Want to build a good Energy saving PC

[ixos]

Why not?.. All you need to run a bunch of apps is more RAM. Things idling on a hidden window don't use CPU cycles.

Thats what i thought

[Ice Tea]

ASRock - ION 330

Dear Customer,

Idle mode : around 28.75W
Loading mode (Run 3DMark05 ) : around 39.6W

Yours Truly,
ASRock Inc.

[lego batman]

Now that he's banned I wonder what he went for.
Still, useful thread. Surely a netbook is better than a nettop?
Anyone know the standard power consumption of an external HDD? That will probably offset any difference.

[Ice Tea]

OooOOoO yeah so he is

he must have done something bad to get banned as they are pretty relaxed at Hexus

Back on topic

Problem as said before is your restricted with screen size with a Netbook or Laptop and if you start plugging in a larger external screen it somewhat makes it pointless.

[ice_chill]

This is a very interesting thread. I think if you like tinkering inside the PC, then build one, if you don't then get a net-top.

For low power CPUs you should look at 45nm pentium dualcores, such as E5200, they have "Deeper Sleep State (C4E) enabled" which reduces power in idle and sleep modes.

You can then drop the multiplier to downclock the chip.

Green hard drives vs normal you'll see no more than 3 watt difference, i.e 8 watt vs 11 watt.

You'll want intel's G41 series motherboard, look for a board with the lowest number of powerphases as these consume power just by being there.

To further tweek you can disable any motherboard features that you will not use, e.i. serial port, floppy port etc..
You can then down clock the memory from 800 to 667, and increase the latency to the max, this will of course save some power.
And main thing, get a quality power supply, and go for the smallest capacity possible, i.e. Corsair 400 watt, as a cheap PSU, or a high capacity/underloaded PSU will waste power.

BEST thing about such PC is, if in the future if you need some serious work done, you can always bring the performance back up or even upgrade some stuff.
OR EVEN OVERCLOCK!