Energy efficient PC build?

[neufuse Veteran]

Well its about time to build a new system, and I am looking for energy efficient parts this time...

my current Intel X58 Chipset with the original i7 920 processor uses about 250 watts idle.... I would like this time to take that wattage down some... I'm not talking going i3 or laptops here... I am just saying make it as conservative in power usage when idle as possible...

Right now I have a 750 watt Corsair 80+ PSU, when I think about it now, 750 Watts might of been overkill (was going to SLI high end nVIDIA cards 3 way but never got to it), since I never max out at that wattage...

what is the current standard for the most efficient PSUs? I really looked into their ranking, see 80+ gold, platnum, bronze, not sure how they rate them, etc

I assume you want active PFC's now? That does make it more efficient right?

Any recommendations on efficient PSU's?

also, I know motherboards / chipsets play a big part in power consumption, anyone know what the wattage is running on the latest Intel chipsets and what motherboards are most efficient?

CPU wise I am probably going to be in the Ivy Bridge range either i5 or i7, as this build is probably 6 months out (Starting research for it now obviously)

I know the X58 chipsets where power hogs... so probably anything newer right now is more efficient, and the thermal dispersion wattage of the newer cpu's seems much lower now days then the 920 chip I have now

[giantpotato]

Where are you getting that 250watt figure? That seems way too high for idle. My 2 year old AMD Phenom II system uses ~110W idle ~240W full load. My AMD E-350 server uses 30W idle.

Make sure the CPU and GPU are underclocking when idle. The difference in power usage while idle in any modern processor would be negligible. Take this for example, the idle power consumption for most intel processors is almost exactly the same. You shouldn't base your next system on power consumption, you should base it on how much processing power you need.

[linsook]

agree with the idle figure being off but anyway...

http://silentpcreview.com/

http://www.silentpcr...ecommended_PSUs

great site. silence and energy efficiency go hand in hand.

[neufuse Veteran]

Where are you getting that 250watt figure? That seems way too high for idle. My 2 year old AMD Phenom II system uses ~110W idle ~240W full load. My AMD E-350 server uses 30W idle.

Make sure the CPU and GPU are underclocking when idle. The difference in power usage while idle in any modern processor would be negligible. Take this for example, the idle power consumption for most intel processors is almost exactly the same. You shouldn't base your next system on power consumption, you should base it on how much processing power you need.

Verified two ways, used a Kill-A-Watt and it reads 250 Watts at idle... and I have a whole house power monitor (TED5000) and when the computer is on the house power raises 250ish watts

[neufuse Veteran]

looked up the power consumption of the X58 board I have,the board alone claims it uses 65 watts of power... thats without the CPU, just the Chipset and the other stuff on the board..... going by the Mfg spec sheet

[Jub]

Ivy Bridge and Z77 (Asus' Sabertooth Z77 is quite nice) should do the trick, and look for PSUs with 90% or higher efficiency, for example some of Be Quiet's (http://www.bequiet.com/en/powersupply/280). Do read reviews beforehand though, the "unseen technicalities" makes a lot of difference. The graphics card will obviously also play a large role in this.

[tsupersonic]

Well, x58, and i7 920 aren't the most energy efficient parts these days. You can get a nice Ivy Bridge CPU and also get a new GPU like the Nvidia 6 series. Consume a lot less power when idle.

[WebOrbiter]

Im doing a new build now as well, also with an eye on efficiency. Z77/Ivy Bridge is the the best power/performance wise right now, 80 Plus Gold or better PSU is a must. You might want to look at the Core i5 3550S, quad core at 65w. I'm going with mATX as I dont need all the extras and I read mATX draws less power, depends on the person I suppose. From what I read a mobo with Lucid Virtu will idle the GPU and use internal Intel graphics for simple stuff like web browsing, so I'm sure that helps too. Good luck with your build!

[neufuse Veteran]

Maybe we need to start posting configurations and how many watts our system is using idle using a kill-a-watt device to record it... when you have to pay for electic, wattage does turn out to be a larger deal

[neufuse Veteran]

anyone use Kingwin PSU's? I've never used one they seem to have good reviews, fanless always scares me on a psu, but they sound like they are pretty efficient

[TEX4S]

Neu - Why are you concerned about enery usage living in the U.S. ? Surely its not because you want to save $2.00 a year in electricity bills... Is there a specific reason ?

[neufuse Veteran]

Neu - Why are you concerned about enery usage living in the U.S. ? Surely its not because you want to save $2.00 a year in electricity bills... Is there a specific reason ?

$2 a year? yeah right... if I could drop my power usage by half I could save up to $150 a year, that's how bad the electic bills are getting up here since they deregulated pricing last year... just a year ago my electic bills where running $50-$70 a month... now they are running $190 to $310 a month! and I am using the same killowatt hour usage per month on average!

our rates more then doubled in 6 months! we had a rate lock on rates until end of 2010, last year that ended, and since then rates have been skyrocketing even with competition, its going up really fast... every month has turned into another I don't want to look at the power bill moment because it probably went up again in cost... we can rate lock for 6 months, but then they kill you after that with a big hike to make it up it seems like...

and why? because I want to! I just want to be able to say I did this and it worked!

[TEX4S]

$2 a year? yeah right... if I could drop my power usage by half I could save up to $150 a year, that's how bad the electic bills are getting up here since they deregulated pricing last year... just a year ago my electic bills where running $50-$70 a month... now they are running $190 to $310 a month! and I am using the same killowatt hour usage per month on average!

our rates more then doubled in 6 months! we had a rate lock on rates until end of 2010, last year that ended, and since then rates have been skyrocketing even with competition, its going up really fast... every month has turned into another I don't want to look at the power bill moment because it probably went up again in cost... we can rate lock for 6 months, but then they kill you after that with a big hike to make it up it seems like...

and why? because I want to! I just want to be able to say I did this and it worked!

Wow - $70 jumping to $310 - that is bad - I see what you mean.

What do you pay per kil0watt ?

[WebOrbiter]

Im not familiar with Kingwin, but I decided to give Rosewill a shot after all the good reviews it's had. I got this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182071

[neufuse Veteran]

Wow - $70 jumping to $310 - that is bad - I see what you mean.

What do you pay per kil0watt ?

it's sadly variable.... I've seen it as low as $0.1459 and as high as $0.199 every so many months they can change rates now... we use to be at a fixed rate that didn't change for 10 years I believe it was... so it was MUCH cheaper considering it was fixed for 10yrs... right now we are paying $0.1655 i think

hopefully another invesement I made this year will help... highest efficency furnace and 20SEER AC unit (didn't just buy this because I thought I could save money, the old AC unit was shot and was only 8SEER and the furnace used 2.8KW/h to run the darn blower!) the new furnace only uses between 50 and 150 watts to run the blower (DC variable speed motor instead of a PSC AC motor which are energy hogs) furnace was crap too.. previous owners bought the cheapest one they could find 2yrs before we bought the house, and it just wasn't working right when we moved in... and only got worse in the past 3yrs...

[tsupersonic]

Do you leave your computer running 24/7?

[SirEvan]

I dont know if this is what you want, but I use around 100-110 idle, 150 watts load with the following in my file server:

Asrock 880GXH-USB3 board

AMD X3 455 processor

4x Kingston 4gb 1600 RAM sticks

8x Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives

1x Dell PERC 6/I raid controller

1x Intel gigabit nic

1x Corsair C300 SSD for booting.

This stays on 24x7, and while it idles most of the time, it serves my email, web sites, and movies/tv/music to my HTPC (and streaming music to my phone). My monthly electricity bill in my apartment is around 35-45$, thats for everything I have (refrigerator, microwave, 47" plasma tv, stereo receiver, I5 Desktop, printer, 16Port gigabit swithc, 5port switch, LED lighting (got rid of CFL's), networked tv tuner, etc.

[neufuse Veteran]

Do you leave your computer running 24/7?

it has to be on about 18hrs a day due to working and running long running tasks... but all that and the eclectic rates are irrelevant to this top, I just want to make an energy efficient system? this is not about politics or anything else? this is no different than the I want my PC silent community, I just want to make it efficient instead of silent... it's just an end goal

[SirEvan]

it has to be on about 18hrs a day due to working and running long running tasks... but all that and the eclectic rates are irrelevant to this top, I just want to make an energy efficient system? this is not about politics or anything else? this is no different than the I want my PC silent community, I just want to make it efficient instead of silent... it's just an end goal

I forgot to mention that I have a Cosair H60 water cooler and an NZXT H2 case, my system is silent. If you really want low power, you could use an Atom 330 board. My original win2k8r2 server was based on an dual core atom board and 8GB of ram, and I used around 80 watts at idle, thats slightly more than a regular incandescent bulb.

[neufuse Veteran]

I forgot to mention that I have a Cosair H60 water cooler and an NZXT H2 case, my system is silent. If you really want low power, you could use an Atom 330 board. My original win2k8r2 server was based on an dual core atom board and 8GB of ram, and I used around 80 watts at idle, thats slightly more than a regular incandescent bulb.

Atom isn't powerful enough, like I said at the start I want an i5 at minimum, just as efficient as I can get it... just trying to track down what motherboards are the most efficient, what PSU's are etc...

[Rudy]

it's sadly variable.... I've seen it as low as $0.1459 and as high as $0.199 every so many months they can change rates now... we use to be at a fixed rate that didn't change for 10 years I believe it was... so it was MUCH cheaper considering it was fixed for 10yrs... right now we are paying $0.1655 i think

That's high! Here I pay 5.32?/kWh for the first 30kWh used each day and after you go over it's 7.51?/kWh.... and I thought that was high :/ (oh plus a 40.64? / day flat charge)

[neufuse Veteran]

That's high! Here I pay 5.32?/kWh for the first 30kWh used each day and after you go over it's 7.51?/kWh.... and I thought that was high :/ (oh plus a 40.64? / day flat charge)

is that for generation, transmission or both? because if you just take generation for us its only about half the cost... but you have a generator and a transmission company here... transmission companies are fixed as they are the ones that own the lines to your house.... generators we can shop around for

here's just one of the two companies that bill me they come as one bill though combined..

Generation/Transmission $0.07249538

now that for the distribution costs...

Distribution $0.081756

Consumer Education Charge $0.000210

Solar Requirements Charge $0.000110

Default Service Support Charge $0.000500

Non-Utility Generation Charge $ 0.009030

that comes out to $0.16410 per KW/h

[ViperAFK]

anyone use Kingwin PSU's? I've never used one they seem to have good reviews, fanless always scares me on a psu, but they sound like they are pretty efficient

I don't really recognize the brand at all, but I did some research and looked up a few reviews on some kingwin units on jonnyguru and they actually seem to be pretty solid PSU's, here's a review of one of the fanless units from last year: http://www.jonnyguru...Story5&reid=253

from what I see in those reviews they seem to perform very well, they are just on expensive side. Getting one of the platinum certified units wouldn't be a bad idea if you are worried about efficiency.

[neufuse Veteran]

I don't really recognize the brand at all, but I did some research and looked up a few reviews on some kingwin units on jonnyguru and they actually seem to be pretty solid PSU's, here's a review of one of the fanless units from last year: http://www.jonnyguru...Story5&reid=253

from what I see in those reviews they seem to perform very well, they are just on expensive side. Getting one of the platinum certified units wouldn't be a bad idea if you are worried about efficiency.

yeah, all the reviews I've seen so far have been great, I never heard of them before either.. but being 92+% efficient is awesome since thats a lot less heat generated also... price is high, but not that bad

just read that review you posted and I just love the fact the guy took off a point for not having a Metal Oxide Varsistor (MOV)... if you put one of those on say bye bye to your 90+ efficiency rating....

[TEX4S]

I have heard of Kingwin - normally its cheap chinese-made accessories/adapters. I have also seen a couple of PSU from then in the 1KW range.

If I remember correctly it was considered an OK PSU - but considering all of the other options out there - I think I would look elsewhere - but thats just me.

I have a Seasonic 1KW Platinum its not silent, but hasnt blown up anything yet so I guess its OK- cant remember price.