Zotac ION 330 or CORE2 low power and cheap HTPC

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 1:46 pm

Hi all,

I am looking at building a low power HTPC.

I would like the whole system to use less then 50W when not using the optical drive. Preferably less then that and Less then 30W when idle.

I don't want to spend more then $300 and preferably less. I am going to make a case from whatever I can find and I already have a HD and Blu-Ray Drive. I also already have the display and cables. All I think I need is PSU, MB, CPU, wifi and RAM. I guess to be quite a Core2 or AMD system would need a after market HSF.

The OS will be Windows 7. (I got it preordered when it was cheap)

It has to do the following
-Drive 1920x1080p display through DVI or HDMI with HDCP
-Play Blu-Ray discs with Total Media Theater 3
-Upscale DVDs with SIMHD in Total Media Theater 3
-Play Hulu videos
-Be quite
-have wifi
-have optical or coaxial SPDIF

My first candidate was the Zotac Ion 330. It basically has everything I need except the ram so I figured the system would cost about $250.

I was wondering if a competitive core2 or AMD system could be built. The problem is that I think a good low power fanless PSU will cost close to $100. It would also probably need an aftermarket HSF to be quite. Also I am not sure how much power it will use when idle.

The motivation for this project is to replace my current HTPC which uses ~150W at idle and at $0.15/kWh it is costing me about $100-$150 a year. Obviously to justify the project the new system has to be cheap and very low power.

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:41 pm

I came up with two other configuration that seemed practical though it is hard to know how power efficient.

PSU ???
New Egg has a broad range of cheap sub 200W PSUs but they all have fans and are of dubious quality.

AMD
CPU: Sempron 140 based system $37
MB: 785G chipset with 4200 HD graphics $80

Intel
CPU: Celeron 430 $40
MB: ZOTAC GF9300-A-E Geforce 9300 based board $80

Not really sure which was is better or what the total power consumption would be. If anyone know what the power consumption at the outlet for either system would be please let me know. Also let me know if you know of a good, affordable, efficient, and fanless PSU.

ilovejedd · Post by **ilovejedd** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 6:47 pm

barefootzero wrote:MB: ZOTAC GF9300-A-E Geforce 9300 based board $80

This one's Micro-ATX and not Mini-ITX. You mentioned you were building your own case but do you have any size considerations?

barefootzero wrote:Not really sure which was is better or what the total power consumption would be. If anyone know what the power consumption at the outlet for either system would be please let me know. Also let me know if you know of a good, affordable, efficient, and fanless PSU.

Less than 30W at idle might be difficult, but 30~40W is achievable. Assuming a basic build, even a 90W PicoPSU plus 80W brick should be sufficient juice. Cost is maybe around $60.

JamieG · Post by **JamieG** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:37 pm

barefootzero wrote: Intel
CPU: Celeron 430 $40
MB: ZOTAC GF9300-A-E Geforce 9300 based board $80

Not really sure which was is better or what the total power consumption would be. If anyone know what the power consumption at the outlet for either system would be please let me know. Also let me know if you know of a good, affordable, efficient, and fanless PSU.

Have a look at the power usage of the Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi (the mini ITX version of the motherboard you listed) with a E7200 (EIST enabled). It maxes out at 65W with full artificial CPU and GPU load and idles at 35W.

The Celeron 430 that you are looking at should use a bit less power, so maybe subtract a couple of watts from the load and idle figures generated by using the E7200.

A 90W picoPSU with an 80W brick as mentioned by ilovejedd would be ideal.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:23 am

While the Celeron 430 will use less power it does not support speed stepping and will not throttle down under load. With that in mind, I think the e5x00 would be a better choice. Much better performance and bang for your buck.

This is also an option and just showed up this AM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116264

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:48 am

Trav1s wrote:While the Celeron 430 will use less power it does not support speed stepping and will not throttle down under load. With that in mind, I think the e5x00 would be a better choice. Much better performance and bang for your buck.

This is also an option and just showed up this AM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116264

The e3300 looks tempting. I wasn't able to find a review that did power consumption for a e3300 system with a low power PSU. Xbit Labs measured the power under load on the 12V line as ~20W

So including shipping

PSU $77
E3300 $64
MB:
Zotac Geforce 9300; $130 mini itx w/ wifi (The micro atx version has a
dumb fan)
or ASUS P5N7A-VM $120 (has more then 2 sata ports)
Ram:
2x2GB $50

Total
~$310

I am not sure which MB to go with. Does anyone know which one is more reliable? IMO the most important thing fo a HTPC is that it always works perfectly. If anyone knows of any problems like resuming from S3 or hybernate please tell me. I think I am leaning towards the Zotac though I have a spare wifi usb dongle the complaints on new egg about hdmi problems with the ASUS board worry me.

I dont really care if its micro ATX or mini Itx. Mini ITX might produce a sexier box but the SATA blu-ray drive and SATA HD would fill the SATA ports. I guess I could plug the BD into the esata port. I have gotten use to having RAID 1 on all my systems but I dont really need it.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:21 am

I have the zotac board one level below that NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500020

System info:
NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
2 gigs (1x2) Crucial DDR2-667
e5300
WD 640 gig Blue Sata HD
Leftover LG PATA DVD burner
Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

I am quite impressed with it. Set-up and install with XPPro was painless and it is very stable. I have used an e2200 in it (light overclock) and currently am using an e5300. Processor swap was painless and it booted right up seeing the change. Tweaked the bios and it has been running for a week without a hitch. I used SisoftSandra to burn it and that was eventless. FWIW

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 2:39 pm

Hey,

I was looking briefly at the AMD camp and wondering id there is a competive low power solution from the green team?

JamieG · Post by **JamieG** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 4:00 pm

barefootzero wrote:I was looking briefly at the AMD camp and wondering id there is a competive low power solution from the green team?

The Zotac 8200 Mini ITX Wifi is the AMD equivalent of the board you were looking at. The BIOS options allow for some undervolting of the CPU, which is a nice change from the Intel version, which is more locked down. This board also has 4 SATA ports.

AMD's 780G chipest is popular too. There is an updated 785G version of this chipset as well. (Just be aware that the SPCR review of the 785G-based board used a more powerful processor than the other two reviews).

Basically, you'd have to manually undervolt and underclock the CPU on the AMD boards to reach the power levels on the Intel boards with the E7200 installed.

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 4:31 pm

Does anyone know if either the ASUS or Zotac 9300 boards can drive the HDMI and DVI at the same time? Currently my projector is HDCP compliant but my LCD is not so I can't use the switch box I bought until I work that out. Running VGA through my walls would be to much work so that is not an option.

I am going to see if I can find a rev 3 of the Zotac 9300 wifi board. Aparently previouse versions did not support wake on usb which is sort of critical for my setup.

Right now the Asus board looks very good and also has plenty of SATA connectors though I could live with only 2. I wish there was a good side by side power consumption test of both boards with low power CPUs.

Tonight I am going to try to hunt down one of those microPSU at Fry's. Someone sad they had them for a good price. If they have a reasonable price on the other components I might walk home with a new system.

PartEleven · Post by **PartEleven** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:18 pm

Trav1s wrote:I have the zotac board one level below that NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500020

System info:
NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
2 gigs (1x2) Crucial DDR2-667
e5300
WD 640 gig Blue Sata HD
Leftover LG PATA DVD burner
Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

I am quite impressed with it. Set-up and install with XPPro was painless and it is very stable. I have used an e2200 in it (light overclock) and currently am using an e5300. Processor swap was painless and it booted right up seeing the change. Tweaked the bios and it has been running for a week without a hitch. I used SisoftSandra to burn it and that was eventless. FWIW

Did you try measuring your power consumption at load/idle? I'm going to be building something similar so I am curious.

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:39 pm

Well my hunt at Fry's was not fruitfull.

They had the 120 and 150 picoPSUs but they were packaged by another company and they put a bunch of blatant lies on the boxes. The worst was they claimed they could handle 120W and 150W respectively but packaged them with 60W and 80W AC-DC adapters. That sort of stuff pisses me of so i didn't get either.

For those that are still interested the 120 was $60 and the 150 was $80. This was at the Sacramento Fry's off Northgate Blvd.

They didn't have any 9300 based 775 boards at all and they had the celleron e3200 but not the e3300 and were charging $50 for it.

At any rate it was worth a look. Sometimes Fry's delivers and sometimes they don't

hybrid2d4x4 · Post by **hybrid2d4x4** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:01 pm

barefootzero wrote:Does anyone know if either the ASUS or Zotac 9300 boards can drive the HDMI and DVI at the same time?

Unless something's changed in the last few weeks/months, the answer is no, unfortunately.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:27 pm

PartEleven wrote:
Trav1s wrote:I have the zotac board one level below that NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500020

System info:
NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
2 gigs (1x2) Crucial DDR2-667
e5300
WD 640 gig Blue Sata HD
Leftover LG PATA DVD burner
Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

I am quite impressed with it. Set-up and install with XPPro was painless and it is very stable. I have used an e2200 in it (light overclock) and currently am using an e5300. Processor swap was painless and it booted right up seeing the change. Tweaked the bios and it has been running for a week without a hitch. I used SisoftSandra to burn it and that was eventless. FWIW
Did you try measuring your power consumption at load/idle? I'm going to be building something similar so I am curious.

Not yet but I am considering it....

JamieG · Post by **JamieG** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:04 pm

Trav1s wrote:
PartEleven wrote:
Trav1s wrote:I have the zotac board one level below that NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813500020

System info:
NF630I-F-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 Mini ITX WIFI
2 gigs (1x2) Crucial DDR2-667
e5300
WD 640 gig Blue Sata HD
Leftover LG PATA DVD burner
Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

I am quite impressed with it. Set-up and install with XPPro was painless and it is very stable. I have used an e2200 in it (light overclock) and currently am using an e5300. Processor swap was painless and it booted right up seeing the change. Tweaked the bios and it has been running for a week without a hitch. I used SisoftSandra to burn it and that was eventless. FWIW
Did you try measuring your power consumption at load/idle? I'm going to be building something similar so I am curious.
Not yet but I am considering it....

FWIW, my main PC is an E5200 at 2Ghz (1.0V) with a HR-01+ for cooling, Gigabyte G31-based motherboard, 1 x 2Gb stick of RAM and a 60Gb SSD. I also have a 1Tb Samsung F1 HDD that is sometimes connected.

Idle is 30-35W / full CPU load is about 45W at most from memory (may be off by a few watts though). Add about 5W for having the HDD switched on.

I've no DVD drive connected and the whole thing is run off a PW-200V with a 60W brick with no issues.

barefootzero · Post by **barefootzero** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:55 pm

Well i think my preferences might have switched slightly

I am now leaning towards the AMD 240 with either a 780g or 785g chipset.

These mothboards look promising
ECS Black Series A785GM-M (785g) $67 DDR3 (this mother board looks very good though I dont know how reliable ECS is)

MSI 785GM-E65 (785g) $90 DDR3 (SPCR seemed to like this one ok)

GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H (785g) $80 DDR2 (DDR2 would be cheaper but the ECS board is cheap enough to make up the difference. Also does not apear to have side port but I am not sure that matters.)

ASUS M3A78-EM (780g) $69 DDR2 (I have not been able to find any more conumption tests for this board. I am not very enthusiastic about getting a mobo with no am3 support.)

The ECS I think is at the top of the list for price and features and guru3D gave it a nice review but I am not sure about the credibility of guru3d or ECS.

If anyone can fill in any info reguarding power consumption of the Athlon 240 or any of the mobos I would apreciate it.