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Am I making the right choice of processor?

darael

darael

darael

Soldato
Joined
10 Jul 2010
Posts
7,251
I have a spec me thread here, in which I am proving to be indecisive! :o

I currently have an E8400 and I'm looking at the i5 4570S for my new build. A comparison of these can be found here.

Am I making the right choice? Will I see enough of a reduction in power to make the 4570S worthwhile? I play a couple of games, but none that my E8400 can't handle right now. I do play with virtual machines a bit and this is the main cause for upgrading, due to lack of RAM and SATA 3 ports for my SSD.

I hope I can either be reassured or pointed in the right direction.
 
Hi,

The only thing I'd say about the processor you've chosen is it's locked. You cannot overclock it at all. But your obviously looking for power efficiently it seems.

I built a low power small build for my children a few months ago now. Used a 4670K processor. Now what I did was undervolt it in all areas, but keeping the clocks. It now uses 0.601v on idle at 799mhz , and ramps to 3800mhz full turbo only on 1.012v. My temps don't seem to go above 45degs and it uses about 1 watt power on idle.

So there are other options. The 4690k should do the same. But it's all your money.
 
I would get a normal Core i5 unless you really are using a tiny chassis for your PC. You might want to consider a Xeon E3 1230 V3 if you use a graphics card.
 
Realistically, the low power S variant chips are primarily of interest when you have a confined or hot environment, or you want to look towards passive cooling. The 19 watt power difference just isn't going to show up on your electricity bill, especially as most of the time both chips will be idling at the same consumption.

The cost to you is performance; not overclockable.
 
darael said:
So I'd be wiser spending my money on the same speed CPU and probably see more saving in doing so?
Click to expand...

If you're going for low power then you have two options.

1. Buy a low powered chip.

2. Buy the unlocked variant, then reduce the multi and the volts until you reach the same sort of volts and clocks on the lower powered CPU.

Just because a 4670k for example is listed as 85w doesn't mean you'd be unable to drastically reduce that by underclocking and undervolting it.

However, the nice part is that the unlocked part is ready to go if you need to give it a shove in the future, whereas the locked part will remain as is.
 
you can undervolt any cpu,it depends on the motherboard and whether it has the negative offset option,some budget boards don't

(you only need to worry about power consumption if your running a very high oc or a hex core cpu imo) quad cores and a mildish oc wont use much juice,they auto clock down at idle anyway)

oh and you'll save even more power by using the igpu inside the chip (no dedicated gpu required)
 
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