Dear all,

I am looking for a desktop.
I have quite a nice laptop (Samsung Q320), which I modified in the year, upgrading CPU, SSD and RAM but starts to feel a little tight.
Especially lately with some insane Excel sheets.

What I need:
a system that allows me to photo edit (from simple colour corrections to panorama stitching, HDR), a snappy Lightroom usage, and gives me a reliable Excel experience (anyway for personal-related experience, i.e. not for professional purposes; for work I have my company PC)
eventually playing some HD contents
[-> 1st question: how important is nowadays the contribution of the Graphic part for image editing/lightroom/photoshop? I also knew from the past that there were intentions of using the Gpower as CPU power when needed, is this an utopia still? I'm a tad outdated!]

What I have/had: Intel Core2Duo P9500 2.53GHz, 3GB Ram, OCZ Agility2, nVidia G105M (laptop)
before this I had a desktop (from the top of my head) with an AMD Athlon 4850e, Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H 780G, 4GB ram, and a nice WD 320GB WD3200AAKS

What I want: a system that when on idle or low usage (multitabbing internet), draws the least amount of power
a mini ITX board
and of course as silent as possible, but it should come hand in hand with lowest Wattage requirement @idle
powerful when needed

What is my budget: for mobo+cpu+ram (that is where I really need your help), I would like to stay in the 200+ € region. Can stretch to 300€ if necessary (and only if!)

What I am looking at: from my current/previous configuration, I know that the cheapest i3 would give me an improvement anyway.
But I was aiming at A6 3600, for its low TDP, or the more beefy (but more expensive, and probably the additional kick is not really needed by me) brother A8 3800.
But then I was reading that, watt per performance/wise and performance per quid/wise, intel are better
So I was looking at i5-2450s, again for its low TDP and the HD3000 graphics (the other 's brothers have HD2000)
But then I was reading that an undervolted/underclocked standard i5-2400 will reach the same watt at idle, being more powerful when needed.
But then I realised that both Intels range close to the €200, CPU only!

So, forgetting about money for a second, for a requirements-meeting, compact, low watt PC: is the more expensive solution really needed? Or can I comfortly embrace AMD? And what configuration then, ecologic versions, or standard version downlocked?

Many thanks for your influential help!

I use Lightroom quite a bit. It's an interesting program in that both single thread and multiple thread performance is important depending on what you do.

If you care more about a "snappy" experience in Lightroom while editing, get an i3. It's mostly single threaded in this mode.

If you care more about bulk export performance then get an AMD quad core.

If it were me personally I would take the i3, the user experience is more important.

If you want both to be fast then get an i5 if you can swing it. The turbo boost will be useful while editing. I'd get the regular i5-2400 unless you really need the lower power version. Lightroom will take all the CPU it can get.

Other things that help are to keep the DB and image files on separate drives. Put the DB on the fastest drive you have, SSD is preferred.

The Graphics card is relatively irrelevant as Lightroom doesn't use any specific GPU acceleration like Photoshop does. The HD2000 will be just fine for Lightroom.

Be sure to get 8GB of RAM. I wonder if your laptop performance was limited by the 3GB installed.

I concur with above poster, I think i3 2100 is a good option, depending on your task I would even go with a quad like he recomended.

Now if you can wait a couple of months, lower tpd cpus come with ivy bridge, while not a big change at idle, it saves some under load, better igpu also a nice gain.

Either way for both single thread or multi thread, I would go with intel.

@CA_Steve

8gb ram will be for sure, that is a minimum requirement nowadays I think, especially given the low price you can purchase RAM; unless the only thing you do is just browsing!

@Abula

the weird thing with PCs (and technology) is that by waiting couple months something sensibly better is ALWAYS going to come out! and so you could fall in an endless loop; but anyway I will keep that in mind, I am not buying parts tomorrow, and maybe by the time I am gonna fill my shopping cart, I am close to a two-months time lag!
the i3 2100 is interesting (price-wise), I just have to realise if the two-core-Intel vs. quad-core-AMD are comparable, power consumption- and performance-wise (since they are marketed at the same price)

@washu

I haven't done "bulk export" so far and I am not even entirely sure in what consist of. I can guess that is taking 1000 RAW file from the camera and converting them in jpg, maybe resized, to ease the sharing? Because this, I will never do (I believe).

I am still using Photoshop a bit for editing as well, plus playing some HD movies: I guess these require an acceptable GPU, I will inform myself over the i3 2100


I am most interested also in idle power consumption; by reading the spcr review, it seems to me that they didn't believe the AMD provides a 'green' idle experience; I am hence wondering who is their target, people who want a 4-cores for cheap?

thanks to you all!

Zotac has announced three new mini-PCs in standard, nano, and Blu-ray form factors. From Legit Reviews
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/12561/
http://www.zotacusa.com/products/mini-pcs/zbox
For comparison:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6856173023

These look interesting. I wonder if you can add an additional 2G of memory (looks like you can)

The Zotac ZBOX ID82 series will bring mini-PC performance to a new level. It makes use of the Intel's Core i3 2330M processor, which offers Hyper-Threading for maximum performance. Intel's HD 3000 graphics alongside Quick Sync Video, InTru 3D and Clear Video HD technologies further help the ZBOX IN82 series by bringing GPU-accelerated video conversion, stereoscopic 3D video output and even hardware-accelerated Blu-ray 3D playback all within a compact and efficient design.

Zotac further pushes the envelope with the ZBOX nano ID61 series, which utilizes Intel's Celeron 867 dual-core processor, bringing Intel's CPUs to the ZBOX nano form factor for the very first time. The CPU is paired with Intel HD graphics, along with a memory card reader and optical S/PDIF output, making the palm-sized ZBOX nano ID61 series versatile and powerful within such a small footprint.

The ZBOX Blu-ray series will receive a refresh with the new ZBOX Blu-ray AD05, which packs an AMD E-450 APU with AMD Radeon HD 6320 graphics for smooth playback and performance. The new Blu-ray series will come bundled with Zotac's Media Remote and USB IR reciever for easy control when paired with popular media center software (Microsoft Windows Media Center and Open ELEC). All three ZBOXes will be fully customizable as barebones platforms, with plus models coming with 2GB of memory with a 320GB HDD pre-installed.

ZBOX ID82 Series
Intel Core i3 2330M (2.2 GHz, dual-core four threads, 3MB cache)
Intel HD Graphics 3000
Dimensions 7.40in x 7.40in x 1.73in

HDMI & DVI-I outputs
2 x SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports (back panel)
4 x High-Speed USB 2.0 ports (2 on back panel, 1 on front, 1 on top)
Bluetooth 3.0 technology
ZBOX ID82
2 x DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM slots (up to 16 GB)
Support 1 x 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD (SATA 6.0 Gb/s)
ZBOX ID82 Plus
2GB DDR3
320GB 5400RPM HDD

ZBOX nano ID61 Series
Intel Celeron Processor 867 (1.3 GHz, dual-core dual-thread)
Intel HD Graphics
HDMI & DisplayPort outputs
2 x SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports (back panel)
2 x High-Speed USB 2.0 ports (back panel)
1 x eSATA port
Integrated IR receiver
Bluetooth 3.0 technology
ZBOX nano ID61
1 x DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM slots (up to 8 GB)
Support 1 x 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD (SATA 6.0 Gb/s)
ZBOX nano ID61 Plus
2 GB DDR3
320 GB 5400RPM HDD

ZBOX Blu-ray AD05 Plus
AMD E-450 APU platform (1.65 GHz, dual-core)
AMD Radeon HD 6320 GPU w/ TurboCore technology
HDMI & DVI outputs
4x Blu-ray reader / 8x DVDR/RW reader/writer
2 x SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports (1 on back panel, 1 on front)
1 x High-Speed USB 2.0 port (front)
1 x Combo eSATA / USB 2.0 port (back panel)
ZBOX AD05
2 x DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM slots (up to 8 GB)
Support 1 x 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD (SATA 3.0 Gb/s)
ZBOX AD05 Plus
2GB DDR3
320GB 5400RPM HDD

@jv_guano & @CA_Steve

No reason to skimp on RAM, but Lightroom doesn't care much. Extra RAM will help with disk caching, but a faster disk (or SSD) helps more. Lightroom is all CPU and disk, RAM not so much. Get 8 GB for sure, but invest in disk or CPU if you have more cash to spend.

@jv_guano

Bulk export is as you describe it. I do normally export my files to JPEG so it matters to me, if you don't do that then a fast dual core will be great for your purposes.

A fast dual core Intel will be faster than a quad AMD for what you need. It will also be lower on power consumption. The difference between a normal and low power i3/i5 is negligible at idle.

As for Photoshop, unless you are working with many truly massive files I doubt the amount of video card acceleration will matter much. The Intel HD graphics are listed as supported, so they may help a bit.

HD movie playback is no problem for any of the chips being discussed. They all have full H.264 acceleration.

This Zotac is even smaller
Zotac preparing even smaller ZBox mini-PC
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/26263 ... ox-mini-pc
127x127x45mm
Connectivity options include USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, e-SATA/USB combo port, Ethernet, audio inputs/outputs, card reader and single HDMI display output.

@jv_guano
You've been advised by people who buy gear in the Americas. In Europe, you can have a large difference between the cheapest i3 and similar Sandy Bridge CPUs which are branded Pentium. I'd probably buy one of the Pentiums in your situation.

How much CPU you need for photo editing depends in no small part on the resolution of the photos. It's bizarre not to look at that if your budget is in any way constrained.

I don't see why you'd want more than 4G of RAM. 2G would probably be adequate but prices are low enough to justify 4G. But 8G?

Your idle power consumption is going to be determined by your PSU and your motherboard. See the other threads. Abula is on top of this issue if I remember right. PSUs which don't waste much electricity don't come cheap, especially in Europe. So buying a case with a halfway decent low-wattage PSU like (I assume) the 65W Antec 300 would save you a bit of cash.

HFat, while I cannot comment on the price differences in different countries, Lightroom is a program where spending money on CPU does pay off. The extra few hundred MHz gained by going from a Pentium to an i3 can actually matter in terms of responsiveness. It's not a simple matter of the actual photo calculations like Photoshop, but the interface speed. For all that it is an excellent photography workflow program, Lightroom is terribly written. The interface is often lags for no apparent reason and the only solution is to throw CPU and/or SSDs at it. You could be editing a bunch of 640x480 photos from a cheap cell phone and it will still be slow.

I went from an i7-870 to an i7-2600k just because of Lightroom. For everything else I do the 870 was already overkill.

Basically you want the highest clocked SB chip you can afford for Lightroom, more cores only matter with batch jobs.

Ram I mostly agree with you, but 2 GB is too low. 4 GB is plenty for Lightroom, but even 8GB is cheap so why not. Maybe the next version will be more of a memory hog.

What you may have missed is exactly how low the OP's budget was in relation to EU prices.
In that context 8G is NOT cheap, and neither is an i3. The difference between a 2100 and a G840 is 300 Mhz and it saves you $32 (Intel prices).

If we are talking specifically about power efficient desktop CPUs then there has been only one significant release roughly every 12 months with the next one due next month apparently. Not sure when Ivy Bridge will hit retail channels and the higher end SKUs are coming first so maybe beyond your budget.


The OP mentioned multi-tab browsing so 2GB is a no go really. 4GB is the least I would suggest and I have noticed recently that my multi-tasking exploits have pushed RAM usage above 5GB for the first time after seemingly being stuck around 3GB for ages.
Modern software is more and more RAM hungry. My iTunes is now at 600MB and Firefox at 1.3GB so I’m glad I went with 8GB when I built my system. I’m using the same applications but newer versions just seem to be ravenous for RAM.
When you add to that the very low price of RAM and that 2 sticks consume less power than 4 I think 8GB (2x 4GB) makes sense unless you absolutely know that your requirements are quite modest.
Given the choice of 4GB 1.5V for £16 or 8GB 1.35V for £40 I’d go the extra mile but your budget may take you elsewhere.

Multi-tab broswing works fine on 1G.


That's the RAM you use, not the RAM you need. I wouldn't touch iTunes so I don't know but it's utterly preposterous to say Firefox needs 1.3G.

@ces: thank you for your suggestions; though you got me right (with my mini-itx requirement) that I would like a compact system, I am not looking for something that fits in a pocket. Compared to a classic ATX, mini-itx is already more than enough size reduction for me, without sacrificing performance.
The one you posted, just the first one might be okeish for me; but anyway I am more for building something on my own, rather than buying a pre-made box.
But indeed thanks for showing me these!

@washu and HFat: thanks for pointing out the non-greediness of RAM of Lightroom; But I am working a lot with Excel as well. Right now, with my laptop (3gb) I am running out of memory (just Excel open) and I had to create a virtual memory on disk. 3gb to 4 is too small of an improvement, buying 3 banks of 2 gb is infeasible in a mini-itx, hence the 8gb!

@washu:
This is a very concise and indeed dense hint, I will work more on this, thank you!

@HFat: the price increase from G840 to i3 2100 is from 62€ to 93€; thanks for pointing out the existence of these CPUs, as due to marketing (I suppose) I was just more aware of i3/5/7; I will dig them and see what lacks do those €30 less bring to.
Ram prices are not a problem, I can see 4gm DDR3 modules sold at €20, is virtually nothing much. And easy to buy 4gb today at €20, wait two months and get the second card at €15 euro!

The difference between a G840 and a i3-2100 is about $40 here and worth every penny if Lightroom is the task at hand. For 95% of things I would agree with you that the G840 would be enough. Lightroom is in the 5% where it does matter.

Skimping a bit on RAM is fine for Lightroom, not CPU.

€200 for mobo+cpu+ram is not that small!
I‘m in the UK where pricing is close to that of Europe (assume £1 is roughly €1.1).
I looked at one retailer and got these prices:

Intel mITX + 8GB Corsair 1,333 + i3-2120 (3.3GHz) = £188 (~€207)
As above but i5-2320 (3GHz) = £232 (~€255)

There are cheaper i3 CPUs and if you shop around you’ll get the above a bit cheaper but for €200 an i3 + mobo + 8GB is achievable.

I reported my personal usage which is clearly not the same as what is needed by everyone so way to go on the misinterpretation! Why would I limit my usage pattern just to save spending an extra £16 or so on RAM?


That depends on how many tabs you have open and what else your system is doing at the time. The OP is already finding 3GB a limitation so hopefully we all have a sense of where they are coming from now.

You don't get it: you don't need that much RAM to do what you do. Firefox uses RAM because it's there. If it wasn't there, you could do the exact same thing but it would use less RAM.

Here's a Lightroom 3 Benchmark at X-Bit Labs that includes the Pentium class and another that includes the low end i5. Also, a fairly spot-on discussion at dpreview.

The 8GB of RAM has been installed for over a year but only fairly recently has Firefox, iTunes etc been so memory hungry which is why I said:



I presume Firefox uses all that RAM to improve performance which is fine by me; as I said earlier:


Or limit performance for the sake of increasing my system build budget by a few percentage points.

You can also use less RAM and rely on the page file but I think most of us know how well that works out. Don’t skimp on RAM, it’s MADNESS.

or it would crash and/or notify errors.
Anyway, we are getting off track a bit here.
I wouldn't buy 8gb ram just for the sake of multi-tab browsing. I said it by myself that for that 3gb would be enough.
I would buy 8gb ram for excel, other heavy programmes (though seems like Lightroom is not much RAM needy) and most of all because is cheap.
As smilingcrow mentioned, turning on pagefile just to save 20€ and decrease performances, is a bit of a madness.

Indeed, the biggest concern for which I opened the topic is choosing the CPU (Green@idle, powerful in need, not uselessly expensive) and an appropriate mini-itx motherboard

so all the discussion on RAM are a bit pointless; but thanks indeed.
For mini-itx, I think generally speaking the Intel motherboards are the least power hungry.




pretty interesting, thank you for the contribution.
For example, I see that for the PS test, an i3 2100 gain ten seconds (out of two minutes) over the G850. This for some editing of 4 pictures. It is not specified what sort of editing, but still is not the end of the world.
Again, for lightroom, exporting into JPEG format 100 12mp pictures in RAW + post-processing, it takes half a minute more for G850, on top to the almost three minutes and a half of the i3 2100. More significant, but I will never export 100 RAW pictures!
Indeed I could save those 30€ to buy at a second stage a better CPU, when more greener/efficient etcetc CPU will come to the market (and given retrocompatibility is possible)

I will just need to do my research about power consumption of the G850 and what are the main structural differences with an i3, being both Sandybridge

nice food for thought, thank you!

basically, a

G850 in idle is slightly lower Watt hungry than i3 2100
G850 at full load is relatively lower Watt hungry than i3 2100
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_7.html

G850 for archiving and image editing is a tad slower than i3 2100
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_5.html#sect0

G850 for video encoding is sensibly slower than i3 2100, due to Quick Sync lack
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_6.html#sect0

BUT, a i3 2100T consumes less at idle/peal than a G850
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_8.html#sect0

BUT AGAIN, for my needs, G850 is faster than a i3 2100T
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_9.html

AND FINALLY, the i3 2100T compared to a i3 2100 is just a stupid purchase
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1202-page7.html
you can easily undervolt the i3 2100 (if mobo allows) and reach the same low power in idle.
And power when needed, as, on demand, the i3 2100 could be setup to go back to normal values


so seems to me that for my situation, the i3 2100 is best purchase.
Unless for those excess €30 I can buy a substantially improved SSD which delivers a huge increase in performance; but I doubt so!

I wouldn't buy a T version unless you need the low profile cooler, there are multiple threads where you can read how to change the settings in windows to restrict the multipliers and have very similar results, most of the T are just crippled none T version by its multipliers, no cherry pick or anything special, now i do think they do have a spot in the market as their cooler is smaller and you can build a lower factor without spending extra money in another cooler, etc.

I dont do much editing, but from what i have heard depending on the program you see benefits from better cpu, more memory and in some cases a dedicated GPU. Most of the Sandy Bridge CPUs idle at the same clocks, if i recall correctly 1600mhz, so you get very similar idles, but they do difer in load as most have different multipliers and turbo settings. Focus on getting a good mobo, most of the intel mobos have very good efficiencies, MSI is also rumored to be good (but personally haven't tested), avoid Gigabyte and Asus, while they are really good mobos for OCing their boards are not always the best in consumption.

Depending on your budget i see the i3 2100 or i5 2400 as best options, an ssd also key on making the machine very quiet and very responsive, i been very happy with Crucial M4 but i read good things about Samsung 830 series, and get a quiet green 5400rpm for storage, like WD Green Caviar or Hitachi 5k3000. Try to get an intel mobo, i have good results with both of mine (check sig for more details).

This is just me, but i personally wouldnt buy Sandy Bridge anymore having Ivy Bridge so close on release, the idle seems very similar so no gain for what you looking, but they are rummorerd to be 5-10% faster and consume 20% less in loads, so while you are not improving the idle you are working faster and consuming less while you really working, and the cpu should be very similarly priced.

As Hfat also pointed, key for a low idle setup is the PSU, try to get a Gold rated PSU, i have good luck with Seasonic X series, and also good results with external brick/PSU like picoPSU (check my sig for more info).

Good luck with your choice,

One thing as you look through the Intel made mobo's - some aren't being updated with an Ivy Bridge compatible UEFI..if sometime in the future you were thinking of popping in an IVB CPU for an upgrade.