New build: low wattage (<20w) idle, totally passive, gaming HTPC

[Bigsy]

Quite pleased with this setup, it plays games well enough, is totally silent (0 fans) and not a power hog... so thought I'd share.

This all runs stock volts, wireless, BT and LAN onboard and enabled, its totally passive, and idles at ~19.5w... also gives playable framerates in Battlefield 3. Not really tried to push the overclock, from reading reviews I'm not far of the max and I don't want to up any volts so I keep the power and temps down.

I honestly can't quite believe how low powered this idles, I can't get my ION system this low!

I have a couple more bits to add like a couple of 3.5" drives for a nas and a slim BD rom but idle watts shouldn't increase drastically.

* Streacom FC8 - Awesome case for the money (£130 fanless case http://www.streacom.com/products/fc8-fanless-chassis/)

* 120w pico psu

* Asus F1A75-I, Fantastic board has some fancy power gubbings which really helps this setup idle at super low watts.

* Tri core Llano A6-3500 @ 3.65Ghz

* Geil 4gb (soon to be 8) running at 2100Mhz

* Crucial M4

Some pics:

This is taken with it idling on desktop. It tops out at about 110w full tilt.

 

[Bigsy]

Yeah I know... not only that but the base of the cpu heatsink is anodized. But it does do a good job, I've ran it a full tilt with 3 threads of linx and furmark and it tends to top out around 80c, which is fine by me my 4ghz i7 core has run in the 90C since it came oot a year or 2 ago.

I did have to take the whole setup apart and apply mx-4 to everything the heatpipes touch, before I did that it was idling in the high 70C.

 

[Bigsy]

The case only comes with with 2 heatpipes, the heatsink and case has room for more simply to aid fitting on different mobos.

As is the mobo heatsink would make it difficult to fit more, I think they would fit but it would be marginal. Still two is absolutely fine, surprisingly.

 

[Bigsy]

As said full load overclocked is about 110w, if you ran stock no more than 70w full load.

I see 80'ish Celsius overclocked I reckon if you ran stock it would be around the 70C mark max.

Case has 1x2.5" 1x5.25" and 1x 3.5" (with rubber mounts) but there is room for more if you want to get creative .

 

[Bigsy]

Nice build!

(surprised it didn't start throttling after a few mins of heavy 3D stuff )

The cpu doesn't start throtting till it hits 100C and its got no where near that after an hour of furmark and linx.

As said I've ran my 4ghz I7 on high volts in the low 90C's since they first came out and its as stable as ever. That temp is (just) within spec so why bother having it lower? It only makes it more noisy and even if iit does shorten the life of a cpu its going to very outdated by the time that happens..

 

[Bigsy]

Looks pretty good! How much did it cost total, if you don't mind me asking?

Also, what's that meter called that you're using to measure the Watts? (on the plug)

Pretty cheap in my book....

Case = £130
mobo = £95
CPU = £62
PicoPsu = £14 (ebay)
120w power brick = £11 (ebay)

I bought the ssd second hand for £60, already had the ram but I guess you can get 8gb for £30

That and a slim dvd rom would be around ~£400 I guess.

The plug thing is just a power monitor thingy I bought of ebay for £9

 

[Bigsy]

Looks awesome mate Will the llano play bluray and other hd stuff without any problems? Tempted to get llano to make a htpc and stick a freesat hd card in there

It will play anything you can throw at it, its only limitation I think is that it can only decode one of the channels on the gpu for blueray 3d it off loads the other to the cpu but that only results in 5>10% cpu usage.

And yes the remote came with the motherboard.

 

[Bigsy]

That's the exact setup I had been looking at going to but I hadn't been able to find any idle power usage info, so this thread is perfect for me! Unfortunately I won't be going for a passive case but instead I will go for a high end cpu cooler in a larger case (thinking Lian Li PC-Q07) as I want to be able to fit enough hard drives inside my htpc. Also amazingly you have got the identical picopsu to me, it really couldn't be any closer to the setup I was looking at getting.

How good is the remote with the Asus board? I am trying to weigh up whether it's worth going to over the AS Rock mini-itx board available for £75.

I don't suppose you have tried any 10 bit mkv's? They can't use the onboard gpu to play with so was wondering how the cpu stood up to it.

What makes you say its not hardware accelerated? Got to admit I'm not really one for super HD rips etc so don't have any mkv files but I tried to test this for you using Elephants dream video from here: http://www.divx.com/en/electronics/solutions/high-definition/divx-plus-hd/video (1080p H.264 MKV, AAC 5.1, and seems to be about 8 > 9k kb/s according to vlc)

While it was playing in XBMC eden (full screen 1080p) cpu usage hovered around 4%, the peaks (10%'ish) at the end were where I opened menus to stop it + alt tab etc... This is exalty the same cpu usage as my main machine (i7 core at 4ghz and 6870) so as you can see it is most definitely hardware accelerated on the llano gpu! I think this cpu could handle pretty much any media you care to throw at it.

EDIT: the asus remote aint bad actually, you can use a mouse curser with it etc so can navigate windows if you find yourself dumped out of xbmc. It can be tricky switching from side to side and you sometimes have to use a Fn button on one side in combination with a button on the other, but its rare.

 

[Bigsy]

It's fine for xbmc navigation, although I do use logitech harmony anyway.

Give us a link (torrent, whatever) to a reasonably sized 10bit mkv (under 1gb if you can) and I'll be happy to test, email is in trust if you don't want to post it up here.

 

[Bigsy]

I just found a small 10bit mkv here: http://www.mediafire.com/?w429656vqm89ez7

Cpu usage jumped between 11% > 21% using klite codec pack + classic media player.

Same file and player combo uses between 10% > 14 % on my main machine (i7 core at 4ghz), so the llano is more than fine with this.

Bare in mind mine is overclocked to 3.5ghz+, and still I am running undervolted by 0.15v now as well, 100% stable (loads of linx and furmark) its a great processor for the money.

 

[Bigsy]

Killasample : http://rapidshare.com/files/82525583/killa.sampla.x264.mkv.html

Obviously I expect you to pass as does the htpc in my sig

This can't be 10bit right? It's completely gpu accelerated on this rig, ie the cpu doesnt really go over the cpu usage it uses when xbmc is idle (about 2% > 8%).

 

[Bigsy]

Your not wrong, google shows me that its pretty identical to the Wesena Mini ITX7-2, bar the massive lump of metal on the side.

Still that case seems to be £100, so I make £130 pretty good considering the extra metal + heatpipes gone into make this one.

 

[Bigsy]

would this be suitable to run as a workstation computer for browsing the net, word processing, playing music.

I do multitask a lot have photoshop, dreamweaverr, word, excel, 3-4 different browsers with countless web pages open on dual screen.

I'd like a silent machine because sometimes the ambient noise of my tower PC annoys me when I'm trying to concentrate at night.

Also, is there an AMD mobo possible fopr this machine? I'm thinking that an AMD cpu will be slightly better as it runs a lot cooler.

Of course, it's quite a quick little PC more than capable of running those things.

And it is an AMD ?!

 

[Bigsy]

hi Bigsy

am i right in thinking that the case came with 6 heat pipes, but you only installed 2 because of the layout?

if so is it not possible to bend the pipes? to install more?

Nope

The case only comes with with 2 heatpipes, the heatsink and case has room for more simply to aid fitting on different mobos.

As is the mobo heatsink would make it difficult to fit more, I think they would fit but it would be marginal. Still two is absolutely fine, surprisingly.

 

[Bigsy]

Can I be cheeky and ask for a pic in situ? I want to see it's size relative to a disc player and/or AV amp if you can oblige.

cheers!

I'm afraid I don't have anything in situ for comparison. I now added a bdrom and usb dac/amp which I mounted internally, it does everything as a stand alone box.

If you look at the pics it is next to a cd for size comparisons, but be assured its very compact, wouldn't look out of place with any AV equipment.

 

[Bigsy]

I'm probably running just over it now I've added some stuff. Am I concerned? No frankly, if i was I'd run it closer to stock, maybe I might be if it was running prime 95 and furmark all day but it will never hit that kind of load normally.

 

[Bigsy]

Hmm, while I was setting it up I had it plugged into my montor and regularly switched between it and my main machine which has a 6870 in it and there wasn't any difference in quality, least not enough for me to notice. Only thing I have done is install the latest catalyst drivers and set the correct overscan for each resoluion/refresh rate.

As for gaming in general its not bad at all, you can play most things at what I would call console level detail, performance is very much linked to memory speed, it helps a lot that I have my ram at 2100Mhz+. Still at stock it would play eve online with playable frame rates no issue.

 

[Bigsy]

The case doesn't come with a PSU, least not in this county, I chose 120w as their very cheap on ebay and it gives me more than enough head room.

Motherboard is sold at many retailers, you'll have to use google as per forum rules... it's not hard to find.

 

[Bigsy]

Yeah there is room for a full size drive in there, its mounted on the underside of that tray that goes in over the top, it even has rubber mounts pre attached for you.

 

[Bigsy]

Ok, just music and film so why do you need a 3800? 3500 is more than enough you could easy go lower than that.

Why do you need 150w psu? Mine was under £20 and I bought a 12v 10a brick for £11.

Where are you shopping? I paid £20 less for the mobo!

That brings your total to ~£430 without even really trying.