Needed: cheapest of the cheap

rezzie · Post by **rezzie** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:33 am

Hi...

Lets straight to the problem. I need recommendation for 2 parts--processor and mainboard--and here is the criteria:

Processor:
- Low power consumption
- Easy to underclock/undervolt

Mainboard:
- Micro/mini ATX
- Wide range CPU undervolting/underclocking options in the BIOS
- Fan control options in the BIOS (not too important though)

and most of all it must be the cheapest and available on market as a brand new product.

Henk Poley · Post by **Henk Poley** » Tue May 22, 2007 5:37 am

What exactly do you want to do with it? I mean, if it's just going to be "an MP3 player" you can buy basicly anything and it will be fast enough.

Anyways, AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (uses socket 939 or AM2) currently has the best bang for the buck, according to Tom's Hardware.. but in the case of CPU's their benchmarking seems more or less fair (office, games, video/audio encoding). These AMD processors seem to undervolt quite well.

For the motherboard I'd say, go to Newegg.com and use their search tools. They are quite good and have lots of systems and mini reviews in their database.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Tue May 22, 2007 7:20 am

hard to get cheaper than socket 754 sempron +matx mb (eg ASRock K8NF6G).

rezzie · Post by **rezzie** » Tue May 22, 2007 10:05 am

Well, actually I have made my mind for the CPU, it will be either
Celeron D 331 (775) or AMD Sempron 3000+ (AM2). So I think
now I'll simplify my question to "Is there any cheap mATX
mainboard with good underclocking/undervolting ability
(socket 775 or AM2)?". I'll try searching on newegg again
though, before I tought it would be faster if I'm asking here.

BTW, this computer will be used as Proxy/File-server and maybe
an entertainment, multimedia, or office computer

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Tue May 22, 2007 11:11 am

Forget about the Celeron D. If you care about power consumption or noise level at all, there is no reason whatsoever to get any Pentium D or Celeron D.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Tue May 22, 2007 12:10 pm

ECS Geforce6100SM-M & RS485M-M has undervolt/clock options in bios (manuals here and here).

johno · Post by **johno** » Wed May 23, 2007 7:15 pm

I'd question a bit the value of manual undervolt/underclock. The modern chips and motherboards already effectively underclock and undervolt automatically with the cool n quiet for Athlons, or equivalent for Intel. With a suitable motherboard you can get lower than the cool n quiet goes to, but it would be diminishing returns.

As an example, an athlon x2 3600 brisbane with an efficient motherboard and power supply will run at around 45W in standard configuration. For a rough breakdown of the idle energy use:

Power supply: 13W
Hard Disk: 10W
DVD: 2W
Fans: 1W
CPU: 8W
Motherboard: 11W

There isn't much more to be pulled out of the CPU. However, there are substantial variations in motherboards, both in their power converters and chipset. These differences easily account for 10W in variation between builds with different motherboards. Even for the same chipset, some boards are more efficient than others.

So, my point? Probably what is more important is to find an efficient motherboard that has good cool n quiet support, rather than one that supports undervolting. Underclocking is an added benefit, but if the board that has it draws an extra 5W, all the time you spend fiddling with underclocking/undervolting won't even that back.

Come to think of it, do the semprons have cool & quiet? Better check.

The tough thing of course is to find out which mobos are efficient and which ones aren't. A bit of searching on the SPCR forums gives results some people have had with different boards, but the information is generally hard to come by.

Also, Henk mentioned the x2 3800+ - If I remember correctly the 3800 didn't come out in the new more efficient 65nm Brisbane core, so you'd want to go with 3600 or 4000 Brisbane for efficiency.