimage there to get some deals. I got an i5-2400 for $149.99 and a MSI H67MA-E45 for $85 with a coupon + I get a $10 MIR. For all this cheapness it's still wicked fast.

I haven't done exhaustive testing yet because I'm still waiting to get my CPU cooler situation figured out.

In the meanwhile, look at these power consumption numbers. System in signature...
Testing was done with 4x runs of Prime95 blend torture test, power read by P3 kill-a-watt
*numbers not adjusted for power supply efficiency*

i5-750, Gigabyte H55 mATX motherboard, slightly undervolted CPU, DDR3 @ 1.4V
61W idle, 151W load

i5-2400, MSI H67MA-E45 motherboard, stock CPU voltage, DDR3 @ 1.5V
57W idle, 134 load

i5-2400, MSI H67MA-E45 , CPU @ 1.085V, DDR3 @ 1.4V
57W idle, 104 load

Wow! That's pretty impressive to me. Once I get my CPU cooler situation figured out I will push the limits of undervolting to see how far I can go.

wow. that is quite impressive.

I picked up the same MSI H67MA-E45 board from MC using the coupon. I chose the board because of price, and it had most of the connectivity I wanted (including firewire). Haven't found many reviews of the board yet, in fact only found one somewhat in-depth review in Italian, of which Google Translate was able to make partial sense.

I will be interested to hear any additional info as you work on your build. I am building my first HTPC (play DVDs, store/play movies, Netflix, online content, family PC) with this MSI board, intended for reasonable budget build. Currently agonizing a bit over i3 2100 (HD 2000 graphics) vs. i5 2500k (HD 3000 graphics). Considering I already have a powerful i7-950 machine for Adobe CS5 and other intensive graphics work, hard for me to justify i5 for the HTPC (although I am trying to justify it, lol.)

I did read a report from one guy online who purchased the lower cost version of the MSI H67 board, mentioning a capacitor whine or something, making the board too loud for HTPC usage in his view, so he was exchanging. Curious if you notice any odd noises, or perhaps it was a defective board. Hoping it is a reasonably good board.

I'd go with the i3-2100 but either one would be good. I am dreaming of having an i3-2100 just to play around with, what if you disabled turbo boost, underclocked it to 2.8GHz, wonder how low you could get the voltage? I'm guessing 1.0V would be possible.

i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz VID: 1.241, 4GB DDR3, DH61WW, 1TB 3.5 WDC and GTX 460

50.0W Idle /CPU Package 5W/
117W Prime95 26.5-64b, Peak /Cpu Package power 57W/

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/1571/prime26.png

What power supply? Are you adjusting for power supply efficiency? Are you subtracting your 5W envelope from the 50W? The 57 I stated is the power from the wall socket. That's running 2 case fans, a power supply fan, CPU fan, and 2 video card fans, and an optical drive. I'm hoping to get my idle power down even lower with further undervolting.

Not subtracting or adjusting, CPU power by HWiNFO32. 1 Case FAN.
PSU is VX450 /80plus <85%/, measured at the wall 220V /energy check 3000/.

Intel motherboard, efficient but no bios voltage control at all, no software either, i was hoping for that.
Under volt wont do much, at multiplier 16x 1.00 volts factory, down to 0.800 sometimes.

So, is it actually possible to underclock non-K processors?

You picked up 30 watts at load, just by changing memory!!!!

Did changing memory change performance at all?

Edit:

Oh I just caught the other difference. But please explain a bit more anyways.

Amd E350, Asrock E350M1, 1x 2GB Stick DDR3 @ unknown voltage, 17.5W Idle, 26W load.




Andy

Electrodaucus on this board has (to my recollection) a 4 core 775 Intel running at something like that wattage.... maybe it was just a little higher. Beats me how he does it.

He even uses an old Intel chip set that has the lease energy usage of all the chipsets they ever made. Electrodaucus is the guy who sells the winmate PSU. He has a picture of his setup somewhere on this board.

FYI you will hear more about my build in the near-ish future.



Nor do I, was he working out the DC power usage.? Mine is AC of course as they should all be measured - 236v will help as well.


Andy

That was a long time ago. Here is a picture of it.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=55353&start=120
The answer is probably somewhere in that thread.

Edit:

Here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=55084&hilit=intel+intel+watts
I guess its a little more than I remembered... but still impressive.