"going green", part two - mini-PCs!

[Yuriman]

I believe that when Haswell was finalized, 4K60 wasn't really a thing yet, was it? Maybe that's why? Anyway I'd rather have a Broadwell CPU too, all else equal.

 

[cbn]

That's all well and good, but why don't the device specs show that?

Brix projector
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4779#sp
HDMI Resolution (Max.) 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz
Mini DP Resolution (Max.) 3840 x 2160 @ 24 Hz

According to the following info the low power Haswell's (like that U model in that Brix) can't do 4K @ 60 Hz over a single DP stream:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/51410?start=0&tstart=0

The main requirement for supporting 4K@60 on DP SST (single-stream transport) is that the core display clock (CDCLK), which is configured by SBIOS, must be set high enough to drive the dot clock required by the mode. Usually 4K@60 has a 536MHz dot clock, so it requires a 540MHz CDCLK. If the system OEM did not configure the CDCLK at 540MHz for thermal, power saving, or other reasons, then the system will not be able to drive 4K@60 over a single DP stream. Also, Haswell ULT (-U) and ULX (-Y) are limited to 450MHz and 337MHz CDCLK, so they will not be able to do 4K@60 SST. ULT should still be able to do 4K@60 MST, though. ULX can’t because 4K MST still requires HBR2.

This shouldn’t affect DP MST tiled displays because for those we use two streams, each for one half of the display, reducing the pixel clock.

Additionally, 4K support is only available on the Core processor graphics. Celeron and Pentium do not support 4K. All Core Haswell processors will support HBR2 with the exception of Haswell ULX.

The H processor can though. I wonder if the 35 watt Haswell processors will work at 4K at 60Hz?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting. Thanks for digging out the technical details.

 

[ninaholic37]

I should throw my cell phone in the recycling bin since I never really use it too.

Funny, I tried to cancel my cell phone today, and they lowered my monthly bill from $29 to $20 instead (for the same plan). Interesting that I would still be paying $29/month if I didn't ask to cancel...

Not sure if this strategy would work to get the best "bang for you buck" low-power rig though... maybe. Good luck

 

[Yuriman]

Funny, I tried to cancel my cell phone today, and they lowered my monthly bill from $29 to $20 instead (for the same plan). Interesting that I would still be paying $29/month if I didn't ask to cancel...

Not sure if this strategy would work to get the best "bang for you buck" low-power rig though... maybe. Good luck

Back in the mid and early 2000's, you could get some screaming deals on prebuilds by calling Dell and harassing their salespeople and support.

"Not good enough, I think I'll call HP and see what they'll offer me."

 

[VirtualLarry]

Darn, missed out. Lenovo.com had their Q190 mini-PCs for $150 again. Seems like that they have that sale every month or so, and I always seem to miss it. That's $150, for a Celeron 1017U IB 1.6Ghz dual-core, I think 4GB RAM, and a 500GB 5400RPM HDD, and Windows 8.1 w/Bing pre-loaded. Wired keyboard / mouse included. I figure I should be able to swap in an SSD easily enough. (I hope.)

 

[escrow4]

Darn, missed out. Lenovo.com had their Q190 mini-PCs for $150 again. Seems like that they have that sale every month or so, and I always seem to miss it. That's $150, for a Celeron 1017U IB 1.6Ghz dual-core, I think 4GB RAM, and a 500GB 5400RPM HDD, and Windows 8.1 w/Bing pre-loaded. Wired keyboard / mouse included. I figure I should be able to swap in an SSD easily enough. (I hope.)

Yippee! More slow crap! My smart TV is faster!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yippee! More slow crap! My smart TV is faster!

Care to run some browser benchmarks on your smart TV? Is it single, dual, or quad-core? Arm, x86, or other?

 

[cbn]

Here is another consumer Mini-desktop:

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-200-010-Mini-Desktop/dp/B00R7R1GWK

2957U, 2GB RAM, 32GB M.2 SSD, Windows 8.1 $179.99 FS:

EDIT: It is on sale for $164.99 free shipping --> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2428168

 

[Abwx]

Here is another consumer Mini-desktop:

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-200-010-Mini-Desktop/dp/B00R7R1GWK

2957U, 2GB RAM, 32GB M.2 SSD, Windows 8.1 $179.99 FS:

An Athlon 5350 has rougly 70% more throughput, actualy even the Sempron 3850, or about any decently clocked Btrail, is better on MT...

 

[cbn]

An Athlon 5350 has rougly 70% more throughput, actualy even the Sempron 3850, or about any decently clocked Btrail, is better on MT...

I actually brought up the idea of using AMD in the HP Stream Mini in this post --> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37329587&postcount=26

However, my primary reason for wanting AMD was the hardware decode (which Haswell ULV Celeron lacks).

 

[cbn]

According to Intel Ark, Broadwell ULV Celeron has Quick sync enabled:

http://ark.intel.com/products/84811/Intel-Celeron-Processor-3755U-2M-Cache-1_70-GHz

 

[ninaholic37]

Here is another consumer Mini-desktop:

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-200-010-Mini-Desktop/dp/B00R7R1GWK

2957U, 2GB RAM, 32GB M.2 SSD, Windows 8.1 $179.99 FS:

EDIT: It is on sale for $164.99 free shipping --> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2428168

Yeah, that model has been available since February I think?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2419697

Wonder if they will refresh it to that 3755U CPU you mention soon.

 

[Shehriazad]

I'm waiting for the day that USB sized PCs become viable in the medium high to higher end sector...until then...cube PCs it is. (I love me some cubes)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just an update. I've got both G3258 rigs running (@3.6 only, because I was getting some errors on my main rig @ 3.8), with 7950s.

In Win7 HP 64-bit SP1, at the desktop idling / web browsing with Waterfox, not crunching, my power draw as measured by my UPS, is 79W, with the monitor. I'm finding that to be perfectly acceptable, and I don't need to lower the power any lower than that.

But the allure and "coolness factor" of the mini-PCs is still drawing me closer.

I now have my eyes set on an MSI Cubi, a new entry to the mini-PC realm. It has a Broadwell, either a Celeron 3205U, Pentium 3805U, or i3-5005U, for $149.99, $199.99, or $279.99.

See this thread for more specific info:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2430900

It supports an optional larger bottom-plate, for installing a 2.5" HDD / SSD. Only problem, as reported by LonOnTech's YouT**e video review, it won't boot off of the 2.5" HDD. I'm waiting for confirmation of the problem by someone else here on the forum, because that seems strange to me, not being able to boot off of all of the internal drives.

Still considering a 4K monitor in the near-future, but that may wait for funds for a while. Newegg has the Changhong 42" 4K UHD LED HDTV for $299.99 AC FS over Memorial Day weekend.

 

[Erenhardt]

Your UPS is giving you a wrong data.
My Kaveri is running 50-55 Watt idle without display. LED screen takes what? 10-15 Watts?
That is a full ATX A88X Motherboard and mechanical HDD. 4.0Ghz CPU and 1028MHz GPU (but that doesn't make a difference when system is iddling) and 2400Mhz RAM.
Get a cheap Kill-a-Watt and try again.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Your UPS is giving you a wrong data.
My Kaveri is running 50-55 Watt idle without display. LED screen takes what? 10-15 Watts?
That is a full ATX A88X Motherboard and mechanical HDD. 4.0Ghz CPU and 1028MHz GPU (but that doesn't make a difference when system is iddling) and 2400Mhz RAM.
Get a cheap Kill-a-Watt and try again.

How is it off? Too high, or too low? Don't forget, I have a discrete 7950 video card in there too, did you miss that? I don't think it's off by much. CoreTemp reports the power usage of the CPU (Haswell can do that), and it shows around 52-53W when under full load on both cores. That corresponds to around 119W on the UPS.

 

[escrow4]

Why do you insist on crippled slow mini junk still? Just scrap all your tech and build a pair of mini-ITX 4790K (or the Skylake equivalent) boxes. Pentium, Celeron, U, Y, 69, its all rubbish. Slap an i7 in there, slap in 32GB of RAM for both, slap in a pair of 1TB SSDs (doesn't have to be M.2) and forget about slowness.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why do you insist on crippled slow mini junk still? Just scrap all your tech and build a pair of mini-ITX 4790K (or the Skylake equivalent) boxes. Pentium, Celeron, U, Y, 69, its all rubbish. Slap an i7 in there, slap in 32GB of RAM for both, slap in a pair of 1TB SSDs (doesn't have to be M.2) and forget about slowness.

At first, your shtick was amusing. But now I know it's just un-serious trolling.

Like I really need an i7, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB worth of RAID-0 SSDs, to Skype and Nef on AT forums.

Edit: I did spend some additional money the past two months on some Z97 ATX mobos, and a couple of 16GB DDR3-1600 kits, to give my G3258 rigs a slight boost. Haven't felt the need to install them yet. Maybe if I get TW3.

 

[Blue_Max]

You mentioned gaming - that still important to you?

If so, the best prebuilt deal I've ever seen was the i3 Alienware Alpha with GeForce GTX 860M for under $500 Canadian, probably under $400 US.

A steal considering the parts, performance, Windows, etc. And smaller than an Xbox! Oh, yes, and very low power consumption for that performance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You mentioned gaming - that still important to you?

TBH, I don't know. I haven't gamed much at all lately.

 

[Lonyo]

With a riser, an enclosure for Micro-ATX would not be much larger than an enclosure for Mini-ITX (re: the video card is going to lay flat in the area occupied by the other expansion slots). But Micro-ATX is often cheaper and allows more options to be used.

Actually, if laying a full size video card flat (via riser) the lower most part of the video card will line up the bottom edge of an ATX motherboard (though ATX motherboards usually have their PCIe x16 lane in the second position rather than the first position as with Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX)

I have Silverstone mITX case ML07b (same internals as the Raven), and it's about the same size as a half height mATX case that has a non-full-size PSU and space for a 5.25" optical and a couple of 3.5" HDDs.
The mITX case has space for an optical, two 2.5" drives, a 3.5" drive, full size 13" graphics card and SFX PSU.

Imagining as a desktop style case: a MicroATX which supports full height graphics cards would be larger due to height. The footprint is about the same for both.

 

[TeknoBug]

I'm very happy with my NUC, also been into "green" PC builds lately.

I recently sold my i7 3770K and FX 8320E PC's.

The one problem I see with these ultra-small machines is that you can't put a video card in them. If you want that, [thread=2417090]here are some small gaming desktops[/thread] to consider. I'm personally considering the Silverstone SG05, or the DIYPC HTPC-Cube - though I'm not sure how the airflow is on that last one.

My other problem is that you can't put 32GB of RAM in them with current ITX chipsets. But I suspect that's only a problem for me.

Silverstone RAVEN, lets you slap in a mini ITX in a small form factor and still fit a dGPU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=silverstone_raven-_-11-163-252-_-Product

 

[Yuriman]

Low power is something I've had a lot of interest in lately. Larry, your power figures look slightly high to me (though definitely not unreasonably so), but I suppose it depends on a lot of factors. Some motherboards are much more hungry than others, low power RAM makes a difference, and older screens are less efficient.

My Ivy i5 + Z77 system idles around 35-45w, while my wife's Haswell i3 + H97 system idles 25-35w, depending on whether or not the video card is in ZeroCore. She has a 27" IPS monitor that I measured at ~20w, bringing her total up to 55w when browsing the web., while my 9 year old MVA CFL panel draws closer to 70w alone. A 7950 shouldn't draw significantly more at idle than a 7850 (maybe 2-3w), and no more at all when your screen goes to sleep.

My builds lately have all been based on this case, for cost effectiveness reasons:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353044&cm_re=diypc-_-11-353-044-_-Product

Full sized ATX PSU, fits a 240mm-ish video card, and potentially supports a tower heatsink if that's your thing. 2x 2.5" or 1x 3.5", and 1x 3.5" HDD bay, though video card temperatures are negatively affected if you fill the 3.5" bay.

 

[escrow4]

At first, your shtick was amusing. But now I know it's just un-serious trolling.

Like I really need an i7, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB worth of RAID-0 SSDs, to Skype and Nef on AT forums.

Edit: I did spend some additional money the past two months on some Z97 ATX mobos, and a couple of 16GB DDR3-1600 kits, to give my G3258 rigs a slight boost. Haven't felt the need to install them yet. Maybe if I get TW3.

If you had an i7 with 32GB of RAM and a pair of SSDs you wouldn't endlessly buy slow crap on special than moan about why its so slow.