Power consumption and value in Intel's Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, vs. Haswell...

[waltchan]

I need an AFFORDABLE (both new or used) Intel processor that runs fairly quick and competitive today for 2016, but uses good amount of power consumption that will heat up my room a little in cold winter.

I'm thinking Sandy Bridge, like Pentium G645, fits best in this category. Or maybe I should step up to i3-2130 since prices are depreciating fast, but it's still selling for $65 shipped. I tried putting in a Haswell, but the power supply runs too cold and doesn't heat up my room fast enough, plus they're 30% more-expensive than used Sandy Bridge. I haven't tried Ivy Bridge yet, because used price for them is near-identical to Haswell, and I assume they're at the middle.

What I'm not sure is how Sandy Bridge's HD graphics compete with today's time? I notice for Windows 10 download, Intel only supports Ivy Bridge and later. Sandy Bridge retains the older black-color interface, but can be installed for Windows 10 with no problem.

What do you suggest me?

 

[Burpo]

Buy a space heater? :\

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Buy a space heater? :\

Or Crossfire R9 290s.

Waltchan, weren't you the one who had bought a bunch of Celeron/Pentium CPUs as investments, thinking they would be worth more later? You could build those out into systems and run Folding@Home on them or something.

 

[MrTeal]

Buy an old Bitcoin miner. You might not make money, but you'll at least subsidize the cost of the electricity you're using for heat.

Other than that, if you're looking at spending $65 on a processor, you'd be way better served with a Westmere hex than a Sandy i3.

 

[Zodiark1593]

$25 space heater > 1x $250 OCd Haswell Quad, at least as far as space heating goes.

Or, rent out a room for a data center. Pipe the heat to your entire house.

 

[DidelisDiskas]

Anything short of fx-9370 is not going to cut it, although come to think of it, my old AMD Phenom 9850BE was a pretty good toaster too (it still runs strong at my grandparents house after years of heavy abuse), but seens to run cooler after i placed it in a more spacious box.

 

[Ken g6]

Anything short of fx-9370 is not going to cut it

FX-8320. You can always OC it later.

Or better yet, one of those old dual Xeons on Ebay.

For ways to make the processor hotter, please see the Distributed Computing forum.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I've gotten my CPU to use over 400 watts, that'd do the trick.

 

[el etro]

If you concerned about price and power, get a used Ivy bridge.

 

[SuperJaw]

An OC'd socket 1366 i7 or Xeon should do the trick. Nice and toasty.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I (partially) heat my apt in Winter with DC. Current rigs are i3-6100 w/GT740 1GB GDDR5, and 2x G4400 OC on Z170 Pro4S, w/7950 3GB GDDR5 cards.

Between all of them, they do provide some warmth, but not excessively so, on the colder nights. I finally had to turn my heat up to 62F in my apt. (I had it set to 50F, but that wasn't enough.)

 

[lyssword]

definitely something old xeon or fx 8350 oc'd

 

[waltchan]

Wow...no one really answered my question. I assume Sandy Bridge fits perfect for me. But what about its graphics?

 

[SPBHM]

Wow...no one really answered my question. I assume Sandy Bridge fits perfect for me. But what about its graphics?

pretty bad, but that's enough if you are not gaming most of the time.
but you need to be more specific.

 

[SuperJaw]

Wow...no one really answered my question. I assume Sandy Bridge fits perfect for me. But what about its graphics?

Sandy bridge doesn't consume much power at idle and it's graphics suck. But if you care about graphics at all, I don't think Intel's were really acceptable until Haswell. But space heaters are like $10 bucks even with a thermostatically controlled one.

Even high wattage CPUs like AMD FX actually idle at fairly low watts these days so until you're folding or something any CPU is not going to give you enough heat for space heating.

My old dual socket Mac Pro with 2x 2.8Ghz quad idled at 220w, that was enough to make the room it was in a couple degrees warmer. But any modern platform is going to have a way lower idle power draw.

 

[waltchan]

Sandy bridge doesn't consume much power at idle and it's graphics suck. But if you care about graphics at all, I don't think Intel's were really acceptable until Haswell. But space heaters are like $10 bucks even with a thermostatically controlled one.

Even high wattage CPUs like AMD FX actually idle at fairly low watts these days so until you're folding or something any CPU is not going to give you enough heat for space heating.

My old dual socket Mac Pro with 2x 2.8Ghz quad idled at 220w, that was enough to make the room it was in a couple degrees warmer. But any modern platform is going to have a way lower idle power draw.

Finally received my first acceptable response. Yes, after installing Pentium G645 in it, it does run a tiny bit warmer than Haswell Pentium G3260. Fair enough to warm up my room a little. :thumbsup:

I just purchased a new Acer desktop from Costco with i7-4790 and 12GB RAM for $450 clearance price (only to get the Acer Windows 10 copy, copy to USB, and install it for my other Acer PCs with each different product key used from Windows 7 & free update to 10). Already sold the i7-4790 processor for $275 shipped on eBay, and now selling the 8GB DDR3L RAM stick for $40 shipped. Kept the 4GB only. Processor changed to Pentium G3260 already with thinner heatsink. Good deal...

The heatsink from i7-4790 84W it provided is thicker and different size than the thinner-size found in Acer's Core i3 and below. I assume the thicker heatsink works better for Sandy Bridge 65W instead, since it dissipates more heat, so that's my interest for this topic. I'm installing Acer's Windows 10 with Acer LGA1155 board right now with Pentium G645 and the thicker heatsink from i7-4790.

 

[Yuriman]

Sandy Bridge i7 - 95w
Ivy Bridge i7 - 77w
FX-9590 - 220w
Four incandescent lightbults - 240-400w
Space heater - 1500w

Buy whatever gives you the performance you need, plus a space heater. Heating your room with a PC is not going to be very effective.

 

[jeffbui]

Can find GTX 480s and GTX 580s for $50-$60. They're pretty effective space heaters

 

[aigomorla]

oh man this post made me laugh a little...
someone who is actually going after the contrast of what everyone else is mostly asking...

Sandy Bridge i7 - 95w
Ivy Bridge i7 - 77w
FX-9590 - 220w
Four incandescent lightbults - 240-400w
Space heater - 1500w

Buy whatever gives you the performance you need, plus a space heater. Heating your room with a PC is not going to be very effective.

hmmm..

I can name a few pentiums which were legendary space heaters..

Pentium D 805 - The Entire line of Smithfields for that matter.
Pentium D 960 - Yup also toss in Presler



especially when they were ranging in the 4ghz+ overclock...
I recall trying to keep my room cool even during a chilly winter with those guys cranking out heat.

 

[SPBHM]

pretty sure you can get 1500W with some old high end hardware, like Nehalem OC + GTX 480 quad sli OC.

 

[waltchan]

I found Pentium G645 not quick enough and would like to upgrade to i3-2130, 500MHz speed extra. Sandy Bridge has the widest gap you'll find (and sensitive to slow speed), starting from 1.6 GHz Celeron G440, and up to 3.4 GHz in i3-2130 for the 65W max area.

Today for Haswell, Pentium G3470 is 3.6 GHz while i3-4370 is 3.8 GHz.

 

[rgldsmth]

oh man this post made me laugh a little...
someone who is actually going after the contrast of what everyone else is mostly asking...



hmmm..

I can name a few pentiums which were legendary space heaters..

Pentium D 805 - The Entire line of Smithfields for that matter.
Pentium D 960 - Yup also toss in Presler



especially when they were ranging in the 4ghz+ overclock...
I recall trying to keep my room cool even during a chilly winter with those guys cranking out heat.

ya, I had a PentiumD [945]3.45@ 4.5 Ghz That ran very hot, used a peltier back then....

 

[CuriousMike]

Four incandescent lightbults - 240-400w
Space heater - 1500w
Buy whatever gives you the performance you need, plus a space heater. Heating your room with a PC is not going to be very effective.

I would think light bulbs make for better "space heaters" than CPU's.

When I was a kid, my father put a 100w light bulb in the dog house when it got below zero.

 

[superstition]

pretty sure you can get 1500W with some old high end hardware, like Nehalem OC + GTX 480 quad sli OC.

I think the neighbors would complain about the noise, though.