Getting used to slower... or... "going green".

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I've made a transition, of sorts. Mostly because of energy consumption, not strictly because of the costs, but because of the heat that the rigs put out. Useful in winter, not so much in summer, when it's fighting the A/C.

So, I used to use a pair of Q9300 rigs @ 3.0, 8GB DDR2, HD4850 as my "main" rigs. But they crank out 280W at the wall doing DC.

I bought a pair of i3 pre-builts cheap, and already upgraded one of them to be a gaming rig, and was planning to upgrade the other one. Possibly the i3 rigs would have been ideal as far as performance / watt.

But then I saw some 24" Westinghouse LED LCD HDTV 1080P HDMI screens for $100 + tax at BestBuy.

So I took my old HTPC, which was a Foxconn AT-5570 NanoPC, and VESA-mounted it to the back of the TV. It has 4GB of RAM, and a C-70 CPU, and a 50GB Vertex2 SSD. Win7 64-bit.

So now I have some 24" LCD All-in-One machines that take 40-45W total, for both the screen and PC.

Edit: Continued...

It's not that bad. Web browsing is acceptable. I can listen to internet radio while I browse (flash player). I just can't listen to internet radio and be in a Skype video-chat at the same time, because the CPU load is too high.

I kind of wish the Foxconn NanoPCs has Celeron 1007U CPUs in them.

I have a few netbooks, one with a C-60, and one with a 1007U, both running Win7 64-bit on SSDs. The 1007U one has much better performance, probably about double.

But I have to make do with what I have.

 

[ShintaiDK]

While you have to add a screen on top. 40-45W is what my gaming PC uses in idle and regular surfing usage. I doubt you gonna save much powerwise on the NanoPC. But you are gonna feel its limited abilities.

Its abit like the talk of S and T models vs regular CPUs.

Did you measure it with a killawatt, or is it a guess?

 

[VirtualLarry]

While you have to add a screen on top. 40-45W is what my gaming PC uses in idle and regular surfing usage. I doubt you gonna save much powerwise on the NanoPC. But you are gonna feel its limited abilities.

Its abit like the talk of S and T models vs regular CPUs.

Did you measure it with a killawatt, or is it a guess?

Well, someone in a Newegg review measured the NanoPC at 15W. CoreTemp reports the TDP of the C-70 CPU at 8.2W, and it's passively-cooled, so I expect 15W to be fairly accurate.

The screen was rated at 25W by BestBuy, and the mfg specs say 40W. I have it set to "Energy Star" mode.

I would prefer a 1007U by far though. Maybe I can consider some ITX cases that VESA-mount (I guess the Antec ISK series is popular), and get a couple of those Biostar 1037U ITX boards that they have at Newegg for $70.

 

[monstercameron]

does it need to be windows, amazon fire tv is pretty decent.

 

[Homeles]

I can't quite recommend the small cores from both AMD and Intel right now. They're just not "there" yet, but they're getting close. Depending on how big the improvement is next generation, we might get something that's power efficient, "fast enough," and cheap enough. We might be "fast enough" today, and have "power efficient" on lockdown, but I think prices need to come down a bit more, because you just give up too much at what the platforms cost currently, compared to what you're getting. With AMD, you can get quite cheap actually, but you give up a lot of performance getting there...

You're running something that's last generation (or really, two generations old for AMD), so it's not really a surprise to me that it's choking. I wouldn't have even touched it. I think you jumped the gun a bit, but this is all subjective, and the only thing that matters is that you feel happy with your decision.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Homeles, how do you feel about the 1007U-powered Asus VivoPC? Or the ECS LIVA (dual-core Bay Trail)?

Do you think that either one of those would make a viable desktop PC alternative?

 

[Soulkeeper]

Making all your electronic/pc related stuff low power can be an obsession, just like overclocking
My llano system idles under 60W even with a 7870 in it, sometimes I regret buying the IPS panel because it uses more juice than the pc itself.

 

[cbn]

How do people feel about the use of power saving options in the operating system to counteract a high idle power consumption for the PC and monitors?

 

[Homeles]

Homeles, how do you feel about the 1007U-powered Asus VivoPC? Or the ECS LIVA (dual-core Bay Trail)?

Do you think that either one of those would make a viable desktop PC alternative?

I'm a nut for SSDs, and I'd probably particularly adamant with using one with a low power CPU, so I'd personally swap the hard drive on the ASUS for an SSD, even if it was something small like 64GB or less.

The ECS machine looks almost perfect, and I love the price, but there are a couple of concerns I've got. 2GB of RAM is just not enough for my browsing habits. eMMC also concerns me, as typically eMMC solutions have sucked. If it's using eMMC 5.0 though, it's probably fine. I also wonder what "Bay Trail-M" SoC they're using.

Both machines I basically have personal issues with, that aren't related to the CPUs. AMD equivalents would work just fine as well. However, my complaints will undoubtedly be solved over time, with SSDs and RAM always dropping in price (okay, maybe not RAM, but it'll go back down eventually), and eMMC getting faster. For some, I could definitely see that ECS machine being perfect, though.

 

[KingFatty]

What about using a modern mobile phone, and coupling it to a display for output, and using a USB hub for mouse+keyboard input?

Those phones are getting really powerful and fast, with native resolutions that are even beyond 1080p, so they should have no problem doing lots of stuff while consuming mere pennies of electricity.

 

[cbn]

I also wonder what "Bay Trail-M" SoC they're using.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ecs-v20-mini-lake-bat-i-v20,25679.html

According to that article above, it has the N2805 Bay Trail, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have upgraded to N2806 or N2807 by now.

 

[cbn]

What about using a modern mobile phone, and coupling it to a display for output, and using a USB hub for mouse+keyboard input?

Those phones are getting really powerful and fast, with native resolutions that are even beyond 1080p, so they should have no problem doing lots of stuff while consuming mere pennies of electricity.

An x86 phone would be awesome.

Unfortunately, I have been recently dismayed reading that MicroSoft will not include "desktop" for Windows 9 "Threshold" phones and tablets.

Hopefully the information I read is wrong or Microsoft changes it mind.

 

[Homeles]

What about using a modern mobile phone, and coupling it to a display for output, and using a USB hub for mouse+keyboard input?

Those phones are getting really powerful and fast, with native resolutions that are even beyond 1080p, so they should have no problem doing lots of stuff while consuming mere pennies of electricity.

It's hard for me to think outside of Windows, lol. One particular downside I can see to that is the price of those devices is not cheap, if you were to start from scratch. Most of us already have one of those devices, though.

Definitely an interesting proposition...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ecs-v20-mini-lake-bat-i-v20,25679.html

According to that article above, it has the N2805 Bay Trail, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have upgraded to N2806 or N2807 by now.

Bleh.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm a nut for SSDs, and I'd probably particularly adamant with using one with a low power CPU, so I'd personally swap the hard drive on the ASUS for an SSD, even if it was something small like 64GB or less.

My thought as well, although I would probably go for 128GB or maybe even a 256GB MX100.

The ECS machine looks almost perfect, and I love the price, but there are a couple of concerns I've got. 2GB of RAM is just not enough for my browsing habits. eMMC also concerns me, as typically eMMC solutions have sucked. If it's using eMMC 5.0 though, it's probably fine. I also wonder what "Bay Trail-M" SoC they're using.

I agree with the RAM limitations and web browsing as well. I much prefer 4GB (actually, I prefer 8GB, but 4GB is decent enough for most browsing sessions). My Foxconn NanoPCs have 4GB in them, which is mostly enough.

I have yet to use a 22nm Atom CPU though, so I'm not really sure how it compares to the C-70 in these NanoPCs. I'm sure that a quad-core Bay Trail would probably be enough for both Skype and internet radio (using Flash Player), but I don't know if you could do a quad-core Bay Trail with passive cooling.

This Foxconn AT-5570 is running at 90C according to CoreTemp, which is pretty warm. CPU load is basically 100%, as I have Skype running, and am web browsing besides.

I will say that using it while on Skype, does definitely slow down the web browsing. Newegg pages with a lot of scripts on them take 10s to load, whereas on my more powerful machines, they load in like 1-2s.

Edit: Had a couple of these as free gifts for a Newegg purchase:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=arctic_usb_cooling-_-00-995-116-_-Product

Pointed one at the NanoPC (since the vent holes go horizontal when VESA mounted), temps dropped from 92C to 65C.

 

[BSim500]

Nice, though you don't have to go extreme and sacrifice gaming to get a "green rig" if you still want to game. My i5-3570 + 7870 gaming rig draws about 38w idle (that's with a mild OC to 4.0-4.2GHz + mild undervolt). Remove the discrete GFX card, and it drops down to about 27w idle (and that's on 1600MHz clock rather than Haswell's 800Mhz). The key lies in a Gold / Platinum rated low-wattage PSU + undervolting + SSD vs mechanical drives.

Another consideration is : "Green" can also be measured by "total power drawn per total task over time", ie, a Pentium / i3 / i5 can be more "green" than an Atom if you do a lot of video encoding as it will jump back into an idle state (or even a 0.5w standby) much faster (plus the other components power draw (motherboard, SSD, monitor / TV, memory, USB devices, etc), are mostly fixed regardless of load, so even if the CPU draws 2x the power, the whole system itself may draw only 33% more but will be more than 100% faster which = it will idle / standby much sooner). So the slowest CPU isn't always the greenest if you do stuff on it that taxes the CPU some of the time. In short, an undervolted Pentium can get close to a Bay Trail without the annoying slowdowns in web browsing, etc, and won't draw that much more power if it "peaks" only a few seconds at a time when browsing.

"does it need to be windows, amazon fire tv is pretty decent."

Windows really doesn't add much to power consumption. Eg, in PerfMonitor2, the number of "Unhalted CPU cycles" is 40-70MHz idle. That's actually pretty efficient for a "full OS" (Windows 7) with a web browser with 30 tabs idling in the background.

"How do people feel about the use of power saving options in the operating system to counteract a high idle power consumption for the PC and monitors?"

Depends on which ones. Eg, you can actually tweak SpeedStep settings to mimick an S or T chip by locking in "max processor state" at 90% (typically 3GHz with low voltages of around 0.8-0.85v under load). But you can't really tweak it to drive idle power below default beyond more aggressive PC / HDD / monitor standby timeouts, which can get very annoying very quickly if you have to keep turning your PC back on every 5 minutes you step away.

What about using a modern mobile phone, and coupling it to a display for output, and using a USB hub for mouse+keyboard input?

For "instant" power it might be lower, but again for "power drawn per task over time", it's not much lower. Eg, on a desktop with an i3, web page loads on a "heavy" site take 1-2s. On an Android phone same page takes 6-11s. If it takes 2-3x longer to do stuff, total power draw may not actually be that much lower. It's why I use an ultraportable laptop for travelling vs a tablet - 5hr laptop battery = I can get 4.5-5hrs work done, but on a 10hr tablet I often can only get 2-3hrs work done (even with a Bluetooth keyboard) due to slower web browsing, nerfed frustrating Office interface which requires 2-8x more taps than mouse clicks on a PC, etc. There's more to "total task efficiency" than instantaneous power draw or even battery life.

Edit : Mobile phone chargers typically use 2-6w power + powered USB hub + keyb + mouse + monitor / TV, etc, = there's really not much savings (power or space taken up on desk) vs a mini-ITX Atom PC. And if something takes 2-3x longer to do on a phone / tablet or you need to edit it on a PC anyway due to lack of features / compatibility (in mobile Office, etc), then ironically a phone could end up drawing slightly more overall.

 

[VirtualLarry]

For "instant" power it might be lower, but again for "power drawn per task over time", it's not much lower. Eg, on a desktop with an i3, web page loads on a "heavy" site take 1-2s. On an Android phone same page takes 6-11s. If it takes 2-3x longer to do stuff, total power draw may not actually be that much lower. It's why I use an ultraportable laptop for travelling vs a tablet - 5hr laptop battery = I can get 4.5-5hrs work done, but on a 10hr tablet I often can only get 2-3hrs work done (even with a Bluetooth keyboard) due to slower web browsing, nerfed frustrating Office interface which requires 2-8x more taps than mouse clicks on a PC, etc. There's more to "total task efficiency" than instantaneous power draw or even battery life.

I've found that to be true as well. I was travelling one summer, and I had a "real" laptop, as well as a "$99 CVS Netbook" (7" Netbook, ARM CPU, Windows CE 6.0). While the CVS Netbook had a longer battery life, tasks such as browsing these forums took like 5x-10x the time as on the real laptop, due to how slow that whole system was, and I couldn't simply open several thread links in new tabs, due to RAM limitations, and stuck with using what was essentially IE6.0. I found I was more productive, even with shorter battery life, with the laptop.

I'm somewhat spoiled now, instead of 3 hours of battery life on a laptop, my 1007U laptop with Win7 64-bit, gets nearly 8 hours web-browsing, thanks to both a six-cell battery, as well as a power-efficient SSD.

Nice post, btw.

 

[ShintaiDK]

So 5-10x longer just to load webpages? Its absolutely not worth it.

Also you are not doing the environment a favour buying a product that is obsolete much much sooner. In your case its basicly bought obsolete. So if you are thinking on going green for the environment and/or your wallet. You are doing the wrong thing.

 

[Qwertilot]

Yes, its only worth doing from a purely green perspective if you're going to give the old stuff away second hand to somewhere where it'll be used

That's what I did when I moved over to a smaller platinum PSU/750ti - yes it dropped my power bill a small amount but compared to the embedded energy? Peanuts.

Not an issue in the end because I handed the stuff they replaced to a local computer shop for use as spares etc.
(The motivation was at leats as much cutting down noise, which worked.).

 

[Sequences]

What's the dollar amount you have saved on your electric bill by going low power vs amount of money you spent on buying them?

 

[VirtualLarry]

What's the dollar amount you have saved on your electric bill by going low power vs amount of money you spent on buying them?

I didn't buy them specifically for this project, nor for their low power consumption. I bought them because they were the smallest PCs on the market at the time, with the most expansion capability, and they were markedly cheaper than a NUC.

Basically, I wanted some new toys to experiment with.

My electric bill is included in my rent.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So 5-10x longer just to load webpages? Its absolutely not worth it.

Only when Skype is taking 95% of the CPU. When I'm not on Skype, Newegg pages load a bit quicker.

Also you are not doing the environment a favour buying a product that is obsolete much much sooner. In your case its basicly bought obsolete. So if you are thinking on going green for the environment and/or your wallet. You are doing the wrong thing.

I want less heat in my apt. in the summer.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I want less heat in my apt. in the summer.

The obvious next question is. What else do you have in your apartment. Because those 10-20W you saved is not gonna do much.

Lights? Appliances? Specially the fridge and freezer can be massive power users. Are they both A++ or A+++?

 

[VirtualLarry]

The obvious next question is. What else do you have in your apartment. Because those 10-20W you saved is not gonna do much.

Well, going from an overclocked Q9300 @ 3.0 and HD4850 card (280W), with a 26" LCD (65W), to a C-70 (15W) and a 24" LED LCD HDTV (25W) should def. make a difference in temps.

Lights? Appliances? Specially the fridge and freezer can be massive power users. Are they both A++ or A+++?

I do have several lights on, most all of them are CFLs. The refridgerator / freezer was provided with the apt, I have no idea about its energy efficiency.

I'm sure that my A/C that runs nearly continuously is probably my biggest source of power usage.

 

[NTMBK]

My girlfriend's PC is a VESA mounted model with an i3-2330M in it. I know it's not the lowest powered device out there (there are even more efficient Ivy Bridge models), but it certainly beats the Phenom II & discrete GPU box I have. And it's an absolute pleasure for music, internet browsing, etc.

 

[piasabird]

I am using an Intel i3 4330 in my HTPC build. It has the 4600 graphics and when I purchased it I planned on not using it without a video card or really to play any new games or anything like that. It has the 4 meg L2 Cache. I think it works great for the tasks I use it for. I watch a lot of Internet stuff like HULU and do some other things like taxes and web browsing and YouTube.

I am using 8 megs of 1600 DDR3 and a 7200 rpm SATA 3.5" hard drive. No SSD. Samsung 40" LCD HDTV.

I Wanted to avoid using a mobile chipset. However, I used a gigabyte Z87N-WIFI MB with WIFI. The WIFI seems to work great for me.