Haswell heat-minimisation advice
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 6:20 pm
Hi. I'm looking at the possibility of building a smaller, cooler-running, and hopefully quieter system. It will be used mostly for watching videos and web-browsing, with some light gaming and occasional bouts of video transcoding. I'm currently running an i3 2120 (TDP 65W), which seems to handle my needs fairly well (though who will say no to some extra grunt). The problem is that I have to leave the window open in my room day and night through much of summer.
I'm planning on building it in a mATX case (most probably a TJ08B-E), so a reasonably-sized tower HSF is not a problem (although the 15mm overhang from the heatsink on my passive GPU probably reduces the maximum HSF width from 14cm to 12cm). The issue is heat output (mostly idle-light utilisation, but occasionally heavy-maximum).
The choices appear to be:
1) A normal Haswell i3 (TDP 54W), most probably a 4130 (but that may change according to price differentials)
2) An (apparently factory-undervolted/underclocked) i5 4570T (TDP 35W)
3) Manually undervolting and/or underclocking (does the latter require a K-suffix processor?) some other CPU to match this ballpark performance.
Can anybody give me ballpark wattages for these 3 options at idle-light and heavy-maximum utilisations? And what CPU would be most appropriate for the third (assuming a neophyte underclocker)? The 4570T is clearly the most expensive option, but I'd like to get some idea what the wattages are at each price-point before making a decision.
Also, is there much of a difference in the power draw between mATX Haswell MBs (assuming that I'm not buying an all-the-bells-and whistles OCing board)?
I'm planning on building it in a mATX case (most probably a TJ08B-E), so a reasonably-sized tower HSF is not a problem (although the 15mm overhang from the heatsink on my passive GPU probably reduces the maximum HSF width from 14cm to 12cm). The issue is heat output (mostly idle-light utilisation, but occasionally heavy-maximum).
The choices appear to be:
1) A normal Haswell i3 (TDP 54W), most probably a 4130 (but that may change according to price differentials)
2) An (apparently factory-undervolted/underclocked) i5 4570T (TDP 35W)
3) Manually undervolting and/or underclocking (does the latter require a K-suffix processor?) some other CPU to match this ballpark performance.
Can anybody give me ballpark wattages for these 3 options at idle-light and heavy-maximum utilisations? And what CPU would be most appropriate for the third (assuming a neophyte underclocker)? The 4570T is clearly the most expensive option, but I'd like to get some idea what the wattages are at each price-point before making a decision.
Also, is there much of a difference in the power draw between mATX Haswell MBs (assuming that I'm not buying an all-the-bells-and whistles OCing board)?