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Low power/passive cooled CPU?

This is a awkward one with spectre meltdown patches slowing down CPU's but i would personally get either a G5400t or a 8100t with the new Alpine 12 Passive cooler.

Maybe others can chip in if AMD is any better.
 
I had an AMD E-350 from around 2011 that was passively cooled, so I'm sure they exist. The equivalent these days is probably Stoney Ridge but it's Excavator based. Intel have the Denverton Atom CPUs but I have no idea if they're available to consumers.

Even an Intel Core i3 or mobile Ryzen chip might work as long as its TDP is low enough: the Ryzen U series is 12-25 W TDP and the Core U series is 15-28 W, but good luck finding either. The one I had was soldered to the motherboard, so I guess that counts as an "embedded" CPU rather than a mobile one?
 
"Embedded" is fine. Infact, from looking around, getting any ultra low TDP chip "off the shelf" is difficult.

Would rather look at "new" just for sake of compatibility and knowing it will work (as best as I can).

Thanks.
 
There's also the Ryzen V1605B, 12-25W embedded. Bet you can't find any though. :D

EDIT: Configurable TDP usually means it's set by whoever is selling the entire system (OEM for example). Might be changeable in BIOS though.
 
DragonQ said:
EDIT: Configurable TDP usually means it's set by whoever is selling the entire system (OEM for example). Might be changeable in BIOS though.
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Sounds about right.. Intels definition is:

Configurable TDP-down is a processor operating mode where the processor behavior and performance is modified by lowering TDP and the processor frequency to fixed points. The use of Configurable TDP-down is typically executed by the system manufacturer to optimize power and performance. Configurable TDP-down is the average power, in watts, that the processor dissipates when operating at the Configurable TDP-down frequency under an Intel-defined, high-complexity workload.
Click to expand...
 
Ice Tea said:
Alpine 12 Passive cooler.
Click to expand...

That thing is just the ticket, thanks.

"The heatsink is priced at USD $12, and is backed by a 6-year warranty, which could come in mighty handy if the block of metal with zero moving parts somehow stopped working."
 
Plenty of embedded celeron/atom/pentium SOC boards lingering around, they usually quote anywhere from 5w to 20w.

I went with an AM1 setup for my home built NAS. It was super cheap and a passive cooler from Arctic was available for about £8. Only thing is the passive cooler is a bit pointless once you factor in the noise from the drives..! The chip is rated for 25w, and the whole system with 6 disks comes in at around 60w from the wall.
 
Xeon 1245l/1260l v5 depending if you need graphics and ECC. As long as the case is not tiny and filled with drives you can easily run these passive. You would need a C232/6 board.

An undervolted Ryzen setup is also worth looking at. ECC support depends CPU and motherboard.
 
Don't know if they are still being manufactured but Jetway used to do fanless boards with multiple Gigabyte Lan sockets designed for PfSense.

Though by the time you bought a box , ram , ssd , WiFi card and a laptop power brick they worked out quit expensive.
 
It depends on the rest of the system components and your ambient temperature on how much CPU performance you can get using a passively cooled CPU.
Will there be any fans in the system at all?
My i5-8400 system is totally silent at 100% load and hits 60C and uses two fans at about 450 RPM. It does have a £40+ air cooled heatsink.
 
Ice Tea said:
Don't know if they are still being manufactured but Jetway used to do fanless boards with multiple Gigabyte Lan sockets designed for PfSense.

Though by the time you bought a box , ram , ssd , WiFi card and a laptop power brick they worked out quit expensive.
Click to expand...

When I looked last year to build a pfsense box I ended up buying my own. The awkward bit was finding an itx case that allows a separate pci-e card as most cards only come with a single ethernet adaptor and I needed 3 so I ended up with a case (antec ISX300) which is rather bigger than I wanted.

Also If you are using it just for pfsense you really don't need much of a CPU. While I have a G4560 with a NH-L9x65 cooler on it (it's silent and the case has space), it's running at 3-4% cpu so something far less powerful will suit pfsense's needs.
 
What's your budget? For around 400 (if you need them to add an SSD and RAM, cheaper without) you can get a G4560 mini PC. I set mine to only kick the fan in at 40oC and it's usually off/silent.

If you need cheap and still effective, a PC Engines APU2 will do magnificently. I sold one on MM recently because I upgraded to the aforementioned G4560 unit (to run several OpenVPN connections on the router concurrently). The APU2 series is serial console only (you'll need a cheap null modem cable and a serial to USB adapter), but will run 600Mbps up and down no problems on pfSense, and 1Gbps symmetrical on IPFire. It can't manage as much via openvpn due to the limited core speed, but will still do 150Mbps or so. It idles around 5W and pulls around 12 to 15W at full load. It's also fanless! Great little boxes.
 
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