Need Low Power/Heat Machine

[bob4432]

as the summer comes closer and closer my computer room gets warmer and warmer. i am getting rid of 1 machine and re-doing one home server which is currently a xp2000 w/ 1GB of pc3200 ram, 1xide hdd, 1x sata hdd, 1x120mm, 1x80mm fan, a 350W antec psu and a fanless agp gpu.

my goal is to get a bit more power in terms of cpu but to lower the overall power usage and heat output with minimal amount of $$$ output.

what i will be keeping from the current build -
1GB pc3200
1xide hdd
1xsata hdd
1x120mm fan
1x80mm fan

i know i could pick up a 35-45W skt A cpu, but the prices of those are more than 939s, and have less than 1/2 the performance, plus no throttling.

so, are there any good m/bs that support ddr1 and a am2 (one of their low power d/c units would be excellent 🙂, one mixed with onboard GbE, video, sata (no raid is necessary) would be a greatly added bonus. cost is a huge factor as i already have the cpu power i need for what the machine does, but it pours a lot of heat out of it.

i am also looking at picking up a decent priced, efficient psu, something in the 300-400W range that is 80%+ certified, probably a enhance, etc.

thanks in advance for your time.

also, this is a 24/7 rig - will be running probably xp pro and does duty as a print server, image storage of all the othe machines hdds, http and https server, ftp and ftp-ssl server but most of the time it is using very little power, so the ability to be able to throttle down would be nice.

some of you may say to just cut the V and fsb on the current setup - tried it, this is a weird setup and whenever i move the fsp either up and down, no boot, so that is out of the question.

 

[43st]

I believe the Venice core was the first of the 939 based chips to really cut power usage. I think most of the newer AMD chips use that technology as well. Sea Sonic is the best line of 80%+ efficiency PSU's, maybe even the Antec EarthWatts line. You may also consider Vista as it has advanced power saving features and profiles. Just some food for thought..

 

[bob4432]

thanks for the replies, anybody else want to weigh in on this?

 

[zerogear]

Stay away from 8800 series 😉 They're like space heaters.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: zerogear
Stay away from 8800 series 😉 They're like space heaters.

will probably be going with eithe agp or a pci card.....

 

[piasabird]

Maybe you can find something like a Shuttle that has a Pentium M Motherboard. They cost a little more because they are Pentium M, but they run on less power and make less heat and have smaller CPU Coolers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856101480

A lot of people do not like the Pentium M Concept for a desktop board and it has not been that well implemented. I have heard that Asus makes a Pentium M Adapter for 865 motherboards, but it will only work on some select Asus Motherboards with the Intel 865 Chipset. You might find a review on it. At best this is a somewhat iffy product that was not well received that would probably require upgrading the Bios.

I have heard rumors that the Xeon Dual Processors run cool. However, that might require a server motherboard. The Xeon Quad Cores will be coming out soon. It is a shame they dont make a cheap Xeon board for low-end use. There may be one out there somewhere made by Titan or somebody. It is rumored that the New Mac Pro's will use dual Xeon Quads, but that is more geared toward High-end Workstations. I think it will also have like a $3,500.00 Price tag.

On the other hand I still have a 1.2 gig Tulatin Core Celeron running on an Asus TUSL2-C Motherboard which is no longer made. This is actually a PIII Motherboard and processor but it does run cool.