New pc. Want <50 watts idle

[esaym]

I need to build a new system for my grandmother. I would like to have the system not use more than 50 watts idle. I am seeing that the newer dual core amd's are drawing like 80 watts idle and 170 watts load? Is that correct?! I have been reading for hours trying to figure out all this and collect data. I am really eating up a lot of time. Does anyone have any recommendations? Maybe just use the 45 watt single core 2ghz amd?

[jhhoffma]

Straight from Newegg.

Energy efficient!

Reviewed By: hoon on 2/6/2008
Rating + 5Rating + 5Rating + 5Rating + 5Rating + 5
Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: Low energy consumption. My home server PC uses only 35W total when idle. I have a BE-2300 with one 500GB SATA HDD, two 1GB RAM sticks, running on a ECS nforce 7050 board which came with the CPU as a great deal. MB and CPU only costed me $70. I also use a high efficiency antec earth power 380W. My system is really quiet, and snappy too.

Cons: Included AMD fan makes some humming noise when running slow. I just replaced it with a larger cooling fan, with constant very low speed, it's really quiet now.

Other Thoughts: If the computer case is well ventalized, I would even try fanless with a large aluuminium block installed on the CPU. This is a awesome CPU, I am thinking of keeping my computer on 24/7 as soon as I learn more Ubuntu networking.

[mcoleg]

what your grandmother will be using it for? if it's not graphics or cpu -intensive, you could build her a small, quiet box around D201gly2.

viewtopic.php?t=44140&highlight=

energy draw would be just about what you are looking for.

[esaym]

Thank you jhhoffma for your responce

what your grandmother will be using it for? if it's not graphics or cpu -intensive, you could build her a small, quiet box around D201gly2.

viewtopic.php?t=44140&highlight=

energy draw would be just about what you are looking for.

Yea I had already looked at that but "to get with the times" I was thinking that I might as well get some beefier hardware.


The Athlon X2 BE-2350 Brisbane doesn't look too bad actually.

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/AMD_BE2350/?page=4

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=3003&p=9

http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cpu_mo ... 0/p2.shtml

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... id=2&pg=13



I think this is probably going to be what I get:
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wi ... tle=granny

Not sure about the motherboard GIGABYTE GA-M61SME-S2. It will be running linux so any suggestions need to keep that in mind

[nutball]

I am seeing that the newer dual core amd's are drawing like 80 watts idle and 170 watts load? Is that correct?!

I don't know what's going on with those graphs but they're misleading. Ah yes now I see...

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

Low-end X2's idle at less than 80W especially if you can undervolt them. I'm guessing that granny won't be needing anything better than decent integrated graphics.

My HTPC is:

Athlon X2 3600+, undervolted with RMClock
1GB RAM
NVIDIA 7050PV-based uATX motherboard
250GB laptop hard-drive
PicoPSU + 80W passive DC PSU

and without its tuner cards it pulls just over 30W idle and ~55-60W under load (that's measured AC draw from the wall).

[esaym]

I am seeing that the newer dual core amd's are drawing like 80 watts idle and 170 watts load? Is that correct?!

I don't know what's going on with those graphs but they're misleading. Ah yes now I see...

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

Yea I noticed that too.

[mcoleg]

Yea I had already looked at that but "to get with the times" I was thinking that I might as well get some beefier hardware.

I think this is probably going to be what I get:
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wi ... tle=granny

you want you grandma to use linux? you are a brave man

anywho, i see where you are coming from with "beefier hardware"; i do think you are under-estimating the capabilities of D201gly2, just a bit. as a point of reference - it can play 720p vids full-screen, so...

your build, of course.

btw, there's a couple of things in that wish list that i thought i might mention.

first is the ram - it's cheap, get more. one gig is ok but the overall performance will benefit from doubling the amount to two gigs; much more than from increasing cpu speed or going dual-core.

second is the hard drive - for that money you can get a nice laptop drive, look around on newegg. it's going to be just as fast and it will keep the power consumption and the noise down.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

What about a 17" iMac? If you can find one on closeout, it would certainly meet your needs.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article594-page4.html

The 20" and the 24" models would be fine too -- if you include the fact that it's the monitor that puts the power higher. The 24" is just 31watt at idle with the monitor off:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article693-page4.html

[esaym]

Well thanks for the help everyone. I went ahead and bought the list that I posted. I am going to get 2 hard drives and use a software raid1 so granny's data is always good and that will hopefully prevent a future headache for me