Hello,
I am reading many review and I am confused: what is the difference at idle in wattage between:

- clarkdale i3 (or i5) with 3420 intel server chipset;
- sandybridge i3 with c202 or c204 intel server chipset.

Clarkdale price is half as much of sandybridge...


Thanks in advance for any help!
Mario

Xeon 3400 series is based based on 1156 socket, so in essence is last gen CPUs, they will consume a little more power or be a little less capable, not a big deal on a server though, depending on what you do. C202/C204/C206 are the new intel server chipsets, so they take the new Sandy Bridge Xeon E3 cpus, they should be more powerful / use less power. That said everything is releative, not only the CPU/Chipset will influence the power consumption, there are a lot of other factors that you should account, like hdds, hba, PSU, etc. My server currently is idling at 105W with 11 hdds (still have to install 3 more), on my old Atom 510 i used to idle around 40W with 4hhds in. Btw there is a very low TDP Sandy Bridge Xeon, Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1220L (3M Cache, 2.20 GHz), but its expensive, and hard to get a hold, but lower TDP than celerons.

Depending on what you planning on doing you can also go with atom, there are server grade mobos like SuperMicro Atom, although idk if supermicro is as efficient as intel on their mobos. I also seen people build around AMD E-350 as with intel sandy bridge celeron cpus like G530, really depends on what you need or planning on doing with the server.

Thank you for your reply. I have opened another thread for Atom server (I will use for firewall). This time I need a core i3 for virtualization. I see some review that says that, at idle, sandybridge i3 draws less than Atom. But it is not clear if "old" clarkdale draws much more or a little more, expecially considering also chipset. I will not include hdd because I need less than eleven and I probably will use 2.5 low power. Anyway, just to be simple, let's focus only on cpu+chipset.

my mini mi build (check sig), idles around 14W, but with 3 fans, my guess is with a single fan you could get close to your 11W desired, but no perif attached (keybord, mouse, monitor) and you will need a picospu or alilke.

The motherboard is going to dominate idle power consumption. People used to get 15W idle or so with Clarkdales so Sandy Bridge is only a marginal improvement.
Sever boards typically use more a good bit more power than efficient desktop boards. My guess is that the newer versions use a little less.

The i3 brand has nothing to do with virtualization. Most Atoms lack virtualization extensions (which doesn't mean they can't do virtualization) but nearly all other Intel or AMD CPUs have the basic extension (the only one i3-branded CPUs have).

If you want a server chipset for ECC and want low power consumption, going with AMD might an option.

Sorry I was meaning about his eleven hard disks not about wattage.
Anyway now I am looking at your results, minime and microme, and I am reading the threads.

Thanks!

Mario

Ok so I can go with clarkdale and save a lot of money.

I have only amd setups at home but new cpus are too power hungry and not faster than previous ones so I am considering intel.