Please help me select lowest idle power Mobo + CPU for HTPC and file server

[velis]

I currently use an Athlon II @ 3GHz on 790GX, which consumes some 60W at idle.
+10W for the 3disks that are used for file server needs.
Everything is powered by Corsair CX430 - don't ask, getting a lower nominated power ATX PSU is a nightmare here.
This setup cannot play 1080i H264 and cannot do any postprocessing using the integrated graphics. H264 1080i is mandatory, I actually have TV channels broadcasting that.

I'd like to move to something more powerful and less power consuming.

The contenders are:
1. AMD E-350 (Asus E35M1-M (Pro))
2. Intel i3 2100 (or 2105)
3. AMD A8-3850
4. Something I missed?

The first two options would come with a Radeon HD 6570 or something (need to research more which is capable of playing 1080i content with full postprocessing)

What I need is the lowest *IDLE* power consuming option that does what I need. I don't think there's anything more demanding than H264 interlaced, but the system should handle file serving at disk bottlenecked speeds as well - it must not be limited by CPU lack of power.
So the only reason I don't just go ahead and buy the E-350 (it's 100€ cheaper BTW) is because I'm not sure it can handle Gbit ethernet and multiple disks (standard spindle ones) at full speed.
The other thing I'm considering are the reported consumptions of the two much more CPU powerful solutions. Supposedly the difference at idle is less than 20W.

So, which of these options is better?

 

[Ken g6]

Have you considered ION? Note that while it handles H264 1080 fine, it has problems with Flash video.

See Anandtech's review.

 

[sm625]

llano A6? Low idle power, can be tweaked even lower, and no need for discrete.

 

[Vic Vega]

My Atom 330 + ION has zero problems with 1080 flash video.

Specifically, I have an Asus 1201N 12.1" netbook. Perhaps Flash has improved though I've had this unit for over a year and never had a problem.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Have you considered ION? Note that while it handles H264 1080 fine, it has problems with Flash video.

See Anandtech's review.

The Anandtech review didn't include 1080i, which for whatever reason is considerably tougher to render than 1080p (more shuffling data around? Doesn't really make sense to me).

ION has considerable deficiencies for use as HTPC, notably lack of proper 24fps.

 

[Soulkeeper]

E-350 likely won't be fast enough to make you happy imo, but it is the lowest idler of the 3 you listed
llano is nice, i3 has good cpu power and perf/watt but the gpu is lacking compared to llano
pretty sure anandtech or tomshardware had a review comparing i3 against llano (remember reading it)

personally i'd get the llano out of the 3
just cause it's the most well rounded out of the 3 options

 

[velis]

I'm pretty sure ION is out of the question. I worry even about E-350 so no way I'm taking something even worse performing.
The problem is that AT review of llano HTPC action was very lacking. Ganesh kept saying "I had issues..." but failed to elaborate every time. In the end I was extremely confused about it playing anything decently.
And yes, the E-350 is only considered because it uses extremely low power. I just wonder if it's enough. Judging from other forum posts I will not be happy with menu rendering speed in MediaPortal and similar stuff that isn't handled strictly by GPU.

 

[munkle]

If you are getting an add in card (6570) you could do a g620, it is very low power yet is still a fast cpu.

 

[BlueBlazer]

How about Core i3 2100T?

 

[velis]

I have just been looking at it. Seems very nice, but I hear I wouldn't gain much since it's only officially lower power than standard i3 2100. 2100 doesn't exactly guzzle 100W either

 

[BarkingGhostar]

The Anandtech review didn't include 1080i, which for whatever reason is considerably tougher to render than 1080p (more shuffling data around? Doesn't really make sense to me).

ION has considerable deficiencies for use as HTPC, notably lack of proper 24fps.

Maybe in Flash, but straight video it requires very little processing power to introduce interlacing to a video stream that is progressive in original. And a native interlaced stream requires almost nothing to 'output'.

But if the OP was talking about H264 interlaced 1080 for Flash that is another story.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I have just been looking at it. Seems very nice, but I hear I wouldn't gain much since it's only officially lower power than standard i3 2100. 2100 doesn't exactly guzzle 100W either

Why the need for 1080 interlaced output? Are you using a older display not capable of taking a 1080P input? What will be the display (make/model)?

 

[velis]

I don't have the need for 1080i output. AFAIK the Radeons aren't even capable of taking advantage of this. They deinterlace and then reinterlace in the RAMDAC / digital output chips. If Radeons wouldn't deinterlace when output was set to 1080i, I wouldn't need to change the platform because 790GX would be powerful enough.

What I DO have is H264 1080i input and MPEG2 1080i input, both of which I want to deinterlace for the TV.
Flash is of no interest. The format to decode is Transport Stream (.ts), containing either MPEG2 or H264 video.

 

[CTho9305]

It sounds like you're going down the right path given your requirements. Since you stated you want more performance than your 3GHz Athlon II, an E-350 won't cut it. Llano does have power gating for the cores, so its idle power should still be very good despite its higher TDP. I'd recommend avoiding anything Atom-based - until you're going to sub-netbook form factors I think it's a bad tradeoff.

That said, I have a friend who uses an E-350 as an HTPC and he's very happy with it - it's powered by some sort of wall-wart (i.e. very low max power), has no fans at all and uses something like 2 watts when it's sleeping (win7 wakes up automatically when it needs to record a show). He uses Windows Media Center as a DVR for over-the-air shows, and Hulu. If you can deal with sticking to accelerated video formats, I'd recommend an E-350 system (actually, AMD now lists the E-450 which adds 50MHz, DDR 1333 support, and higher GPU clocks) and reconsidering whether you really care about performance beyond smooth video playback. But Llano is your safest bet.

 

[kalrith]

SPCR (silentpcreview) is the source I used when building my low-power HTPC. It was a few years ago, but I went with an Abit AN-M2 motherboard with a AMD BE-2300 CPU. I use Crystal CPUID to lower the voltage to .8v and the multiplier to 4x at idle. I'm not sure what the CPU alone uses, but my entire HTPC (with 2TB green hdd, Hauppauge 2250 tuner card, and 4550 gpu) pulls about 40W from the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt.

While those specific choices might not be applicable to you, the process I used might. I specifically chose a motherboard that allowed low voltage at idle. That means that a different motherboard (without the same undervolting capabilities) with the exact same processor would've used more wattage at idle.

So, undervolting would be another thing that I would recommend looking into.

 

[aigomorla]

intel sossoman?

are u into old machines?

Uses 2 Lappy processors, so its like an ion, however its on a full bloated enterprise board.

typically boards run for around 30-100 on ebay..
The cpu's also you can get used for around 20-120 each, in which you will need 2.

Board accepts 32gigs in registered ECC ram.

Its not a bad package for a simple file server / server layout on WS08

 

[pantsaregood]

Either go Llano, E-350, or E-450 which should be released soon.

E-350 at stock speeds does have some performance deficiencies, but overclocking (even slightly) helps alleviate the bottleneck considerably. You could probably push another 200MHz or so out of it without raising the power consumption significantly.

 

[wirednuts]

i agree. e350 if you want max power savings (solar powered htpc?), but if you really want something that fun, go llano! i have an i3 in my htpc but thats only because its my main gaming rig too.

 

[Zargon]

the 6450 6570's reportedly idle in the single digits for watts(~2w for the 54/6450)

my aII 240 785g setup idles at about 33w. the 785g chipset is very power sippy, especially if you get the right one, like the GB UD2 ones

 

[velis]

So my best bet would be to use an E-350 and complement it with a 6570 for smooth video playback with all postprocessing?
Don't know about E-450, but there's only one micro ATX MB around for E-350 (ASUS E35M1-M) that has 2xPCI slots that I need. So if I decide to wait, I'd probably wait a long time.
Seems using llano would be less painful, but I'd waste some 10-20W more.

 

[hans007]

So my best bet would be to use an E-350 and complement it with a 6570 for smooth video playback with all postprocessing?
Don't know about E-450, but there's only one micro ATX MB around for E-350 (ASUS E35M1-M) that has 2xPCI slots that I need. So if I decide to wait, I'd probably wait a long time.
Seems using llano would be less painful, but I'd waste some 10-20W more.

i think the 6570 would make that not the best power wise. and be a waste on an e-350.

i've got an a8-3850 and at idle with a 300W 80plus psu, its about 24-25W with just an SSD in the system.

an e-350 might only idle like 5W lower than that with the same psu

 

[BlueBlazer]

So my best bet would be to use an E-350 and complement it with a 6570 for smooth video playback with all postprocessing?
Don't know about E-450, but there's only one micro ATX MB around for E-350 (ASUS E35M1-M) that has 2xPCI slots that I need. So if I decide to wait, I'd probably wait a long time.

The only issue I can foresee on using E-350 is the lack of processing power. Especially if you are going to play many types of video formats (including RealVideo, Quicktime, etc) as some video playback software/plugin does not utilize fully hardware acceleration due to either does not utilize GPU acceleration (e.g. Sorensen codec), does not recognize GPU acceleration or just GPU driver bugs.

Seems using llano would be less painful, but I'd waste some 10-20W more.

Either that or Core i3, for safe bet.

 

[grimpr]

It sounds like you're going down the right path given your requirements. Since you stated you want more performance than your 3GHz Athlon II, an E-350 won't cut it. Llano does have power gating for the cores, so its idle power should still be very good despite its higher TDP. I'd recommend avoiding anything Atom-based - until you're going to sub-netbook form factors I think it's a bad tradeoff.

That said, I have a friend who uses an E-350 as an HTPC and he's very happy with it - it's powered by some sort of wall-wart (i.e. very low max power), has no fans at all and uses something like 2 watts when it's sleeping (win7 wakes up automatically when it needs to record a show). He uses Windows Media Center as a DVR for over-the-air shows, and Hulu. If you can deal with sticking to accelerated video formats, I'd recommend an E-350 system (actually, AMD now lists the E-450 which adds 50MHz, DDR 1333 support, and higher GPU clocks) and reconsidering whether you really care about performance beyond smooth video playback. But Llano is your safest bet.

:thumbsup:

Only Llano has the GPU crunch to run some HQ MPC-HC custom shaders like those below.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=157634

 

[Zargon]

i think the 6570 would make that not the best power wise. and be a waste on an e-350.

i've got an a8-3850 and at idle with a 300W 80plus psu, its about 24-25W with just an SSD in the system.

an e-350 might only idle like 5W lower than that with the same psu

yeah the idle watts of the 6570 should be right around 10w which is a big deal according to the OP

 

[velis]

I have now ordered:
ASUS P8H67-V R3.0
Intel Core i3 2105
Corsair XMS3 2x4GB

I think having some CPU power in reserve can't hurt plus these CPUs really sip power as I hear. If it works, I'll just undervolt it.
if it can't handle deinterlacing + postprocessing, I'll just buy a decent graphics card.
It's strange though that I can't seem to find any manual or review showing intel graphics deinterlacing and postprocessing options