striving for low-power solution

[sverre]

Hi all,
Im thinking about building myself a box that would run 24/7 with just some basic networking services. Just a mainboard, CPU, 256megs of ram, 2.5" 4200RPM HDD, integrated VGA and at least one 10/100 LAN RJ45.
I was thinking about the Epia PD6000E mini-ITX mainboard, but since its not exactly cheap and provides quite low performance (though more than enough), I came up with the idea of buying a Sempron 2600+ for socket 754 and underclocking it to say 700-800 MHz...along with undervolting.. I expect to be able to run it with passive cooling only.
My question is - approximately how much power would both solutions consume when idle ?
Would the Sempron based solution be as reliable as the first one ?
The Enermax EG301AX-VE PSU should be quite an overkill, but I prefer an effective and reliable PSU.
Thanx for any suggestions !

 

[jpeyton]

I think it comes down to the motherboard more than anything else. Here are a few good ones to check out:

JetWay A200GDMS

SOLTEK K8M800I-RL

Biostar K8NHA-M Grand

 

[sverre]

thanx for your quick reply 🙂
but before picking a mobo, I should probably choose the platform (or rather CPU) first.
Can a Sempron 2600+ underclocked to some 700-800MHz come anywhere near the Eden processor concerning the power consumption ?
The box will be idle 99% of time, with both CPUs, the power consumption therefore plays the major role. Though if the underclocked Sempron consumed only about some 10W more, I'd reach for it instead of the Eden.

 

[jpeyton]

With the Sempron 2600+ being 90nm, if the motherboard supports undervolting you should easily be able to run the CPU at 1GHz at 1V or less. I'm not sure what the power consumption would be, but there are several awesome fanless heatsinks that can run much hotter processors, so a fanless undervolted 2600+ should be easy.

 

[bersl2]

Never mind... didn't realize it required some hardware hacking too.

 

[Hacp]

Sollution, get a cheap 400 dollar laptop and turn it into your server/network whatever.