Best energy efficient PC
- Thread starter cavonia
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i don't think you really can go energry efficient and have a decent gaming PC,
the only real kind of way of being energy efficient is to get the lowest powered PSU you need to run a system
whats your budget though?
and what games do you like to play?
the only real kind of way of being energy efficient is to get the lowest powered PSU you need to run a system
whats your budget though?
and what games do you like to play?
Theres quite a lot you can do to make a power efficient gaming pc.
You can choose a graphics card with low idle power consumption like the new ATI 5 series. You can choose a not too big very power efficient PSU like a high quality 400w/ 450w one.
What monitor you use will make a big difference. Some of the new LED backlight smaller displays are very low power. You can choose CPUs with low TDPs & low idle power consumption like core i3s & athlon IIs.
You can avoid heavy overclocking which bumps up power consumption a lot as soon as you start adding volts.
You can also choose an energy efficient platform - for example socket 1156 consumes less power than socket 1366.
You can choose a graphics card with low idle power consumption like the new ATI 5 series. You can choose a not too big very power efficient PSU like a high quality 400w/ 450w one.
What monitor you use will make a big difference. Some of the new LED backlight smaller displays are very low power. You can choose CPUs with low TDPs & low idle power consumption like core i3s & athlon IIs.
You can avoid heavy overclocking which bumps up power consumption a lot as soon as you start adding volts.
You can also choose an energy efficient platform - for example socket 1156 consumes less power than socket 1366.
I would go for a Athlon IIe series cpu,5770 and a very high efficent psu such as corsair...I how however find my netbook (n270 atom) to be more than enough for everyday and it plays football manager perfect......Depends what u wanna play
What about asus or msi boards that feature dr mos or epu which they claim to be energy efficent. I know on my past msi board there was a feature called green power which optimize the power for max saving without taking much of a hit in performance.
This is patently untrue. A system that wants 300W is going to use 300W whatever psu it is connected to. So a 500W antec or a 1000W corsair will both supply 300W to the motherboard etc.
The distinguishing factor is efficiency. This varies with psu, simplified by the silver/bronze etc ratings. More importantly psu's are very inefficient when barely loaded, and efficiency drops off towards 100% load as well. There's a fairly wide band between 60 and 80% or so load where most are at their best, so if anything when sizing a psu, aim for one which will be at about 3/4 of its capacity when the system is under heavy load. The above 300W system probably wants the 400W corsair as a psu. This will draw less power from the mains than an equivalent efficiency one rated at 800W, and also less than one rated at 300W.
Regarding the actual question, atoms are very low power but get very little work done. I suspect you want to look at the i3, or the 65W amd dual cores. "Gaming" is a whole mess unto itself as the graphics card can easily use more electricity than the rest of the computer combined. The games I play would run well on the integrated graphics of the i3 dual core, I don't know what games you play as you haven't told us.
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Well In this case Intel Quad core q6600 SLCAR was energy efficent but it was also a overclockers dream compared to the B1 stepping. Reason for this was it TDP was 95 watts compard to 115 i think for B1 stepping.
So not in all case's energy efficent hardware are bad overclockers.
So not in all case's energy efficent hardware are bad overclockers.
I would get one of the latest ATI 5700 cards, the 5750 or 5770 they only use 16-20W in windows and will also allow you to play the latest games. They use around 100W full load gaming, a lot more energy efficient than the previous generation.
Soldato
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As per above get one of the new ATI's for graphics, an athlon II energy efficient edition, doa search for these as ocuk dont sell them at the moment, get a "green" HD and a very efficient PSU...... (Bequiet seasonic etc etc) i dont rate some of the corsairs, the only one I have owned Buzzed a lot (HX series)
Soldato
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or you could go Nvidia and use Hybrid SLI for more energy saving ... Go for 9800Gt or 250GTS green edition
Really depends what you want, Recently put together a system for a friend.
i7 860, 4Gb ram, Nvidia 275GTX, etc etc...
The whole thing only draws 69W once windows is booted up, around 75W while web browsing, its pretty efficent. Once you start gaming its drawing around 170W or so, but really for a machine that can play the majority of titles with a decent level of eye candy, its a remarkably power efficient system.
Compared to the previous generation intel chips i7's are very power efficient when lightly loaded as they can drop to a much lower clock speed, and also they can turn off unused cores completely.
As already said in this thread, the size of the PSU doesnt matter, just the efficiency. Putting a 1k PSU on a system thats drawing 69W idle is going to decrease power efficiency, likewise a 300W psu on a system drawing 275W isnt a good idea either. Best to keep the PSU running between 30 and 70% for both efficiency, and long life for the PSU.
AFAIK the most efficient current PSU is the latest modular PSU from Seasonic, Unfortunatly OcUK dont have stock at the moment (or have given up selling seasonic)
i7 860, 4Gb ram, Nvidia 275GTX, etc etc...
The whole thing only draws 69W once windows is booted up, around 75W while web browsing, its pretty efficent. Once you start gaming its drawing around 170W or so, but really for a machine that can play the majority of titles with a decent level of eye candy, its a remarkably power efficient system.
Compared to the previous generation intel chips i7's are very power efficient when lightly loaded as they can drop to a much lower clock speed, and also they can turn off unused cores completely.
As already said in this thread, the size of the PSU doesnt matter, just the efficiency. Putting a 1k PSU on a system thats drawing 69W idle is going to decrease power efficiency, likewise a 300W psu on a system drawing 275W isnt a good idea either. Best to keep the PSU running between 30 and 70% for both efficiency, and long life for the PSU.
AFAIK the most efficient current PSU is the latest modular PSU from Seasonic, Unfortunatly OcUK dont have stock at the moment (or have given up selling seasonic)
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