I'm looking for a Windows system, laptop or Mini-ITX, with an idle power of ~ 10 watt (with HDD or SSD) for use with home automation. It does not need to be high performance.

I have been looking at some fanless Mini-ITX systems but they seem to be using over 20 watts. Several low-price system can be found in Sweden.

All help is welcome.

I was looking for the same thing this summer for a small server (CVS).

Price/energy efficiency, nothing beats this at the moment IMHO: http://mini-itx.se/epc01batom27016ghz-p-175.html (and you don't have to mess around the system, just install OS and run).

I have not measured how much w the system draws, but I would be surprised if it is more than 12-15 watt idle, running Ubuntu server in textmode and a single 320 2.5" HDD. Fanless and totally silent leaned against the wall on the floor.

Running windows, I guess with Aero disabled, it should consume the same watt.

I think old, first gen EEE laptop (the 7" TFT version) with everything disabled -including screen- is less than 10w.

Most single core Atom netbooks would be in that ballpark with the screen off. Mine only uses 11-12 W at idle even with the screen on. I did replace the HD with an SSD though.

However, if you are looking for low power consumption at all costs take a look at these guys: http://soekris.com/ Very low power, but non standard form factors and way lower than even Atom performance.

I've looked at a few nettops, but it's hard to find reviews that cover power consumption, especially on the Intel IGP parts.
The Jetway JBC360F33 barebone has a dual core atom, an Intel igp and is passively cooled.
So does the Shuttle XS35. I only found reviews for the atom+ion variant, but this is the igp version.
The Acer Veriton N is very similar, I don't know if it has a fan or not.
The Asus EeeBox PC EB1007 is very similar to the Acer, with an Intel igp. An atom+ion variant was tested here, but like most of them idle power is 25+ watts, load 30+ watts.

None of yours are likely to idle very low, boost. SPCR has reviewed the board in the Jetway (it was efficient back in the day but is outdated now) as well as a Pineview desktop board (the other three have Pineview desktop CPUs).
So far as I know, no one is making Atom desktops based on efficient parts except for fit-PC.
But you can get Atoms laptops which idle low: anything with a Zxxx CPU or the mobile Pineview chipset should idle lower than 10W if you use it with a decent brick.

There are some things like the Geode boards made for routers which are less powerful and more efficient than Atoms while still able to run Windows (the old versions anyway). But there's not a whole lot of choice.

If price is an issue, get a D410PT. They're among the cheapest mITX boards.

Newer Atoms are due to be released in a month or so by the way.

I've been tracking power usage of PCs and laptops I come across when I can. We recently picked up a couple of HP ProBook 4320s laptops at work with a Core i3 370 or 380 CPU and standard platter hard drive and I measured one at 9W AC idle. This should have been with the battery removed and the power plugged in. Since it's running on AC, the display should have been at a reasonably high level. Maybe not max but I don't think it was minimum. Pretty impressive.

I didn't get a chance to test a Dell Vostro 3350 which also passed my way. I was impressed with overall as a laptop. (Aside from the crappy screen with bad viewing angles like most. At least it was anti-glare.) That would have been good to see since it had the newer Sandy Bridge CPU in it.

Interesting, I didn't think Pineview was that bad, especially with the Poulsbo chipset.

A more interesting system I found was the NOkia Booklet 3G which idles very low, and has dropped in price dramatically, it's now 320€. Review link

The only non-mobile device which has Poulsbo to my knowledge is the fit-PC. And these should idle lower than 10W unless you use power-hungry peripherals.
It seems a Pouslbo driver was recently added to Linux by the way.

But as you noticed there are many Atom-based mobile devices which draw less than 10W.

Zotac Fusion E-350 (FUSION350-A-E)

Consumption

Normal usage (light browsing, RDP usage): 11-13W
Idle: 9,5W (with disk in spindown)

Measured at the wall with a Danish "SparOmeter". I think it is somewhat equivalent to the killawatt. It has a very good reputation in Denmark, so I trust it (also not exactly cheap to buy!!)

It is currently running Windows 7, with powersave to max. And it is using the onboard WIFI.

Specs

Pico PSU 120
80W power brick (can't remember the model, but it is quite efficient)
2x2GB memory
Segate 250GB 2,5" laptop drive.

Reasons for the choice

It have been getting very good reviews, especially with respect to power consumption. I did a bit of investigation about the power consumption of the various venders that produce fusion e350 boards, and came up with the Zotac as being the one with the best power consumption, and a bonus is that it is fanless

I used an Intel D945GSEJT in a slim case w/a 320gb HDD as an always-on system while I was working offshore. Pulled around 11w from the wall at the Windows desktop and didn't require a fan. Can heartily recommend it if you don't need much CPU performance .

Can anyone point me to a review that compares power efficiency of the AMD Fusion / F1 boards compared to Sandy Bridge?

Try this: http://www.silentpcreview.com/amd-a8-3850
It ain't close to comprehensive but the methodology is stated and the measurements are reliable. There's another such review I think.

You don't need reviews to understand that mainstream desktop gear does not get close to 10W idle anyway. Intel gets closer though.

I do not know your add-on requirements, but try looking at a FIT-PC2 or an atom N2XX based mobo.

The Intel D945GSEJT Mentawl mentioned should get you close to your target although a brazos system could possibly achieve the same thing. There is a roundup of such boards at THG: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/e-350-motherboard-brazos,2958-16.html

The best one manages 15 watt idle which isn`t a bad result considering they tested with a 700+ watt psu. With a pico psu 10-12 watts should be within reach.

Don't forget the Zacate's little brother, Ontario(the C-50 and C-30 processors); Asus EEE-PC: http://www.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1020/, full system consumes less then 10W idle, according to manufacturer. Now all you can find a place to buy it in Europe

Are there any Mini-ITX Ontario boards? Can't remember seeing any coming up at Computex?

<10W Brazos (see my previous post!!).

I have the exact Brazos board (Zotac) that is mentioned in the review posted by ntavlas (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/e-3 ... 58-16.html).

It comes highly recommended. I have had Atom boards in the past, but the Brazos feels quite a bit faster.

I have just received an SSD for the build today, and will install this tonight. I'll give you an updated status about power consumption later today.

Another note: I also have an Soekris net5501-70. This one also comes highly recommended, and they are on sale at the moment due to new version coming soon. I think this one consumes around 5-7W.

Last note: The FIT-PC is also quite good, but are a bit too pricey for me.

I've got you all beat with an off the shelf HP system that idles at <1w
Of course that's when it's in sleep mode where it goes after 20 minutes of no use

If you've got Win7 then you need to set your system to sleep in as short a period as you're comfortable with. For many, forget the screen saver and just go to sleep (suspend to ram). Never had any problem with it and wakeup times wasn't unacceptable. Keep in mind that customizing the power options includes changing to Allow the system to enter away mode under homegroup and when sharing media, otherwise your system wont suspend to ram (S3/S5) mode. Laptops tend to use this setting and from using it, I know it's almost as good as Apples power savings on a mac book.

Then that isn't idle then is it. Idle is when the system and all of it's components are on but sitting waiting. Sleep states are something very different.

HERP DERP.


The little NUC runs about 25W, and that's the i3 version (dual core with HT). I'm hoping it'll be nearer 20W once swapped in to the Tranquil passive case (I'll be losing the 4000rpm fan, and also losing the wifi as I don't use it). I'm guessing I could save a little power if I went with a single 4GB DIMM compared to the 2x2GB ones it's using now. I'm guessing the Celeron version would be sub-20W no problems.

New ITX Atom D2550 will be pretty low power. Use an mSATA SSD and single RAM module, and you're done. There are thin ITX versions of this which will allow you to stick it into any regular ITX case with a good 120mm fan to keep it real cool. Since the power input is on the board directly, no need for a PICO, one less part. A good 24W brick and you could probably be on par with 11-12W consistently. The bonus is that this system wont feel neutered, as long as you don't need more than a dual core Atom + hyperthreading. All things considered, it's pretty fast for what it is.

I know this post is old, but that's a system I'll be proposing to a company to replace 5 old desktop terminals they have, in an effort to make it easier to work on their computers, and cheaper for them to operate. NUCs are low power, but not as low power as the new Atoms are. If only the Atoms could do HD on their own, things could probably change (Haswell?) Considering my dual atom HP netbook isn't really that much of a slouch for basic use with an SSD, the new ones can only be faster and more efficient.

Take a look at some of the AMD Kabini reviews. An A4-5000 laptop in clamshell mode (display off) is using <5W idle, 11-12W running multithreaded apps, and ~15W "gaming".

Could be pretty interesting/cheap if small form factor boxes show up.

People have reported <5W on netbooks for a while.


Last year's board with a decent brick with a higher rating could get you <10W consistently. And you wouldn't need a fan or to keep it cool.


The 2012 Atoms weren't much of an improvement and in some way a step back. The details depend on what parts you're comparing exactly of course but the CPU you mentionned isn't the fastest so it might not be significantly better than your netbook.

There are two main issues with 2012 Atoms: the graphics driver and single-threaded perfomance. They're not necessarily deal-breakers but they're real issues depending on what these computers are inteneded to do.
I don't think HD as such would be a problem (older Atoms could play HD) but I would of course not recommend Atoms anymore for that considering AMD's offerings.
The next gen of Atoms which is supposed to improve substantially on these issues is called Silvermont. It's due late this year though you might have to wait (a lot) more for boards to appear in retail channels.

All the machines I'm quoting will be used for very basic web portal access to the company databases, DropBox and Microsoft Word and Excel. The machines do not do anything beyond that. 5 of them will be just as fine as the current set of 5-8 year old Dell machines that vary from P4 to Core 2 Duo. I opted against really going after the NUC machines that are coming out now because the customer will be somewhat nervous if the machines are "too small" but also because they don't need the power of an i3 to go online and print PDFs. If a raspberry pi had the right software capabilities, those would be enough for this business.

My current Atom netbooks are a Dell Mini 9 and HP Mini 1030nr. They're pretty slow. I favor the HP because of the larger keyboard and working battery, but all it does is act as a test machine for linux distros and if I need a small computer on hand (when I'm on vacation).

edh, HelldiverUK, others:

You've got a strange definition of Idle then because it's clearly defined by the Industry as the CPU being in it's lowest power stage. What happens when the drives spin down? That's the S2 stage. S3 then powers off the monitor and drops the GPU into it's lowest power setting. S5 carries this further by turning off the NIC, GPU and anything else other then the CPU and RAM and if your system is using anything more then 1w at this point, it's not idle and I'd check to see what the problem is. In other words, sleep is Idle otherwise it's working.

Bonestone:

Forget Dropbox as no business should need since it allows data to get off the company network. Things like HR Records, Medical/Taxes/Secret Recipes. Any business asking for that to be on a setup like you're describing is just a recipe for trouble and as a business owner, I'd walk away from it because it'll cost you more for being foolish. Sorry but the risk is simply to high to justify any kind of deal.

For web browsing and Word, you could easily get by with what's known as a Plug-PC. There are models running WinCE and others using WinXP. The XP models will handle Excel but most people don't need Excell. If they do, then a >10w PC isn't what they need. For everyone else though, the plug-pc design should be quite usable as nothing is stored on them other then the OS (boot from flash).

As to a Raspberry Pi. I think the full Stable Debian Linux counts as everything and the Kitchen Sink - Software isn't an issue there. Basically, if it runs on Debian Stable, then it'll run on the R-Pi's. Most folks though would be better off with the plug-pc as they do at least run Windows and can be controlled by an Dommain Controller.

Not 10 watts but I've been installing Windows Home Server 2011 on an i3-3220 with a Radeon HD7790 GPU and its idling at 23 watts with no real power saving measures beside a 255 watt 80+ gold PSU.

That's like nuc power consumption with low end gaming system performance.

I bet it would be much less power without the GPU.

I was hoping for an idle under 40 watts, now if I mess with it a little I might break 20.

I'm going to use it for gaming.

p.s. I'm using WHS2011 because its the cheapest legitimate and supported version of 64bit windows. When you change to Aero desktop theme it even says Windows Server 2008R2.