Maingear Pulse, a green gaming PC?

Olle P · Post by **Olle P** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:14 am

The company Maingear PC introduce what's labeled a "green" (low power) gaming PC called Pulse.

In top configuration it's got a Core 2 Quad Q9400s CPU, up to 2x4GB DDR2 and a GF 9800GT 1GB Eco graphics card. All mounted in a Lian-Li PC-Q07 chassis.

To me this seems like a half measure:
- Even the top graphics is a bit too weak to qualify as a gaming PC.
- Using DDR2 instead of the lower voltage DDR3 makes it more power hungry than necessary.

Using the on board graphics an settle with one of the less potent CPUs will give you a nice little personal office computer though.

What do you think?

Cheers
Olle

Post by **MikeC** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 8:48 am

Agreed w/ your assessment. Green is just another marketing tag for many brands. This thing is no greener than hundreds of other PC offerings out there. In fact, PCs from big brands like HP, Dell etc are greener because they offer extensive recycling services (of both your previous and new PCs) often for free and use certifiably recycled/recyclable packaging.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:35 am

In your opinion is it important have a Q9400s instead of a Q9400? A TDP of 65W vs. 95W do the difference to call it greener?

idale · Post by **idale** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 12:19 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:In your opinion is it important have a Q9400s instead of a Q9400? A TDP of 65W vs. 95W do the difference to call it greener?

It would presumably generate less heat at full power (supposedly 30W of heat isn't being spewed into the case), but what few places have tried to compare the power consumption of -S and non-S C2Qs haven't seemed to see a whole lot of difference. (Example: http://techgage.com/article/q9400s_q820 ... d-cores/11, 3W idle and 6W load difference measured on the Q9400/-S.)

So from the wall you won't see much difference, but there could be a difference in how hot your PC gets. You might have a quieter system because your fans don't need to be as fast because your CPU isn't as hot (as an example). It's a rather pricey upgrade, though, at least last I looked.