• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Athlon II X4 615e

Plenty on eBay, though they're overpriced relative to other Athlon IIs (and even Phenom IIs). You could just get a cheaper one and underclock/undervolt it if power usage is a concern.
 
Low wattage chips can be a false economy in a normal system. Often then are near standard chips with lower clocks and an artificially low power cap. Perfect if you want to limit the maximum power usage due to limited cooling. etc. As these chips run at lower speed they have to run for longer to complete the same amount of work so often there is little difference in the overall power usage, especially as in most cases unless you are converting videos or gaming, the CPU spends a lot of time idle, revving up to perform tasks supporting this overall power usage effect.

My media centre, now server originally had a 25w AMD X2 250U (1.6Ghz) in it. I needed more grunt so I dropped in a cheap 90W Athlon II X4 640 and guess what, the 640 (3.0Ghz) actually idles 5W lower than the X2 in the same board.

I'd buy whatever the best price / performance chip you can get for the board.
 
It's for a HTPC, it doesn't need to have massive amounts of grunt as I have the gaming PC for that. Basically want it low power, cool running, and best performance with those two requirements.
 
You can buy chips on ebay.
For your use any of the newer ones will work.
4 cores will be ok for a media Centre.

I have a X4 955 that I no longer use.
Used it for gaming until I bought my x99 system, you could downclock it a bit to save power. On ebay they are £30.

There are slower chips much cheaper, not sure how much power you need.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom