Cheap ITX mainboard with lowest power consumption?

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:29 am

Hi, I had a Jeyway J7F2 mainboard with a AMD Geode NX1750 CPU but it seems the mainboard has failed silently, does not even try to power on any more

So I am on the lookout for the cheapest ITX mainboard with best power consumption figures, this is for a firewall, the HDD will be a 2.5" 32GB SSD drive, and a PCI based Intel dual port NIC

The Intel D201GLY2 mainboard seems to draw ca 20w bare bones according to most reviews, but the more recently released atom based mainboard Intel D945GCLF I am not able to find any reliable numbers on
Of course though in my eyes it has one advantage and that is the 100% Intel based chipsets (which unfortunantley draw like 10x as much power as the atom CPU but oh well)

Anyway, I want to know which is more power efficient, and if there are any other ITX mainboards at this price point I have missed...

Emyr · Post by **Emyr** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 5:38 am

What are your processor requirements? I was wondering if there are any EPIA mini-itx or nano-itx board+chip combos which would suit your needs?

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:31 am

http://materialistica.livedoor.biz/arch ... 17414.html

Pay attention to system idle & load power consumption, the difference between Intel D945GCLF and D201GLY was at most 5W under full load. Well, Intel 945 is a relative power hog compared to SiS solution under this circumstance.

Anyway, D945GCLF is very slightly more energy efficient than D201GLY.

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:55 pm

My CPU requirements are very modest, the original VIA C3 500Mhz CPU has enough performance for quite advanced routing...

So either of those two systems above are really overkill, nothing bad with that of course tho...

But atleast here in Sweden the VIA systems are 2x the cost of the Intel ones...
http://www.prisjakt.nu/kategori.php?k=4 ... is_inkmoms

loimlo; thanks for the info!

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 5:47 am

You're welcome.

Btw, I suggest you to buy a Pico for such a low load system. You'll meet at lease 10W difference in comparison to an averaged PSU.

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 1:09 pm

loimlo; I might have gone pico if I didn't already have the ITX chassi, PSU etc...
Plus that price is an important role for me, so the new Atom based Intel mobo will fit the bill very nicley...

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:35 am

The Intel DG45FC mainboard with any of the compatible S775 CPU's; would it be able to come even close to the power consumption of the Intel D945GCLF Atom ITX board?

I'm asking just because it would make the system much more versatelite incase I decide to build a firewall from something more daunting in the future like a soekris board or something similar...

I also saw the Kontron KTUS15/mITX 1.6Ghz board, that would be my dream board, not released yet tho and no pricing info

http://us.kontron.com/products/boards+a ... x++16.html

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:25 am

You've changed your mind dramatically in the past few days from one spectrum to opposite spectrum.

Anyway, Anand had a G35 pairing with E7200 power consumption for your reference. Though there's definitely a difference between G35/G45, I don't hink it would be day and night. CPU undervolting surely would improve its consumption, but your mileage may vary.
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=462

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:33 am

Yea I know, I'm just entertaining the idea, it would probably end up costing more than I would like... (both in purcache price and electricity consumption)

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:37 am

I'm assuming the Intel Celeron 4XX series of CPU's are the lowest wattage CPU's available from Intel in S775?

If so 35W TDP + The mainboard sounds like much but that is max rating I take it? Since the system is mostly idle where would that land me?
Any CPU's I've overlooked?

theycallmebruce · Post by **theycallmebruce** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:17 am

How about one of these Per?

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

As an indication of power consumption they run off 12V 2.5A power bricks. Good operating system support. Can recommend.

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 9:07 am

theycallmebruce; Yea, I've been considering them before but they are kind of expensive plus that now I already have a ITX chassi with a power adapter plus DC/DC ATX power supply board... (Travla C137)

http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10409

sousa · Post by **sousa** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 9:22 am

theycallmebruce wrote:How about one of these Per?

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

I second that. I have an 2C3 model and am very happy with it.
I posted some [vague] first impressions back on January, here.

The Soekris equivalent - 5501 models - have the advantage of having a PCI slot(you could use your intel nic or a gigabit nic*), more RAM and a SATA connector. As for the disadvantages, I'd say size and price.

(*)According to this, you are likely to get less than 200Mbit worth of throughput from gigabit. Not that bad, in my opinion.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 9:58 am

Per Hansson wrote:I'm assuming the Intel Celeron 4XX series of CPU's are the lowest wattage CPU's available from Intel in S775?

If so 35W TDP + The mainboard sounds like much but that is max rating I take it? Since the system is mostly idle where would that land me?
Any CPU's I've overlooked?

Probably above 40W at idle with an normal PSU instead of a highly efficient Pico. It's the experience I learnt from countless Intel, AMD, nVIDIA combinations. Btw, Intel never advertised G45 would draw far less power than G35.

Though I admit my Seasonic SS-200SFD, SS-300SFD is relatively inefficient compared to 80Plus certified PSUs, Pico still dominates the peace land of tiny loading.

cd8uk · Post by **cd8uk** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:02 am

For info my new basic folding@home rig consumes only 37w idle and 57w under Prime95 load:

CPU - E7200 @ 2.5ghz (7.5 *333) at 0.880v (0.925v BIOS)
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L iG31 which is a fully functional budget, quiet, undervoltable mATX board with intel GMA X3100 onboard VGA
RAM - single 2GB stick of corsair value DDR2-667
HDD - 60GB seagate momentus 5400.2 2.5 laptop sata drive
PSU - Enermax Pro82+ 385w

I realise that my undervolting may be a bit better than normal but the power consumption figures are imo excellent.
My D210GLY2 system consumes roughly 30w idle and 40w load but at significantly reduced performance.
I much prefer the E7200/G31 combo as it provides a full PCI-E, multi SATA, dual core system at barely 7w idle diff and no more than 10-15w diff in regular use.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:01 am

cd8uk wrote:For info my new basic folding@home rig consumes only 37w idle and 57w under Prime95 load:

Those are awesome numbers and near exactly what I plan for my raid box...except for extra hd's obviously. That gives me good hope for keeping my machine at around 45w idle and 70w load.

cd8uk · Post by **cd8uk** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:42 am

Thanks. I played around a little bit more and although the idle figure wouldn't budge from 37w I could get down to 50w Prime95 load (or 44w under F@H SMP which is a realistic heavy load) by dropping the E7200 from 2.5Ghz to 2.0GHz (7.5*333 @ 0.880v to 6.0*333 @ 0.784) which would still be more than sufficient CPU power for 'normal' usage.

You have to bear in mind though that I'm running at 240V AC.

Also my power measurements are through a radioshack-esque power meter so I can't guarantee their reliability but they've always felt reasonable to me.

Per Hansson · Post by **Per Hansson** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:00 pm

Just wanted to post a small heads up now that I have my system up running

I bought the Intel D945GCLF for my chassi, the system with SSD drive and a dual port Intel NIC drew 50w from the wall, and the annoying fan in the AC adapter for my Travala C137 case spun up with an annoyingly rattling sound

So I bought a AC adapter on eBay with no fan for like nothing... (It's called LSE9802A2060)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0255265066

With it my idle power draw dropped down to 38w!
And so now it is very silent, I also exchanged the chipset cooler for this one;
http://www.enzotechnology.com/cnb_r1.htm

However it still was not able to work without a fan; the heatsink quite quickly got above 70Â°C in an open system... So I put the fan from the original heatsink on it at 6v with a Zalman adapter which makes it perfectly inaudiable for my needs... And it runs only ca 50Â°C now...

The system works really well as my Firewall, I'm using it with 1GB DDR2 RAM...