A new PC after a looong time - low-power quiet workstation ideas?


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Hello all,

 

Haven't built a PC for years, and I feel I've lost my desire to purchase independent components somewhat, and build another big, noisy, dusty, hot tower.  Too noisy, hot and using too much juice is how I've felt about my 'rig' for some time.

 

It is based on an Asus P6T, i7-9200 (?) running ~3.1Ghz, and 20 (should be 24, but a pin bent) GB.  Lots of disks, and a Revodrive (v.1) that has just gone bust, dammit.

 

If I was to put money into a complete new build, rather than patch it up, I'd like it to be;

 

- As fast - as many cores as poss for good VM performance

- Expandable beyond 24GB

- Smaller - I really don't need to the drive-space anymore, a MicroServer, Bitcasa and WS12 dedupe takes care of storage

- Very quite and cool and power-efficient - I want to leave it run at night without hearing it from another room!  

 

I'm not sure I want to try to and make a workstation out of a tablet/laptop this time around - I really want something that will drive 2x 2560x1440 monitors (I'm kind of tempted by a Dell/HP all-in-one).

 

Any one know of any pre/semi built Micro-systems, SFF etc. workstations they can recommend?  I'm UK based, so US vendors aren't much help, sorry!

 

 

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Well... if you want a lot of cores go AMD fx8320 (or fx8350), for the former you can use a microatx motherboard like the Asus M5A78L-M/USB3, for the later too, but after extreme loads (prime95 30min+) will throttle because of VRM load. I actually have a setup like the later with a radeon 7950 overclocked in a very small case: 7f5z.jpg, processor doesn't throttle, but it isn't a setup I would recommend unless you do undervolting, what I would recommend is a FX8350 and a Asus Crosshair Z motherboard, but this is a full atx motherboard, so there are very little cases that go small and fit this processor, if you find one that can match mine... please do inform me :D, otherwise you go intel, but intel only has up to 6 cores with HT, which isn't bad but for VMs I like better the fx8350 and a good third party cooler, which if you are on stock clocks then the samurai ZZ rev 2 keeps the processor below 57? under extreme loads no problem, if you plan to overclock you better go after a big 3rd party cooler like the noctuas, these processors are known to reach 5.0 Ghz quite nicely for most of the time but they indeed heat themselves.

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1.If you want pure performance, definitely go Intel. AMD doesn't offer anything good in the high end market. Don't go by the number of cores either, Intel CPU's just offer better top end performance.

 

2. Just get a motherboard that is capable of handling 32 GB of RAM, which is quite common these days.

 

3. You can go Micro ATX motherboard, and a smaller case.

 

4. The problem with not building your own computer, is you're limited by what components manufacturers put in. You're going to have to do some research and see if the motherboard included in the pre-built system is capable of handling 32 or 64 GB of RAM. Example: On newegg.com (I know you're UK based), they only have 6 pre-built desktops with 32 GB of RAM, all of which are gaming computers. You could go with a service like cyberpower or ibuypower, where they let you customize high end computers. Honestly, it's less hassle to just build it yourself, not to mention cheaper. 

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1.If you want pure performance, definitely go Intel. AMD doesn't offer anything good in the high end market. Don't go by the number of cores either, Intel CPU's just offer better top end performance.

 

that is dependent on needs. he specifically states he wants good vm performance. if we're comparing similar priced chips ($200), an i5-3470,and an AMD,fx-8350, sure intel will handedly beat the AMD in single threaded performance, but then again you've got way many more cores to use for VMs. the amd would be my choice in this situation.

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that is dependent on needs. he specifically states he wants good vm performance. if we're comparing similar priced chips ($200), an i5-3470,and an AMD,fx-8350, sure intel will handedly beat the AMD in single threaded performance, but then again you've got way many more cores to use for VMs. the amd would be my choice in this situation.

And they use GIGANTIC amounts of power (= heat = noise). And the amount of cores by itself really doesn't matter much, it's multithreaded performance that matters. And while the AMD's are slightly faster than similar Intel processors from the same generation they're not interesting simply because of the huge power requirements and bad single-threaded performance.

An Intel Core i5-4570 is what you want. It's fast, doesn't use too much power, supports all the latest virtualisation tech and costs less than one of those AMD's.

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And they use GIGANTIC amounts of power (= heat = noise). And the amount of cores by itself really doesn't matter much, it's multithreaded performance that matters. And while the AMD's are slightly faster than similar Intel processors from the same generation they're not interesting simply because of the huge power requirements and bad single-threaded performance.

An Intel Core i5-4570 is what you want. It's fast, doesn't use too much power, supports all the latest virtualisation tech and costs less than one of those AMD's.

 

They don't use gigantic amounts of power unless extremely stressed, also, those intels cost a bit more (10 pounds) here in amazon UK than the FX8350 while only having 4 cores and a 3.2 GHz frequency and HT, my setup is nowhere near noisy as you seem to think, in fact, it's not noiser at all and I have it just besides me, granted that I run it almost at stock frequencies but I have both GPU/NB and RAM overclocked but when stressed is hardy bothersome. also note that the FX8350 has also the latest virtualization tecnologies like AMD-V. In fact, in this particular case I can say that the AMD is better performance than that precise intel counterpart.

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An Intel Core i5-4570 is what you want. It's fast, doesn't use too much power, supports all the latest virtualisation tech and costs less than one of those AMD's.

 

my bad, youre right the haswell version is better for the same/similar price. i dont know why i was comparing to a ivy bridge part. too bad for amd steamroller is still going to be awhile.

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The difference in performance between the FX8350 and an i5 4570 is quite small (depending on what you're running), but once again the difference in power consumption (and the resulting heat) is quite big, under load and while idling. For similar performance AMD's offering uses almost double the power, which means double the heat.

In addition to that Intel CPU's just have more and better mainboards available with more features.

If you ask me there is no reason to go for AMD.

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The difference in performance between the FX8350 and an i5 4570 is quite small (depending on what you're running), but once again the difference in power consumption (and the resulting heat) is quite big, under load and while idling. For similar performance AMD's offering uses almost double the power, which means double the heat.

In addition to that Intel CPU's just have more and better mainboards available with more features.

If you ask me there is no reason to go for AMD.

Yep, this. The only reason you'd get AMD is performance for price. Otherwise, Intel all the way for performance, and lower power consumption. AMD CPU's used to offer the best performance, but that turned back to Intel a while ago.

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I find funny that the most concern here is "heat" when a third party heatsink of 25 pounds can solve it no problem while being silent. Oh well, more power for me for the same price, at the cost of "heat" and "noise"... which I barely feel because indeed, my system turns on :D.

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I find funny that the most concern here is "heat" when a third party heatsink of 25 pounds can solve it no problem while being silent. Oh well, more power for me for the same price, at the cost of "heat" and "noise"... which I barely feel because indeed, my system turns on :D.

It's only a tiny difference in power, and you'll pay for the price difference in electricity bills in the end (especially because of the high idle usage).

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It's only a tiny difference in power, and you'll pay for the price difference in electricity bills in the end (especially because of the high idle usage).

I read somewhere that it was around $30... a year, some people even says that it's $10, compared to other intels, it's 20W ~25W more at idle so I really don't see the big deal of it, is af they were trying to create a bigger problem of what truly it is, covering the fact that this processor is quite best bang for buck. Since I actually don't consume too much power (an in fact my computer replaces every single entertainment electronic) I also barely feel that because once again, it simply turns on after all.

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I read somewhere that it was around $30... a year. Since I actually don't consume too much power (an in fact my computer replaces every single entertainment electronic) I also barely feel that because once again, it simply turns on after all.

 

where i live, the difference between the 2 chips is 7 cents a day,thats if the full 40w difference was being consumed the whole day.

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where i live, the difference between the 2 chips is 7 cents a day,thats if the full 40w difference was being consumed the whole day.

thats 26.04 *something* a year (I don't know what currency you have)

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Thanks all, I'll take time to read thru (the NeoWin 'reply' icon didn't show). 

 

The Revodrive seems to responded to a split, LLF & re-RAID, so I'm back with the old rig. 

 

Afraid I'm a bit old and not a 3D gamer - I'm more interested in a cool-room and lower bills these days.   Dare I say it, but my research was leading to considering a "Haswell NUC"!!

 

Yup, it's OK, I'll get the hell out of your forum right away!! :$

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Thanks all, I'll take time to read thru (the NeoWin 'reply' icon didn't show). 

 

The Revodrive seems to responded to a split, LLF & re-RAID, so I'm back with the old rig. 

 

Afraid I'm a bit old and not a 3D gamer - I'm more interested in a cool-room and lower bills these days.   Dare I say it, but my research was leading to considering a "Haswell NUC"!!

 

Yup, it's OK, I'll get the hell out of your forum right away!! :$

Go on man, Intel is good, there is no doubt about it, but so does AMD considering its price range, but as long as you are happy that's ok.

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