New budget energy efficient build

[spiral out]

Fancy moving on from my q6600 atx build to something more energy efficient and smaller. My computer is mainly used for web browsing and cd conversions to flac and mp3 and the odd bit of light gaming like left 4 dead 2 and metro.

Thinking of going i5 with the option to add in a gpu if I ever start gaming properly again.

Will be reusing my drives, w7 and PSU for now which is a corsair 520.

Is this motherboard ok?

Motherboard MSI B85M-E45 £50
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-b...-dvi-hdmi-matx

Core i5 4570 £147
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...tio-84w-retail

Corsair vengeance 2x4gb kit £65
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(...9-9-24-xmp-15v

Aerocool Dead Silence £75
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/aeroc...-window-w-o-ps

Thanks

[Dizzee]

why the mobo? B85?
ASRock H87M Pro4 is only £6 more... Amazon


The case.. if you like the look then sure.. but at £75 I'd expect a lot more (bit-tech summed up my own thoughts (and get paid to do it))
Silverstone SST-PS08W Precision as a very cheap (50% cheaper!) but credible alternative.

This is a funny build...

I'd lose the over-priced case and get the 4670K (in case you ever start properly gaming again).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would get a power meter and measure how much your PC consumes during low load and when gaming.

You might find it will take you years to get back the money you spent on new parts.

[Dizzee]

yup.. that also, the q6600 is still a good cpu

[spiral out]

why the mobo? B85?
ASRock H87M Pro4 is only £6 more... Amazon


The case.. if you like the look then sure.. but at £75 I'd expect a lot more (bit-tech summed up my own thoughts (and get paid to do it))
Silverstone SST-PS08W Precision as a very cheap (50% cheaper!) but credible alternative.

This is a funny build...

I'd lose the over-priced case and get the 4670K (in case you ever start properly gaming again).

Thanks i'll take a look at that board, is there something wrong with the b85 boards? I just didn't need the extra features of the h87 so was trying to cut costs on the motherboard.

I actually just liked the case to be honest, it was that or the prodigy m, went for this as it had side window usb and power on top and liked the fact motherboard sat flat in it.

No longer bothered by overclocking which is why i didn't bother with the 4670k

The Q6600 uses around 145w idle overclocked, i will be passing this machine on to the children, so not retiring it.

Cheers guys

[Pob255]

Well you could knock the overclock down around 2.7ghz (fsb 300mhz) you shouldn't need any voltage bump to sustain that and a lower power demand (even without increasing the voltage you will increase current draw by overclocking)

You could look at the i5 4570S not as powerful but lower power demand and should still be enough for gaming and the onboard graphics is fine for non-gaming needs.
You really don't need that much cpu power for games unless your running sli/crossfire with multiple high res monitors.
The other thing is if you get into youtube or live streaming games, because recording/streaming using a good chunk of cpu at the same time.

The Silverstone SST-PS08W is not a good case, fine as a cheap basic office use pc but nothing more, the Silverstone Precision PS07 is a far better option http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...usb-30-w-o-psu the layout is a bit odd at first glance but when you go into it it makes sense, plus it's wide, so no issue with large cpu coolers or big graphics cards.
As a budget case the coolermaster N200 is a better option http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...-psu-(std-atx)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqq1CnQnOZc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5mro17ZgZo

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The IGP on the Core i5 is not powerful enough for a game like Metro2033.

Moreover,the 8800GT has very poor idle power consumption anyway as it lacks dedicated 2D clocks - changing the graphics card alone will reduce idle and lower load power consumption a decent amount.

Once you do that I don't think the added cost of the Core i5 is worth it TBH, as it will take you a few years to get back the money saved in energy costs.

The problem is even a 100W low load power consumption reduction is not going to give enough savings. Even if you use the PC for 8 hours a day for web browsing,365 days a year,at 16P a KWH,you are saving less than £50 a year in electricity costs. You are spending £270 on a new CPU,motherboard and RAM alone.

If anything getting a more modern graphics card will probably cut idle to 100W and below,which probably means under 50W difference than a newer CPU.

Also FLAC conversions and CD ripping in general are more bottlenecked at the drive level - if you do a lot I would do more research on the drive you are using.

Most of the reviews rip the CD to a RAM disk or SSD to remove the optical drive bottleneck. TH for example let it slip once in one of their reviews(and quietly removed it in subsequent ones).

[spiral out]

Cheers pob255 will take a look at those cases, i was thinking that the i5 4570s would still idle at the same but use a bit less at load?

Cat i intend on using an old ati hd4550 with the q6600 along with a lower overclock as pob255 suggested, so will be interested to see how much of a difference it makes in power usage

[mikeo01]

Personally I do like the Aerocool Dead Silence cases but for a low energy build which doesn't output much heat any case is going to be OK in my opinion.
What bumps your power consumption up is the CPU and GPU (especially the GPU!).

But honestly CPU/GPU aside there's only tiny power savings to saved really. Say like moving from I don't know 4 old 500GB drives (say around 32W total) to 1 big 2TB drive will cut your consumption right down (in terms of how much HDDs use). Optical drives eat next to nothing but then you could get an External DVD writer which uses practically nill.

Opting for 1.5V RAM will save a minimal amount (I mean minimal). But then board power efficiency usually means you'll have to spend double which in the long term does nothing. I mean a board may use 50W whilst a "top end" one may use 35W.


Next up is your PSU which besides CPUs and GPUs is the only other component I'd factor in in terms of power efficiency. Any 80+ certified (bronze minimum) is better than bog standard PSUs.


All in all as mentioned above you're going to be saving in the minus, because the cost of components will be reduced than the power savings.
Also you'll find all those energy savings you've just saved, such as the HDDs, optical drives, RAM etc etc will be wiped clean because I bet you adding in the required cooling will bring that back up.


And also "low power" gaming is not possible unless you want to fork out the cash honestly buy the PC that'll do what YOU want because power consumption at the moment are all similar.


Next year we will be looking at even lower power consumption, such as AMD APUs looking at topping at 45W TDPs. But yes right now Intel are way ahead in power consumption but you're looking long term using it to even balance out the savings. long term.

[DanceswithUnix]

For the usage given it strikes me that an AMD apu would be far better.

£125 for APU http://www.ebuyer.com/613105-amd-a10...-ad785kxbjabox
£52 for a motherboard http://www.ebuyer.com/611200-asus-a8...rboard-a88xm-a

Gives you a machine actually capable of light gaming, and will sip power at idle.

[Pob255]

The IGP on the Core i5 is not powerful enough for a game like Metro2033.

Opps I just read the bit

Thinking of going i5 with the option to add in a gpu if I ever start gaming properly again.

Metro ether last light or 2033 are not "light gaming" they are both pretty gpu heavy
For "light gaming" ie non-graphically intensive games, the current intel ondie gpu is fine

[DanceswithUnix]

I latched on to the phrase " i will be passing this machine on to the children"

Sounds like multiple children there, so I would expect all machines in the house to be capable of Minecraft with the render distance cranked up to maximum or There Will Be Tears

I speak from experience of thinking that an old ATI 4670 gpu would be enough, thankfully the 8800GT I had kicking about was more up to the task.

[spiral out]

For the usage given it strikes me that an AMD apu would be far better.

£125 for APU http://www.ebuyer.com/613105-amd-a10...-ad785kxbjabox
£52 for a motherboard http://www.ebuyer.com/611200-asus-a8...rboard-a88xm-a

Gives you a machine actually capable of light gaming, and will sip power at idle.

Had discounted Kaveri because the cpu side was not as good as haswell, so if i ever add a GPU the machine should last longer, but will take another look cheers

Metro ether last light or 2033 are not "light gaming" they are both pretty gpu heavy
For "light gaming" ie non-graphically intensive games, the current intel ondie gpu is fine

got metro 2033 when offered free last year but mostly i will be playing games like left 4 dead 2 and portal 2 and other steam games, i have a ps3 for mw3 and keep meaning to get battlefield 4

I latched on to the phrase " i will be passing this machine on to the children"

luckily they haven't discovered these types of games yet, it's mostly flash based stuff at the moment but i take that on board for the future


Mikeo01 i'll be using 1 ssd drive and a 500gb drive in there with no fans hopefully and already have an external dvd drive as the internal one broke, (plus i have 5 other machines in the house so it made sense to go with one i could use everywhere)

Basically i'm not building to save energy just want to replace my current machine with something more energy efficent so it's not a concern in the future.

Cheers guys

[DanceswithUnix]

Well an AMD Kaveri APU will get you a free copy of Battlefield 4.

I don't think that is a deal maker/breaker, but it is a nice sweetener.

[Bonebreaker777]

Don't forget to but at least 2133Mhz DDR3 modules.

I know it's been (most likely) linked in a different thread but just to be sure, A10 Kaveri with DDR 2400Mhz.

[mikeo01]

Well an AMD Kaveri APU will get you a free copy of Battlefield 4.

I don't think that is a deal maker/breaker, but it is a nice sweetener.

Where's the Battlefield 4 bundle deal? Haven't seen that yet.