New build: low wattage (<20w) idle, totally passive, gaming HTPC

koolpc · 16 May 2012 at 11:37

Lovely case.

Would like to build a cheap Dual core system in one.

vince1 · 18 May 2012 at 00:43

mikejasonsmith said:
Have you built this yet mate? Thinking of doing the same thing...

Will be in a few days just waiting for a few more components to arrive

Bezzaboy1234 · 3 Jun 2012 at 19:06

Can a pico psu run two Sata hard drives as from the pics it looks like it only has one sata power connector?

saitrix · 3 Jun 2012 at 19:25

Yes, just get yourself a y lead.

Bezzaboy1234 · 4 Jun 2012 at 11:51

Awesome, Thanks!

Amp34 · 10 Jun 2012 at 00:37

vince1 said:
Just got one of these cases and an i5 Ivy Bridge cpu, I can't wait to start building it

Bumping this thread to see what the results were.

The i5 is about 10w over the recommended so I'd love to know what happened (interested in getting an i5 and one of their cases).

koolpc · 10 Jun 2012 at 18:12

Would an i3 cpu be a better bet?

Bigsy · 10 Jun 2012 at 21:45

Amp34 said:
Bumping this thread to see what the results were.

The i5 is about 10w over the recommended so I'd love to know what happened (interested in getting an i5 and one of their cases).

Should be fine, cpu-z thinks my overclocked A-3500 is ~90watts TDP and it has perfectly respectable temps.

vince1 · 11 Jun 2012 at 15:25

Amp34 said:
Bumping this thread to see what the results were.

The i5 is about 10w over the recommended so I'd love to know what happened (interested in getting an i5 and one of their cases).

There's a 65w i5 in the ivy bridge line up

_Alex_ · 2 Aug 2012 at 19:55

Hi,

Still wanted to post the result of my (similar) build from recent weeks for us as a HTPC/ media server; thanks for all the info on this forum !

AMD A6-3500
Gigabyte A75N-USB3
Samsung 64 GB SSD
Maxtor 320 GB harddisk (5 years old)
4 GB of RAM
Streacom 150W picoPSU

Works great so far, runs Gentoo and installed tvheadend and some other stuff.

Power usage at idle (HD spinned down): 29Watt

This is somewhat higher then the 19Watt mentioned by Bigsby, but this is a different mobo (slightly less efficient according to xbitlabs), and is including an extra (old) harddisk, a 150 W power brick (for a system that barely uses 60 Watt at max), and a fan still running, so I reckon power consumption might drop some more if I would change some of that.

Thanks for all the useful info !

Alex.

Subliminal Aura · 21 Oct 2013 at 02:32

Bigsy said:
I paid £11 for my 120w brick, it was actually advertised as a 12v 10a LED power supply but it had a 2.5mm*5.5mm connector which tends to be the standard for picopsu's.

Has the brick lasted ?

All my cheap bricks have died within a year. :rolleyes: