Looking to upgrade my AMD BE2350 based file/terminal server with something faster that will hopefully last for another 3-4 trouble free years. Current system idles at 29W and maxes out under 60W so looking to get at around or under 20W with an ivy bridge processor and a H77 chipset.

Microcenter has a good deal ($50 off) on the Intel DH77KC ATX board but doesn't carry any other Intel H77 board. I have been unable to find any power consumption numbers on this board but have found the DH77EB (MicroATX) and DH77DF (MiniATX) boards to be very efficient.

Does anyone have any numbers or thoughts if the DH77KC can match the 2 aforementioned boards in terms of idle power consumption? Are there any other H77 chipset or equivalent LGA1155 boards that will match the DH77DF/EB's low power consumption?

Thanks!

I went ahead with the upgrade and thought I'd post back power consumption numbers if anyone's interested.

Old System specs:

Motherboard: Asus M4A78S-M (micro ATX)
CPU: AMD BE-2350 @ 1.056V
RAM: 2x 2GB DDR2
Drive #1: OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD
Drive #2: WD Scorpio Blue 2.5" 640GB (WD6400BPVT)
Power Supply: Antec Earthwatts 430W
DVD-RW
1x Nexus case fan @ ~400rpm
1x AC Cooling PWM fan @ ~600rpm

Idle: 29W, max cpu load 60W, watching Netflix averages 54W

Everything from the old system was carried over to the new system with the exception of these items:

Motherboard: Intel DH77KC (ATX)
CPU: Intel i5-3570k ivy bridge
RAM: 2x 4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-12800 1.65V
1 additional Intel stock CPU fan (to be replaced later)

Idle: 29W, max cpu load 80W, watching Netflix averages 45W (~10 lower than before)


Overall I am very pleased that this larger ATX board and massively more powerful processor consumes exactly the same amount if power at idle as my old AMD box. It barely spikes above 40W when surfing the web & performing daily tasks when the old AMD would be ramping up to 80% CPU usage and consuming ~55W.

I'm sure that I could have dropped a few more watts with a smaller, more efficient Intel board & a picopsu but for it's hard to complain with what was in stock and available at the local store for immediate pickup. As with other Intel H77 boards, there were NO options to underclock/undervolt CPU or memory. Everything is at stock speeds/voltages.

As a side note, the system is as silent as before with only a minor tweak of the stock Intel fan management software to lower the minimum fan speeds. The CPU runs a little warmer than I'd like but the stock Intel fan is surprisingly quiet @ 1000 rpms.

Hope this helps anyone in the market for an Intel H77 board.

Very Interesting. Any comments about the difference in every day performance?

I noticed slowdowns on the old machine when multi-tasking - watching netflix while browsing or having multiple browsers open at the same time. This is all gone with the new CPU/mobo. Everything opens up instantaneously and CPU usage is a fraction of what it was before while performing the same tasks.

Can't ask for anything more - same idle power draw as a 5yr old "power efficient" AMD processor but with 7x the processing power (Passmark score of 7724 for the i5 and 991 for the BE-2350).

If energy efficiency is important, don't forget to enable C1E in the Intel DH77KC bios.