best option for moderate performance, very low power?

cloneman · Post by **cloneman** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:10 pm

I'm basically looking to build a tiny noiseless system - flash memory for the hard disk, passive cooling.

I was looking at my options... I'm wondering what would be best nowadays:

- Socket 479 Desktop board with Core Duo ULV or LV (9-17W) (CPUs are impossible to find though)

- Turion Based desktop system (?W)

- Intel Atom platform (Less than 5W... but performance lower than single-core pentium M's)

- AMD 64 system with forced downclock/downvoltage (20W?)

The idea is to use passive cooling without the need for a ridiculously imposing heatsink - so keeping the cpu power below 25W is important.

Since 80mm Nexus fans are totally inaudible at 6-7 volts I MAY consider throwing one in - don't know if it will make much of a difference since the airflow level seems almost nonexistant.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:10 pm

If you want a really cool and quiet system, I'd go for either the Atom or the D201GLY2 systems. Pair that with a PicoPSU, flash drive, and a single 80mm nexus at minimum speed and you should be good to go. Get one of the 40mm Scythe mini-kaze fans and put that on the CPU heatsink though - you'll want some sort of active cooling. Don't worry - those fans are basically silent unless you put your head right next to them.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:29 am

How about wait for a Via Nano (isaiah) board with nVidia chipset?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:54 am

nVidia chipsets are hotter than Intel's. So they would need more cooling...

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:50 pm

An undervolted/underclocked Sempron/A64 is probably the best best. Performance will be good and can always be ramped up when you need it, plus it will be by far the cheapest option.

Beware of Via stuff. Performance from the CPU and chipset tends to be terrible.

Spare Tire · Post by **Spare Tire** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:14 pm

Not true about the new via nano. It kick atom's ass and very low power consumption.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:53 am

My 'silent minimalist workstation' concept, that I may build if I have enough time, is detailed below:

- case and PSU: Antec NSK 3480 with Fortron Zen 300, side vent blocked.
- motherboard: AM2 with integrated graphics (AMD 780G or nVidia 8200), chipset cooler HR-05 SLI.
- CPU and heatsink: 4850e undervolted by 15% and underclocked by 20%, down to 2 GHz, estimated power 20-22W, cooled by ducted HR-01+.
- fans: 2x Scythe Slipstream 500 rpm, the one on the CPU heatsink will be removed after the undervolting, leaving only the 500 rpm ducted exhaust.
- memory: 2x2GB DDR2-800 Corsair or Mushkin; DVD drive: Pioneer 215; OS: probably XP with the /3GB switch, not the broken one...

- HDD and cooler: WD 640 GB or 1GB in Scythe Quiet Drive, sitting on foam on the bottom of the case (the SLI version of the HR-05 allows enough space).

This should be almost as silent as a completely fanless build. I know I couldn't tell the difference (can't hear a Nexus fan at 500 rpm from 1 m).

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:24 am

For AMD I think Ninja is still plenty good. Gigabyte is getting soon new MicroAtx board for 780G which has onboard 128Mb GDDR3 and all solid capacitors. its called: GA-MA78GPM-DS2H. It also has bigger heatsink. Similar to my GA-MA78G-DS3H and that chipset is cool. HWmonitor shows 39 to 41 degree's and heeatsink is cool to touch even I use IGP.

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:07 pm

Spare Tire wrote:Not true about the new via nano. It kick atom's ass and very low power consumption.

The reviews and benchmarks I have seen so far say otherwise.

After the dismal failure that was the C7 EPIA boards, it's not surprising. The C7 boards simply did not do what they claimed to, and performance both for the CPU and chipset (IDE/SATA/gigabit LAN/USB) were all terrible.

To give you an example my C7 gets maximum 30MB/sec via gigabit LAN using a TCP/IP benchmark (i.e. theoretical maximum throughput, not RAM or disk limited) and a Pentium III 1GHz gets 80MB/sec.

The built-in hardware AES acceleration is supposed to handle gigabytes per second too, but using the Via StrongBox utility I get only a few megabytes per second performance. TrueCrypt running only on the CPU is faster.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 5:30 am

I know this is probably too easy for a solution, but why not just buy Asus Eee PC 901 ultra portable laptop?

Tzupy wrote:My 'silent minimalist workstation' concept, that I may build if I have enough time, is detailed below:

- case and PSU: Antec NSK 3480 with Fortron Zen 300, side vent blocked.
- motherboard: AM2 with integrated graphics (AMD 780G or nVidia 8200), chipset cooler HR-05 SLI.
- CPU and heatsink: 4850e undervolted by 15% and underclocked by 20%, down to 2 GHz, estimated power 20-22W, cooled by ducted HR-01+.
- fans: 2x Scythe Slipstream 500 rpm, the one on the CPU heatsink will be removed after the undervolting, leaving only the 500 rpm ducted exhaust.
- memory: 2x2GB DDR2-800 Corsair or Mushkin; DVD drive: Pioneer 215; OS: probably XP with the /3GB switch, not the broken one...
- HDD and cooler: WD 640 GB or 1GB in Scythe Quiet Drive, sitting on foam on the bottom of the case (the SLI version of the HR-05 allows enough space).

This should be almost as silent as a completely fanless build. I know I couldn't tell the difference (can't hear a Nexus fan at 500 rpm from 1 m).

Pretty much an overkill cooling. I had the NSK3400, but moved my new rig back to Nexus Breeze, because NSK3400 truly needs a fanless psu to be silent. So I sold it away. Couldn't decide on the new case, so I'm still using my old Breeze.

On cooler days my 4850e idled around 23 degrees with cool and quit. For the past few days, I have stopped using CnQ and instead undervolted from 1.25v to 1.1v (12% undervolt). Clockspeed is still stock. With Ninja Rev B. my cpu temp is 29 degrees at light load (Itunes, browsing with FF3 with 50 pages open, some with embedded videos). Ninja has a fan (stock) running at 650rpm controlled by the motherboard. My raptor is inside a SQD and sitting on 5 cms of foam on bottom of the case, right above a Nexus at 700 rpm. First I kept the case closed, but S12 ramped up too easily when it's the only exhaust, so now my case is open. But relatively it's much quieter then my NSK3400 build was (mainly because of the lack of direct psu noise). Temps measured with Gigabyte EasyTune 5 Pro.

I also build a system with NSK4480, Asus M2A-VM HDMI (690G), 4850e /w Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 PWM, WD GP 500GB for my uncle and it was also pretty cool at 21 degrees idle. It was also pretty quiet at default. Temps measured with Asus PC Probe II.

Anyway my point is 4850e is really cool cpu. Not much point in putting a HR-01+ on it. I already had Ninja, otherwise I might have settled on something like AC Alpine 64 PWM.

kingpotnoodle · Post by **kingpotnoodle** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:36 am

- memory: 2x2GB DDR2-800 Corsair or Mushkin; DVD drive: Pioneer 215; OS: probably XP with the /3GB switch, not the broken one...

You do know that using the /3GB switch will still not allow you to utilise all of that 4GB RAM with XP 32bit?

The /3GB switch changes the ratio of address space allocated to kernel and user tasks, it's normally split 2GB/2GB but adding the 3GB switch makes it 3GB/1GB (user/kernel)

I suggest you do some googling... or maybe read this:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/for ... 7007080931

frank2003 · Post by **frank2003** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 5:19 pm

kingpotnoodle wrote:
You do know that using the /3GB switch will still not allow you to utilise all of that 4GB RAM with XP 32bit?

Just want to add to this: From experience the /3GB boot flag does diddly for your application unless you also has a tool that makes the application take advantage of this split. For example, if you have Microsoft Visual Studio you can run the program editbin.exe with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE parameter on the executable. Unless do do this, you application will still crash once it gets close to the 2GB user space limit.

alecmg · Post by **alecmg** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:11 pm

undervolted wolfdale is also easy to cool passively. And it offers better performance (per watt too I believe) than any alternative.

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 4:05 am

@kingpotnoodle & frank2003: I am aware of the limitations of the /3GB switch.
I write graphics software (using VS 2005 Pro) that may, under certain circumstances, get out of memory with only 2GB.
And I don't have yet time to port the stuff to 64-bit, which would involve installing the 64-bit Vista first.
So the extra 1 GB would make a difference on the short term. And 2x2 GB memory is cheap as chips these days.

@alecmg: you are right, the E8400 has much better performance per watt than the 4850e, but you'd be stuck with the Intel integrated graphics.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:07 pm

thejamppa wrote:For AMD I think Ninja is still plenty good. Gigabyte is getting soon new MicroAtx board for 780G which has onboard 128Mb GDDR3 and all solid capacitors. its called: GA-MA78GPM-DS2H. It also has bigger heatsink. Similar to my GA-MA78G-DS3H and that chipset is cool. HWmonitor shows 39 to 41 degree's and heeatsink is cool to touch even I use IGP.

Looks like the GA-MA78GPM-DS2H is available.

I wonder how the onboard memory and better components (i.e. "ultra durable 2" to use Gigabyte's marketing speak) affect power consumption. This board is pretty tempting to me; thinking about updating my HTPC, and this paired with a 4050e is a tempting solution.

Licaon · Post by **Licaon** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:42 pm

i got a small system build recently

AMD Athlon64 X2 4850e+ 45W w/ Scythe Ninja+ Rev. B fanless
Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H
2x1Gb Corsair DDR2-800 5-5-5-18
Seagate 250Gb 16Mb SATA2
Antec EA380W
Antec NSK3480
1x120mm Scythe M 850rpm out

the chipset heatsink is pretty hot, don't know why

also the k8temp sensor in Linux is behaving strangely, it outputs 2 values per core, one negative, one positive, and they're like +4 or -6 degrees Celsius, and they'll get up to +14 if it does any processing, so it need some sort of correction

sandos · Post by **sandos** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:47 pm

Sounds like you have a similar problem as I do:

http://sandos.se/munin/sanddesk/sanddes ... _temp.html

My temps have always been very bogus. Too lazy to find out a fix anymore, I googled when I bought my AMD motherboard.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:20 pm

Licaon wrote:i got a small system build recently

AMD Athlon64 X2 4850e+ 45W w/ Scythe Ninja+ Rev. B fanless
Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H
2x1Gb Corsair DDR2-800 5-5-5-18
Seagate 250Gb 16Mb SATA2
Antec EA380W
Antec NSK3480
1x120mm Scythe M 850rpm out

the chipset heatsink is pretty hot, don't know why

also the k8temp sensor in Linux is behaving strangely, it outputs 2 values per core, one negative, one positive, and they're like +4 or -6 degrees Celsius, and they'll get up to +14 if it does any processing, so it need some sort of correction

I have pretty similar build. I don't think it's your k8temp sensor. It's AMD chipset that "acts strangely". Try HWMonitor. I'm using it with XP, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with Linux.

Licaon · Post by **Licaon** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:51 am

Erssa wrote:I have pretty similar build. I don't think it's your k8temp sensor. It's AMD chipset that "acts strangely". Try HWMonitor. I'm using it with XP, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with Linux.

k8temp is a specific module that would work only in Linux, for now i blame him for this misreads

HWMonitor is a Windows specific utility that load a special driver into the kernel, this does not yet work with WINE in Linux

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 10:30 am

Licaon wrote:
Erssa wrote:I have pretty similar build. I don't think it's your k8temp sensor. It's AMD chipset that "acts strangely". Try HWMonitor. I'm using it with XP, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with Linux.
k8temp is a specific module that would work only in Linux, for now i blame him for this misreads

HWMonitor is a Windows specific utility that load a special driver into the kernel, this does not yet work with WINE in Linux

I see.

Anyway. AMD has "always" been a bit different to other chipsets. Speedfan would crash my old RD480 motherboard. Now with 780G, speedfan gives incorrect readings, just like CoreTemp and you k8temp...