Building a PC that balances between heat output and performance

[Gammaray1]

I posted here a while back about my room heating up to unbearable temperatures due to my PC's high outputting components. I got a lot of good feedback, but I think I am ready to attack the source instead of working around it.

I have given up. Sort of. I will still have this PC for certain tasks, but I'm looking to build another, cooler PC. I want to play some games on it (nothing crazy like Crysis 2, though. Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 when it comes out, older infinity engine games), and use Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/Premiere CS5.

Unfortunately, I'm not finding a "Heats your room up like crazy" spec on Newegg for any item. So how does one figure out what will output a lot of heat? I'm pretty sure my GTX 285, and my 750 watt PSU are the 2 biggest culprits here. How do I make sure that what I buy next will be suitable?

Again, I know I can buy lower power items, but I'm looking to balance performance to heat output here. I don't simply want a lesser performing item. I want the "best" low heat items I can find.

I would like to spend next summer happily using my PC instead of sweating like a hog. So how would you go about this if you were me?

Any other ideas are welcomed, but I am right now looking to just build a new PC.

 

[billyb0b]

simple solution... water cool both vid cards and cpu on one loop with at 3x rad

 

[Gammaray1]

simple solution... water cool both vid cards and cpu on one loop with at 3x rad

Well that would cool the temperature of the items, but not the room. That will move the heat more efficiently away from the GPU, but the heat will still be there in my room.

It's not so much that my PC is overheating, it's that I am.

 

[videogames101]

Where do you live? It's winter here, easy to open the window =D

Apart from that, TDP is a good indicator.

 

[IGemini]

Go for mid-range parts and high power-efficiency. Intel and ATI tend to do better in this area for CPUs and GPUs respectively. 80-Plus Gold-certified PSUs will put out the least amount of heat. Sandy Bridge comes out in a little over a month and the power savings are pretty significant under load. Depending on the performance you want from a CPU you could probably get away with an i3, but don't go above i5. AMD 57xx or 6850 cards should work pretty well.

 

[Concillian]

Most reviews show power consumption now.

Power used = heat generated. So choose products that use less energy.

CPU - best power per watt will be either an i3 overclocked or an i5 750/760, depending on application. games will generally be best on an i3, since very, very few games scale well above 2 cores. Your other apps will likely be better suited to an i5, but you have to make the call on how much that is worth. An i3 at 4.0-4.2 GHz consumes about the same power as an i5-750 at stock speeds (both fully loaded). In some applications the OC'ed i3 is better, but in others the extra cores provide significant benefit. As you OC the i5 you can get the i5 competitive with the i3 in applications that don't scale well to 4 cores, but then you're using more power too.

Whatever the sandy bridge equivalent of the i5 750 on the S1155 platform may be what you're looking for. It'll probably be a little better in terms of consumption for performance than the i5 750, which is already pretty good.

Video card - a GTX 285 is a beast compared to current cards that perform similarly, like 100 watts. An HD6850 is a faster card, especially with a light overclock (esp. memory) and uses way less energy, which means it produces way less heat.

I use an i3-530 overclocked to 4.0GHz with a HD5770. The combination uses less than 150watts playing games (according to my Kill-a-Watt). Furmark will push it up around 175 watts or so, but nothing else pushes power consumption that high.

150W is like the idle power numbers you see in video card reviews... because they test with a quad core S1366 i7 with a motherboard that has every feature known to man. All those features need power. I have a relatively stripped down MSI H55 motherboard with a dual core because I don't need more. My PC idles around 80-85 watts and I'm pretty comfortably using a 380W supply. I have plenty of headroom for a 5850 to 6870 or so if I want to upgrade my video card.

Now I may not be able to play games with EVERY feature enabled, but if you game at a reasonable resolution and pick and choose, you can usually find a good mix of graphics features that keeps the game looking pretty good and keeps performance adequate. It ends up being like the difference between Blu-ray and DVD. The difference is pretty noticeable if you look for it, but if you're watching a movie with a good plot, you are engrossed enough in the movie that you forget about the better picture quality. I don't know about you, but I don't play games by taking screenshots and comparing picture quality to another screenshot with ALL options enabled. If the game is good, you can easily get by without a $$$ video card, just by running medium-high settings. It still looks plenty good that you aren't distracted by the picture quality.

It's easy to get caught up in 'keeping up with the Jonses'. Shift the perspective to one where you look for 'bang for the buck' or 'bang for the watt' and it's pretty easy to keep power consumption / heat generation in check.

As a bonus, that approach tends to be cheaper, as well as cheaper when your energy bill comes, and easier to cool, quieter, etc...

 

[Gammaray1]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'll take a look and some options and maybe I can sell my 285 and replace it with something like you suggested.

 

[Zap]

Again, I know I can buy lower power items, but I'm looking to balance performance to heat output here. I don't simply want a lesser performing item. I want the "best" low heat items I can find.

One of the upcoming Sandy Bridge CPUs has your name on it. :awe:

Use a latest generation mid-range graphics card should be a good tradeoff between performance and power consumption/heat output.

Other than that, just get an efficient PSU that is just enough to power the system.

Concillian's system is a good reference point.

 

[Gammaray1]

I took a loot at the video card recommended and I'm a little confused.

Here is my current card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121301

Here is a HD6850 I'm looking at
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-374-_-Product

What exactly would I look at to know that this one runs cooler? The core clock on the 6850 is a bit higher, but I don't know if that impacts it.

I'm just curious on how I would figure this out. "Teach a man to fish..." and whatnot.

 

[aigomorla]

Prop it out the window.

There is no solution minus getting an AC.

You really think lowering your heat value by a total sum of 100-200W is going to make a big difference in a room with a 1000 cubic feet?
(assuming 10x10x10).

Dont make me laugh... get a fan, and prop it out the window.
Your not going to meet objective by changing computer hardware, when its ambient ur trying to lower.

 

[Gammaray1]

I seem to be a minority of people who have this issue. Or maybe nobody else mentions it.

Does everyone with a gaming quality PC have to put a fan in the window or turn on an AC? I have a friend with a similar setup to mine that doesn't have this issue. Although, there are unknown variables. For all I know the placement of his room in the house allows for more air flow or something. Or maybe our insulation differs in a way that would make our rooms different.

I could always just build a low-middle end PC for games like WoW (i've run it on old, old, garbage PCs before on low settings fine) and Starcraft 1, and to do my text based work and general internet-ing on. I could use my KVM , keep this current PC on hibernate until I need photoshop/illustrator/premiere or want to play something more advanced, and switch.

That would help for about 75% of the time. I don't like sweating when I check my email. But that other 25% would still suck.

 

[aigomorla]

just get a fan...

LuLz... and a lot of factors play into ambient.

As i said reducing your heat in your room by 200-300W @ max even isnt going to put a dent in your 1000cubic feet area.

Space heaters themselves are 400-800-1000-1500W....

A big fan up against your window is more then enough for a computer.

 

[Gammaray1]

I appreciate the feedback, but for my specific setup a fan in a window isn't an option. I'll keep looking into some alternatives.

 

[Concillian]

I took a loot at the video card recommended and I'm a little confused.

Here is my current card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121301

Here is a HD6850 I'm looking at
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-374-_-Product

What exactly would I look at to know that this one runs cooler? The core clock on the 6850 is a bit higher, but I don't know if that impacts it.

I'm just curious on how I would figure this out. "Teach a man to fish..." and whatnot.

THere's a few things to look at.

1) specs mean very little in the GPU market. AMD / ATI do things different from nVidia and you can't directly compare clock speeds on anything but memory, even then you have to take into account the "width" of the memory "pipe" (128 bit, 256 bit, 384 bit, etc...)

2) It's much easier to look at performance reviews and look at how the cards stack up against each other for performance.

3) At the end of a performance review, there will typically be a power consumption chart or two:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580/17

This shows how much power is being used, and that directly translates to heat generated. Note that the crysis numbers show about 100W difference between the GTX285 and HD6850. There are also some benchmarks which have the two cards, or you can use the "Bench" feature from the front page of Anandtech and select two different cards to directly compare them, though that doesn't seem to be updated very often, doesn't even have the 68xx cards, even though they've been out close to a month.

As a "rough" guide, look for the "thermal design power" of a given video card. This is usually abbreviated TDP, and is usually not on the spec sheet you'll see at newegg, but will be on a spec sheet somewhere. nVidia and AMD seem to rate TDP differently. Same with CPUs intel and AMD seem to rate differently. Usually the one who is currently not "in the lead" will rate by "average TDP" and the one leading will rate "maximum TDP". This is why reviews are usually a better source of information. For example TDP on 6850 is 127W and it's 183W on a GTX285, only a 55W difference. However in the Crysis benchmark in Anandtech's review, there was a 100W difference. So DP can only be used as a 'rough guide'. Usually pretty good if comparing Intel to Intel or nVidia to nVidia, but not comparing Intel to AMD or ATi to nVidia.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

You really think lowering your heat value by a total sum of 100-200W is going to make a big difference in a room with a 1000 cubic feet?
(assuming 10x10x10).

I have to agree here. You can get a more efficient computer, but I doubt it will make much of a difference if you find your room is overheating in the summer. Do you worry about a 100 watt light bulb heating up your room? That's the equivalent; a watt is a watt when it comes to heat output. I'd say the problem would be more effectively addressed if you looked at the air flow situation in your room and tried to manage that somehow.

 

[aigomorla]

I appreciate the feedback, but for my specific setup a fan in a window isn't an option. I'll keep looking into some alternatives.

the problem isnt limiting the heat output.

Its removing it.

This is why expensive server rooms are all AC'd.

There is no effective solution in changing hardware other then OFF hardware which is going to fix your issue.