I'm looking at an Asus P8Z77-M (m-atx) board and going with the Pentium G630T - 35w CPU and since I use a dedicated video card, the onboard graphics is pretty much a wash (great for emergency).

The motherboard is nice, I wouldn't bother with a T suffixed part. Without knowing your apps, I couldn't give a better answer.

Apps have nothing to do with its selection. Instead it's the 35w TDP that selected this chip as there are littlerally nothing lower rated in the 1155 socket space. According http://www.passmark.com/ this chip outperforms my current AMD x2-240 Regor by a noticible margin. Simply put, the usual trade-offs of cooler chip with the same or slightly better performance as an upgrade.

Sure, but you could save a few bucks and get a non T-version since the difference in power consumption is very small. With that motherboard you could underclock to "T-levels" (or lower still) if needed.

+1.

+2

Also, there is no real between the "low power" versions of a CPU (e.g. "T") when the CPU is idling, it only the top end of the CPU that has had its power requirement slashed, mostly by clockspeed.


Andy

Seems that everyone has missed the mark, especially C_A_Steve. When I say You should have understood that saving a few dollars wasn't an issue. Heck checking Newegg before writing this reply shows the cost difference being a meager $10 between the G630 and G630T.

I'll expand on why I'm looking at build a new system around this chip.

System Specs are in my sig so I'll not repeat them. The rig is on 24/7 and I'm seeing a minimum of 80w demand at 10 percent and hitting 150w at 50 percent loading. To use a Car analogy, the damn thing only gets 10mpg when the same price Toyota gets 40mpg. Make sense folks? Based on the TDP, I fully expect to recover the cost of the replacement in half a year. Not bad for less then $325 invested and I even get a performance boost.

If I was after better performance, then I sure as heck wouldn't use the G630T, I'd go for the i5-3450S as the improvement would be 3x boost. If I need all out performance, then I'd be looking at the i7-3770S that is over "9000", a 5x Boost.

With all due respect, you are missing our point. Rated TDP is a bit of Intel marketing and not a complete indicator of power use. The T chips have no special processing. They are merely downclocked versions of the non-T parts and might also be set for a lower operating voltage. Our point is that you can get simlar power consumption with a non-T part by simply modifying the clock speed in your BIOS. The upside is if you ever need the additional processing power, it's there w/o having to by another CPU.

If you really want to lower your power consumption - replace the PSU, too.

The SPCR review of the Streacom FC5 OD fanless HTPC case included power consumption and CPU, system etc temperature data for the Intel i3 2100 and the 2100T. At low levels there was no difference in power consumption and temperatures between the two. This was not the case under high CPU/GPU load, where the 2100T drew less power and produced significantly lower temperatures. I guess the same would apply if the 2100T had been paired with a dedicated graphics card.

I don't see any problem with buying a T CPU for those who don't want to get involved with BIOS underclocking and undervolting. As the first two Ivy Bridge Pentiums have now been released - the G2120 3.1GHz and G2100T 2.6GHz - it might be worth considering one of these rather than the 2.3Ghz G630T. From my local hardware dealer the G2100T costs around 10% more than the G630T and the G2120 is about 20% more. Either would be a better performer than the G630T but I suspect the lower power/lower temperature benefits under load of the G2100T might be less than it was with the Intel i3 processors.

Also, if power consumption is a primary concern, here's a z77 roundup at hardware.info.

FWIW at this point I wouldn't get a sandy bridge Pentium.
The pentium g2120 is a Ivy bridge chip, and some benchmark shows it has quite a bit lower power consumption than "regular" sandy bridge pentiums - on paper there's a 10W TDP difference to Sandy Bridge pentiums (55W to 65W, though on paper g620t is better at 35W).
Comparing and extrapolating the power numbers from http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Core-i3-3 ... 0-1024257/ (g2120, g860) and http://www.anandtech.com/show/4524/the- ... t-tested/3 (g620t, g6850) I'd suspect the actual power usage of a g2120 is not higher than that of a g620t (on average - the actual outcome will vary from cpu to cpu), while certainly being faster (at stock - it should be pretty decent for undervolting/underclocking too in theory though I haven't seen anyone testing that yet). Though it will also be more expensive.

Just for future reference: if you're looking for specific answers, you should ask specific questions instead of writing a half-assed sentence listing two components and asking "any thoughts".

Are you by any chance my ex-girlfriend Jessie?