Low Idle Power Core i5 System?

[pressingonalways]

Hi all,

I've been researching the ideal low power system. I have an Atom PC and it's great at taking less than 35 watts, but it is getting a bit too slow for me.


I've been reading Tom's Hardware Review article that you can get a i5 to 25 watt idle load and was hoping I could achieve something similar. I am currently looking to get:

Core i5-660
Intel DH57JG Mini-ITX
PICOPSU-150-XT
2xWD2000EARS 2TB Drives
2x2GB RAM (undecided what type to get)

I have 3 questions about this:

Is the PicoPSU powerful enough for this system?

Does anyone have any kill-o-watt power consumption readings for the DH57Jg+core i5+PicoPSU combo?

Would my system be running idle if I had VMs loaded? I run a linux VM on my windows Atom PC so I can get the best of both worlds. If the VM system wasn't doing too much, would the system stay at idle power consumption?


The last one is very important because if my system won't stay idle and the VM will make the cpu go into full utilization mode, the i5 would not be ideal at 80 watt peak consumption. I would be looking to get something with a lower peak consumption. Currently I don't notice much of a difference with the Atom since it is all low power... very little difference between peak and idle.

Anyone have any insight on these? Thanks.

[m0002a]

I have a question about your VM setup. Do you use Windows 7, etc to run the VM with Linux, or some other VM software?

[pressingonalways]

I have a question about your VM setup. Do you use Windows 7, etc to run the VM with Linux, or some other VM software?

Currently on my atom, I'm running windows 2k8 host OS and VMWare. With the i5 offering more power, I would probably run Windows 7 Ultimate with 2 VMs, linux and Win2k8... I may switch over to virtualbox or stick with vmware, I haven't decided yet.

[scdr]

Don't know about the VM question.

If you want low idle power - have you looked at a Mac Mini, less than 10 watts idle, with Core 2 Duo.

Will the Intel board allow you to undervolt? If not, you might want to
consider one that will.

Why do you want the low idle power? (Insert standard comments about the energy in manufacture being greater than that in use, so going for something second hand, or that will serve needs for a long time more important, etc. )

[pressingonalways]

Hi scdr,

Mac mini would be nice, but it doesn't give me the flexibility to add 4TB of HD space...

Yes, I understand that power is negligible... but keeping the power requirements to a minimum is one of my personal goals in this project. I'm putting together a new system that will be running 24/7... I rather it take as little power and be as quiet as possible than just to use any old machine that takes 100-200 watts per hour. If I'm spending money and time to research this, I might as well make it power efficient if it isn't going to cost me too much extra. Also, low power means I can probably get away with passive cooling or keeping the fans spinning at a minimum and such.

[scdr]

Have you considered ways to let it sleep or turn off part of the time (wake on timer, wake on LAN, etc.) so doesn't have to be on 24/7? (Makes it even quieter and saves even more power than a low idle.)

Some boards do better at Wake on LAN, etc. (and some have problems waking up) so worth considering when shopping.

(Making it power efficient makes sense - just asked because there are various reasons why people go for low power (e.g. off grid, "greenness", noise, ...), and some of those reasons lead to different trade-offs, etc.)

As noted - undervolting support helps with the power. According to what I have read, many Intel boards are a bit anemic in the voltage adjustments. Boards by some of the other makers (e.g. Gigabyte) may have more flexibility in that area, but I have no experience with the board in question.

[pressingonalways]

Yes, I have considered WOL and such, but I am running my own web server and don't want my site (albeit my very small personal website) to go down at night....

I'll look into undervolting... anyone have any recommendations on undervoltable mobos?

[stevea]

Hi all,

I've been researching the ideal low power system. I have an Atom PC and it's great at taking less than 35 watts, but it is getting a bit too slow for me.


I've been reading Tom's Hardware Review article that you can get a i5 to 25 watt idle load and was hoping I could achieve something similar. I am currently looking to get:

Core i5-660
Intel DH57JG Mini-ITX
PICOPSU-150-XT
2xWD2000EARS 2TB Drives
2x2GB RAM (undecided what type to get)

I have -
i5-650 (o'clocked to 4Ghz max)
GB H57M-USB2x2GB G.Skill ECO DDR3
2x Seagate SATA (7200..10 series)
PSU is this 300W 80+ Seasonic.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article792-page4.html

At idle the system (including PSU) draw 47watts
At startup there is a pulse around 105 watts.
With all core and the disks loaded it's 118 Watts.

IMO your Intel MOBO will draw a bit less power (Intel MOBOs seem to always win on power efficiency). The later Seagate disks (7200.12 for example) will draw several less watt each. My PSU is perhaps averaging 80% effic on these loads, while your Pico willl be 15% better (they claim 96% efficiency at the converter).

FWIW I'm running Linux, Also I'm considering this same PICO.

I have 3 questions about this:
Is the PicoPSU powerful enough for this system?

Yes - almost certainly. If you need to add some graphics card you'll have an issue, but as described you are fine.

Does anyone have any kill-o-watt power consumption readings for the DH57Jg+core i5+PicoPSU combo?

As described above for my mobo. Of course Linux isn't Windows. Still I doubt you can pull 150Watts with your hardware.

Would my system be running idle if I had VMs loaded? I run a linux VM on my windows Atom PC so I can get the best of both worlds. If the VM system wasn't doing too much, would the system stay at idle power consumption?

A VM is just another process and it will use CPU and memory and disk. When the VM is "idle" then the CPU load drops very considerably. The power draw with the guest idle should be low, but this may depend on the virtualization software. Using KVM on a Linux host, with a Linux guest idle. The VM process is using ~1.5% of the host CPU resource, and the i5 is at it's lowest speedstep setting (1.5Ghz w/ my settings).

As an aside the speed step on the Intel i3/i5/17 has a higher ratio of max:idle clock rates (for example idle is only 37% of max in my i5, but on many other processors the low clock rate is perhaps 60% of max, so you can really save a lot of power when the CPU is idling.

It might be smart to create and affinity between the VM application and one of the cores, but I don't know how you do that in Windows.

The last one is very important because if my system won't stay idle and the VM will make the cpu go into full utilization mode, the i5 would not be ideal at 80 watt peak consumption. I would be looking to get something with a lower peak consumption. Currently I don't notice much of a difference with the Atom since it is all low power... very little difference between peak and idle.

You might want to look at the CPU performance monitor on the atom, rather that the watts pulled. I hope you will see the VM using little CPU when the guest is idle.

I think you are fine. OF course you can over/under clock that CPU to control the max power. OTOH it seems that Intel mobo BIOSes are usually pretty weak on "tweaks".

[irev210]

Hi all,

I've been researching the ideal low power system. I have an Atom PC and it's great at taking less than 35 watts, but it is getting a bit too slow for me.


I've been reading Tom's Hardware Review article that you can get a i5 to 25 watt idle load and was hoping I could achieve something similar. I am currently looking to get:

Core i5-660
Intel DH57JG Mini-ITX
PICOPSU-150-XT
2xWD2000EARS 2TB Drives
2x2GB RAM (undecided what type to get)

I have 3 questions about this:

Is the PicoPSU powerful enough for this system?

Does anyone have any kill-o-watt power consumption readings for the DH57Jg+core i5+PicoPSU combo?

Would my system be running idle if I had VMs loaded? I run a linux VM on my windows Atom PC so I can get the best of both worlds. If the VM system wasn't doing too much, would the system stay at idle power consumption?


The last one is very important because if my system won't stay idle and the VM will make the cpu go into full utilization mode, the i5 would not be ideal at 80 watt peak consumption. I would be looking to get something with a lower peak consumption. Currently I don't notice much of a difference with the Atom since it is all low power... very little difference between peak and idle.

Anyone have any insight on these? Thanks.

http://www.missingremote.com/index.php? ... mitstart=2

yes, this guy reveiwed with your PSU.

As you can see, very low power usage.

[pressingonalways]

A VM is just another process and it will use CPU and memory and disk. When the VM is "idle" then the CPU load drops very considerably. The power draw with the guest idle should be low, but this may depend on the virtualization software. Using KVM on a Linux host, with a Linux guest idle. The VM process is using ~1.5% of the host CPU resource, and the i5 is at it's lowest speedstep setting (1.5Ghz w/ my settings).

As an aside the speed step on the Intel i3/i5/17 has a higher ratio of max:idle clock rates (for example idle is only 37% of max in my i5, but on many other processors the low clock rate is perhaps 60% of max, so you can really save a lot of power when the CPU is idling.

Hi stevea, thanks for your very informative post. That was one of the questions I meant to ask. I get ~10-20% cpu utilization on my Atom right now and I was wondering what levels are considered idle. I definitely will be able to stay within the 37% of max and stay in the idle range a majority of the time! That is very promising!


The most I want to do is watch bluray through HDMI out, which I think a core i5 can do very easily.


Irev, thank you for posting that review... It has helped get more of an idea for that side of things too!