In my spec me thread, in GH, I've been doing some poking around with TDP and power consumption figures.
Basically my goal is replace my E8400 (E0) with something more power efficient, particularly when idle. But when I've been trying to find idle figures, I've found it's quite hard to actually find them and I end up using TDP figures, which I imagine is the CPU's maximum power draw?
The CPU won't do too much work, maybe the odd bit of encoding, some light gaming now and then and web browsing. For this reason I'm half tempted to go for an i3, but I've been given to understand these are more or less like old Celerons...gutless.
The idle power consumption is especially important as the computer is always on. I've had a scare or two with harddrives nearly failing when powering my machine up, hence I'd prefer to keep the drives spinning constantly. This will change when 2TB SSDs are affordable, but in the meantime I will put up with the downsides of harddrives.
So, does anybody have any information or advice for me? The last thing I want to do is upgrade and see my electric bills bounce up! I could live with the same power draw as my E8400, but if upgrading means I'm going to regret it, then I'd rather keep my E8400 for now until processors become more efficient.
Basically my goal is replace my E8400 (E0) with something more power efficient, particularly when idle. But when I've been trying to find idle figures, I've found it's quite hard to actually find them and I end up using TDP figures, which I imagine is the CPU's maximum power draw?
The CPU won't do too much work, maybe the odd bit of encoding, some light gaming now and then and web browsing. For this reason I'm half tempted to go for an i3, but I've been given to understand these are more or less like old Celerons...gutless.
The idle power consumption is especially important as the computer is always on. I've had a scare or two with harddrives nearly failing when powering my machine up, hence I'd prefer to keep the drives spinning constantly. This will change when 2TB SSDs are affordable, but in the meantime I will put up with the downsides of harddrives.
So, does anybody have any information or advice for me? The last thing I want to do is upgrade and see my electric bills bounce up! I could live with the same power draw as my E8400, but if upgrading means I'm going to regret it, then I'd rather keep my E8400 for now until processors become more efficient.