Hi,

I'm building a new HTPC and would like to use a PicoPSU for noise reasons, but I'm not sure if it'll handle my new system. The specs are listed below!

Processor = i3-530
GPU = nividia 9500gt
Hard drives = 2 x 1tb wd greens

The combination that I'm looking at for the power supply is the picopsu 150-xt with the premium 12.5 amp power supply that short-circuit sells. It can be found at the following link www . short-circuit . com/categories/powercombos.html.

Thanks,

Why a 9500GT?
The i3 has a IGP which you can use with a H55/57 motherboard.

I'm in a similar situation where I'm considering an i5 660 (TDP = 73W which is the same as the i3 you mention) and am hoping to use the PicoPSU 150-xt.

My concern is that the 150-xt manual says it only supports CPUs with a TDP of up to 65W. Is this going to be a problem for the PSU when the CPU is at 100%?

What's the power consumption of the 9500GT? That's really the only thing I'd be concerned about.

SG06B+DH57JG+i3-530 stock+GT 240+WD10EADS
boot: 80W
idle: 45W
CPU Load: 95W
GPU Load: 120W
CPU+GPU Load: 150W

With the GT 240, I wouldn't be comfortable running it off of a PicoPSU 150. It's possible but for me, that's running it too close to the limits.

I need s-video out because I'm using the HTPC on an old CRT tv that doesn't have hdmi inputs!

According to nividia's website the 9500gt should pull right at 50 watts max so based off my calculations that would put the system right at 150 watts once I factor in the 2 hard drives. I know that you guys always say that you really don't need as big of supplies as it seems you should and based off my calculations I'm just barely hitting 150 watts, but I'm also a little worried about the spin up power consumption of those hard drives!

Why not get the GeForce 8400GS, then? It's a better option assuming you're not doing any gaming.

I got the 9500gt cheap after rebate and I figure it should easily handle what I need it to do!

It can but the iffy part is power consumption. Then again, you're unlikely to stress the card anyway. Unlike desktop hard drives, graphics cards use more power when stressed (gaming, benchmarks, etc) than on boot. I guess if you don't plan on gaming, that PicoPSU is probably enough.

Also, are you planning to RAID those drives? If not, may I suggest just sticking with 1x 2TB green drive?

I actually already knew that about the video cards, but I wasn't sure if rendering 1080p video would be enough to get the video card into high performance power mode?

I also am planning on running raid 1 on the 2 1tb drives. I really have no need for that much storage otherwise, haha!

Do you know of any good silent regular still power supplies that are around 200-250 watts since it looks like the picopsu might be a little iffy for this system?

Thanks

While you are doing that, consider the following experiment. Take the first drive, make your first partition only 50G bit and test how fast is it as a boot partition. Then compare its actual performance with the Raid.

Short stroking it like that make a big difference in performance. I tried it with the WD Black 1T.

While I don't own the 2T WD with the two stage activator, one of these days I am going to buy it and do the same. The 2T WD has a piezo electric head positioner to do the final positioning of the head. If you take a 2T and partition the first partition to 50G, you have only 2.5% of the cylinders to access. If most of the access is being done by the piezo electric head positioner, you have one fast drive.

I already do that with all my computers, however I'll be short stroking the first partition on the raid as I want the redundancy, but like you, I've seen big performance improvements from short stroking the drives.

I was just looking at the seasonic s12II 330 bronze that newegg has for 46.99 since it looks like the picopsu might be a little iffy for this system and I was wondering if any of you guys have experience with this power supply and how loud it's going to be?

One additional question, do the i3 series processors actually disable the GPU core on the CPU when you install an pci-e video card? If they do then that alone will probably save 20-25 watts from the 73 that the processor is spec'd for!

Not that I've noticed.


By the way, the 73W quoted is for cooling purposes and illustrates a worst case scenario. It doesn't necessarily mean that's the power consumption of the processor and you shouldn't be able to reach that during normal operation.

Dumb question: Was your answer a yes or a no?

No, I don't think so.

So basically, as best you can determine, the video chip in the i3 chips basically uses about the same watts even if you add on a video card.

That's interesting.

Pretty much.

GT 240 vs IGP diff
boot: 25W
idle: 15W
CPU Load: 25W
GPU Load: 75W
CPU+GPU Load: 70W

Iirc, the GT240 has a 70W or 75W TDP (pretty much the limit of the PCI Express slot). Accounting for efficiency, the values above seem about right for a GT240.

Based off your readings I should be good then because the video card that I'm looking at is rated for 20 watts less than yours and your still just barely hitting 150 watts! Of course hopefully the distribution between the 3.3, 5, and 12 volts will be ok?

See:


I did mention it was doable, just that I wouldn't be comfortable doing it myself.

By the way, from this review, the power consumption difference of a 9500GT and a GT240 can vary from 12W~46W depending on the specific model.

It looks like it's going to be really really close then, haha! I think I chose about the worst possible components as far as power supplies are concerned, haha! I'm just a little high for the picopsu, but quite low for a conventional supply to be efficient!

Not really. I'd say the i3-530 is an excellent choice. It's just the 9500GT that's somewhat troublesome (should still run within the limits, though). I think it was supposed to be capable of low- to mid-level gaming back when it was first released which explains the slightly higher power consumption.

Nowadays, graphics cards are the worst offenders when it comes to power consumption. Some of the high end ones even consume twice (or more) what the CPU does. At least ATI's power consumption seems a bit more manageable.

So, would the Pico PSU be ok if using just the i3 GPU?

Should be more than enough:

The above was with one WD10EADS. If using two drives, I'd say add another ~20W boot and ~5W idle.