Question What is the most low power desktop Intel CPU with built in GPU?

[Tristpost]

As the official Intel TPU figures is such a bad measure of actual power consumption I am a bit stomped about how to find the most low power fairly recent generation Intel CPU with built in GPU? I am open for any socket (that I can buy a desktop or server motherboard for). I am looking for using the CPU in a combined NAS (unRAID) and Plex server (with transcoding for some mobile devices etc. that is why I want to use an Intel CPU with embedded GPU/Quick Sync). I would prefer at least 4 cores and if ECC memory is supported it would be a bonus (for more data reliability for the NAS) but I can compromise on that if there are no options with low power draw...
Happy for suggestions of CPUs or links to review sites that measures the real power consumption (both max and at idle would be ideal)...

 

[Tristpost]

Thanks for all advice - waiting for this (micro ATX) or this (ATX) motherboards to be released to go with one of the discussed CPUs and real ECC memory.

 

[lakedude]

Thanks for all advice - waiting for this (micro ATX) or this (ATX) motherboards to be released to go with one of the discussed CPUs and real ECC memory.

I'm not seeing where the micro ATX board supports ECC?

 

[lakedude]

Sorry if you already know this but pretty much any newer Intel CPU with Quick Sync can easily handle several Plex1080p transcodes. I'm not sure how often you would need the do any software transcodes with the CPU part of the CPU.

 

[Tristpost]

In this link they say the board supports "128GB Unbuffered ECC/non-ECC UDIMM, DDR5-4400MHz, in 4 DIMM slots" so unless this is another "supported in non-ECC mode" it should be ok I believe... And yes I know that for only plex the i3 is enough and I may go with that. .

I'm not seeing where the micro ATX board supports ECC?

 

[lakedude]

In this link they say the board supports "128GB Unbuffered ECC/non-ECC UDIMM, DDR5-4400MHz, in 4 DIMM slots" so unless this is another "supported in non-ECC mode" it should be ok I believe... And yes I know that for only plex the i3 is enough and I may go with that. .

Yes the ATX Super Micro board appears to support ECC.

The ASRock micro-ATX board does not seem to mention ECC anywhere I can find.



I see now both boards are "micro" in different ways...

 

[Tristpost]

For the ASRock I read this article that mentioned ECC but I have to wait until the manual becomes available to be sure.

 

[mgutt]

According to "tweaktown" review the i5-12600K draws between 91 (idle) and 226 (with load) so may be worth waiting for the i3-12100T that I hope will be even lower...

If you compare an i3 T and Non-T model, they will consume the same in idle. There is absolutely no benefit in buying a T-CPU. Instead it's the opposite. Let's say you convert a video. The T-CPU needs much longer, which means longer running HDDs, RAM, Chipset, CPU package, etc. which means more power consumption.

The only reason T-CPUs exist are tiny OEM builds, which do not allow big coolers.

And as already mentioned: It's not all about the CPU. The most important components for a low idle power consumption are the power supply and the motherboard. Google for "sparsamsten systeme 30w idle". There is a german community collecting low power builds and there is still no alder lake build with an idle power consumption under 10W which was easily reachable with 6th to 9th Intel CPUs.

If you need ECC RAM and a low power consumption, I would search for one of those MBs:
Gigabyte C246N-WU2
Fujitsu D3417
Fujitsu D3644

Those boards consume with one SSD and Pentium Gold or i3 only ~6W. And they were the last generation supporting ECC memory with this consumer CPUs.

Ok not 100% accurate: I own the W480M with an i3-10100E, which supports ECC RAM, too, but it's hard to get and expensive and: This combination consumes 10W in idle, which is 3W more than my older C246M-WU4 build and 5W more than my current C246N-WU2 build.

So what are the important steps:
- find an ITX Board with enough onboard SATA ports
- use the Corsair RM550x (2021) as it has the highest efficiency on low loads or a Titanium grade power supply (or PicoPSU, but those do not allow many SSDs)
- do not enable PCIe 4.0 (or even PCIe 5.0)
- avoid boards with RGB Controllers, Thunderbolt and other additional controllers
- use a CPU with as less cores as possible

 

[Tristpost]

Unfortunately all these Gigabyte "previous gen" motherboards seem to be impossible to get hold of in Europe/Sweden and that was what lead me towards looking for later gen alternatives. In particular I chased the C246N-WU2 for a long time... I have no experience of Fuji boards but some of them seem possible to get hold of.
I was also assuming later gen chipsets and CPUs had more focus on low power than older ones but perhaps this is not the case then?

 

[mgutt]

seem to be impossible to get hold of

Yes, I imported myself the C246M-WU4 and W480M from the US. We have the strange situation that the manufacturers do/did not offer consumer versions of the C256, W480, W580 or W680 as ITX. ASRock Industrial will for example release the ITX IMB-X1231 (W680), which will cost more than 500 €. Crazy.

I'm curious how much the Gigabyte MW34-SP0 (W680) will cost. But it's a full ATX board. I don't think it will have a really low power consumption.

I was also assuming later gen chipsets and CPUs had more focus on low power than older ones but perhaps this is not the case then?

The newer gen consumes more, especially Intel, as they were forced to "overclock" their platform to beat AMD, while having the less efficient node. That's why the maximum power consumption of Intel CPUs has been become extremely high. In addition they added thunderbolt controllers, RGB bullshit and released PCIe 4.0. Everyone is telling us that PCIe 4.0 is more efficient, but this is only valid for the maximum transfer rate and not idle situations.

So yes, it's strange, but at the moment older hardware consumes less energy.

I hope the next AMD Chipset (X670 or similar) will allow a lower idle power consumption.

 

[Tristpost]

Yes RGB is a sad development - you can hardly find quality keyboards without it. Luckily it can usually be turned off on those ...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

- do not enable PCIe 4.0 (or even PCIe 5.0)

If you can make do with PCIe 1.1 speeds, you can shave a few W more off.

If I limit my HTPC to 1.1 it shaves 2W off while decoding video.

 

[mgutt]

Luckily it can usually be turned off on those

I have an Asus Rog Strix B550-I Gaming and it was a huge pain to fully disable the RGB controller. Finally no BIOS setting helped. I needed to disable the device through the Windows device manager. Only after that step the C-State of the CPU changed. Sadly I didn't tested with Linux, but I will do that in the future when upgrading the CPU (its a gaming setup of my son).

If I limit my HTPC to 1.1 it shaves 2W off while decoding video

Does PCIe 1.1 support similar ASPM sleep states as the higher PCIe versions? So would it help with an M.2 NVMe, too?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Does PCIe 1.1 support similar ASPM sleep states as the higher PCIe versions? So would it help with an M.2 NVMe, too?

It's just the transfer protocol. Features shouldn't be affected at all.

Original PCIe 1.1 devices most likely doesn't support any power management at all, but a PCIe 3/4/5 device should only limit speeds. 2.0 only had link power management from what I know.