help me summerize my piledriver

[soccerballtux]

AC's been running a lot. bit down south. I run at 74F these days instead of 75F. As a result it's been running a lot more.

I just shut down 2 modules from 4 and will see how that goes.

I think most of the heat is from my dual monitor setup, in particular the 24" soyo topaz s that uses ~100w. Now, I could upgrade that to a 32" korean LED backlit panel that uses only 50w. I'm not sure if that would make a significant dent in the heat footprint of my room though.

I guess I'm wondering if I should consider dropping to only 1 module and overclocking to 5ghz or something. No gaming. Just chrome.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nah, buy a Broadwell Celeron 1.5Ghz MSI "Cubi" barebones. They're $149.99 at Newegg, add RAM, mSATA SSD, and OS, and you're set. They currently have a combo with a 120GB Samsung EVO 850 and 2x4GB Corsair RAM for $279.99.

 

[Idontcare]

Nah, buy a Broadwell Celeron 1.5Ghz MSI "Cubi" barebones. They're $149.99 at Newegg, add RAM, mSATA SSD, and OS, and you're set. They currently have a combo with a 120GB Samsung EVO 850 and 2x4GB Corsair RAM for $279.99.

Spend $150 to save maybe $15/year in reduced electrical bill?

OP is better off just reducing the clockspeed (and operating voltage) on their existing hardware IMO.

 

[coercitiv]

I guess I'm wondering if I should consider dropping to only 1 module and overclocking to 5ghz or something. No gaming. Just chrome.

All you do is browse and you think your CPU still has some sort of contribution towards your room temperature? It's idle most of the time. Most of your power consumption comes from everything else but the CPU. Look what shutting down modules will do for you, when system is mostly idle.

Likely nothing.

If you're using chrome, don't drop down to one module and try to compensate by overclocking. Chrome is well multithreaded: leave at least 2 modules on, drop max clocks by 100-200Mhz and undervolt. You can try to squeeze a few watts out of the PC (disable unused components on MB if any, drop to 8/16GB RAM etc) but the biggest gain will still be shutting one of your monitors down.

A LED backlit monitor setup will also help much more than anything described above.

 

[AtenRa]

I see you have an HD7850, since you dont play games, sell it and buy a entry level R7 240/250 or NVIDIA 730/740. You will save more energy from browsing/video playback from a smaller dGPU than from the CPU.

Also, changing to a more efficient monitor will also reduce more power consumption than the CPU in idle state.

 

[soccerballtux]

All you do is browse and you think your CPU still has some sort of contribution towards your room temperature? It's idle most of the time. Most of your power consumption comes from everything else but the CPU. Look what shutting down modules will do for you, when system is mostly idle.

Likely nothing.

If you're using chrome, don't drop down to one module and try to compensate by overclocking. Chrome is well multithreaded: leave at least 2 modules on, drop max clocks by 100-200Mhz and undervolt. You can try to squeeze a few watts out of the PC (disable unused components on MB if any, drop to 8/16GB RAM etc) but the biggest gain will still be shutting one of your monitors down.

A LED backlit monitor setup will also help much more than anything described above.

those have CnQ enabled. I don't

 

[jji7skyline]

Overclocking is exactly what you don't want to do. Underclock and undervolt instead.

See if you can lower the brightness of those monitors too, at least until you upgrade them.

 

[NTMBK]

If you want your PC to run a little more cool and quiet, here's a tip... turn on Cool 'n Quiet. :thumbsup:

Seriously, just put everything back to stock and turn the power saving features back on. Sure, it might run your games a touch slower, but it's summer! You should be getting out and enjoying the sunshine!

(Also, have you got any lower power graphics cards kicking around? Even something like a Geforce 640 would be fine for driving your monitors in Chrome.)

 

[coercitiv]

those have CnQ enabled. I don't

As long as you have C1E enabled most of what I said is true.

 

[podspi]

Most BIOSes allow you to save multiple CPU settings... I'd save your OC settings and the return to stock. Just as good as disabling modules, etc, without the actual performance loss for those moments you need the performance.

 

[MeldarthX]

turn it back to stock - undervolt a little; level cool and quiet on.....that will save you a lot of power...

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Yeah, turning on the powersaving features makes a massive difference.

 

[Abwx]

What are your settings exactly for frequency + voltage.?.

For instance Hardware.fr got 65W TDP with MT loadings at 3.5GHz, VID was 1.125V, LLC was set to Auto and CPU Z displayed 1.080V at full load.

For the record a 4670K is at 54W in the same tests with as much as 25% less throughput, at the CPU level, and with such settings, the FX beat it in term of perf/Watt more often than not.

 

[guskline]

How long are you in front of your computer? Do you need it on 24/7? How about just turning it off when you don't use it?

At a very minimum turn off the dual monitors?

 

[KingFatty]

Please consider buying a Kill-a-watt power meter, usually less than $20.

Then you can watch and see what power savings your changes make, if at all, in real-time.

You can jump through hoops and go through tons of trouble to reduce the power from 100 watts to 85 watts, and then realize it's not worth it. Or you can look at the huge contribution from monitors and lop off 100 watts in one fell swoop by using the winkey+p combo to easily switch back to single-monitor.

But I think if you want to attack the heat output, use a tool to find it. Much better than noodling around in the settings and guessing at what power savings might occur. Get the in-your-face numbers.

Here it is on Amazon for $18, or you can go to your local hardware store and buy one for around $20-25:
http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

 

[AtenRa]

Heh just realized you are using dual monitors with HD7850.

If im not mistaken AMD GPUs work at 3D clocks when dual monitors are used and they never down-clock when Idle. That means your GPU is working at 800MHz (or more if you have OCed) instead of 300MHz.

Have a look with GPUz and if that is whats happening, you better search for a solution in that department first.

 

[coercitiv]

Please consider buying a Kill-a-watt power meter, usually less than $20.

Excellent advice, quite a handy little tool nowadays. It helped me identify devices with poor power saving features around the house.

 

[Yuriman]

KingFatty's suggestions are great.

Using a Kill-a-watt, I was surprised to find that my 24" MVA panels used close to 80w, while my wife's 27" IPS Viewsonic is only around 25w at normal brightness levels. The first thing I did was ditch the 2nd MVA panel (gave it to my brother). I strongly considered replacing the other one too, but it makes more sense to do it after I get back from going abroad for a year. This alone helped make my PC room a lot more comfortable, and I was able to ease off of the A/C a little.

Some other interesting bits:

PC power draw: ~35w when the monitor is on, 25w when Windows turns the display off, 25w if I pull the video card and use integrated, ~175w Prime + Furmark, with a mild 4ghz overclock

Speakers (z5500's): 15w when they're plugged in and turned off, 25w when they're plugged in, turned on, and making no sound, and 35w minimum with any input

 

[2is]

Spend $150 to save maybe $15/year in reduced electrical bill?

OP is better off just reducing the clockspeed (and operating voltage) on their existing hardware IMO.

Might be quite a bit more than that if it's causing a 4000 watt AC to run for considerably longer then it would need to otherwise.

 

[Dave2150]

All you do is browse and you think your CPU still has some sort of contribution towards your room temperature? It's idle most of the time. Most of your power consumption comes from everything else but the CPU. Look what shutting down modules will do for you, when system is mostly idle.

Likely nothing.

If you're using chrome, don't drop down to one module and try to compensate by overclocking. Chrome is well multithreaded: leave at least 2 modules on, drop max clocks by 100-200Mhz and undervolt. You can try to squeeze a few watts out of the PC (disable unused components on MB if any, drop to 8/16GB RAM etc) but the biggest gain will still be shutting one of your monitors down.

A LED backlit monitor setup will also help much more than anything described above.

That graph shows old Intel CPU's. Haswell CPU's have dramatically reduced idle power requirements, which would make his AMD FX look far worse than it is in that graph.

 

[coercitiv]

That graph shows old Intel CPU's. Haswell CPU's have dramatically reduced idle power requirements, which would make his AMD FX look far worse than it is in that graph.

The discussion is about improving soccerballtux's system power usage, and not comparing FX with Haswell.

The reason I posted that graph was to prove disabling modules in the 8310 would do little to improve idle power consumption, and since we're talking about Internet browsing power usage, it will be rather close to idle on average.

Might be quite a bit more than that if it's causing a 4000 watt AC to run for considerably longer then it would need to otherwise.

If he's using a 4KW AC unit maybe he should replace that instead :biggrin:

 

[SlowSpyder]

I can run my CPU at high clocks / voltages or I can underclock at or near factory clocks. But your FX @ 4.3 shouldn't be going nuts with the power... turn on C&Q. Chances are during gaming your video card will be a bigger part of the total heat output. My third bedroom is a tiny 8'x9', I'm running 4.8GHz now. Wish me luck through summer.

 

[Yuriman]

That graph shows old Intel CPU's. Haswell CPU's have dramatically reduced idle power requirements, which would make his AMD FX look far worse than it is in that graph.

FYI my Ivy Bridge idles close to 25w on integrated graphics...

 

[2is]

If he's using a 4KW AC unit maybe he should replace that instead :biggrin:

That's about how much a central AC system uses.

 

[Dave2150]

FYI my Ivy Bridge idles close to 25w on integrated graphics...

Haswell idles 10-12W less than Ivy Bridge.