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Whats the coolest CPU on sale today?

Tumbletop

Tumbletop

Tumbletop

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Joined
29 Jun 2006
Posts
195
My aging Athlon 2600+ which has been on solidly for the last ~2 years sitting under my TV has finally started to creak a bit. Well specifically, the Zalman reserator 1 sitting next to it is creaking - I suspect the pump is on its way out.

When I set the PVR box up, there wasn't really any decent "cool" CPUs on the market - the VIA and Transmeta chips were too underpowered, and the P4's were furnace pumping chips, so I ended up recycing the 2600+ from an old PC to form the core of the system. Its in one of those HTPC cases so internal space is a little tight, and I ended up getting a Zalman reserator tower to keep the system cool and silent (its got a 400Gb Seagate SATA sitting in a finned aluminium enclosure and the Enermax 400w PSU with the fan speed turned down to the minimum).

Given the advances in technology, I'm hoping I can ditch the reserator and use some sort of fancy heat sink with a very slow running fan on to keep things operational. The problem is - I don't know what the current set of CPU thermal outputs are.

Does anyone know how the thermal output of a Core 2 Duo (say a E6300) compares to a mobile socket 478 version (say T5500)? Both have far more power than I need - the pc just acts as a file server and PVR (running Linux), I just need something which runs very cool.

While I'm at it - whats a good "silent" graphics card today? By good I mean - cheap, can output a video signal to drive a TV (via component out or s-video or some other connector which I can get a scart adapter for) and is cool? (oh and I can drive through Linux). Don't need any 3D accelleration at all.
 
I can;t say for sure which CPU is the coolest. But I'm going through a similar consideration right now. The more I look at it the more the AM2 motherboards and CPU's seem cracking bargains. My own choice would be:

ASUS M2NPV-VM. This has onboard sound and graphics including both s-video and HDTV output (but has issues with long DVI cbles so google for them). Approx £50. So it works with normal SD output and also HD output when your system grows. It has an nVidia 6150 chipset. Not sure about the 6150 but usually nVidia chipsets are very Linux friendly. I assume you're using MythTV?


AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800 X2 Energy Efficient. This can be had for around £60 and is very low power. If on a tight budget then a Smepron can be had from about £25.
 
I didn't get on too well with MythTV but then again I tried it when it was fairly early on in its development, I'm sure its a lot better now (just been using totem in combination with raw stream saving via cron jobs).

I believe that, while those AM2 CPUs are dirt cheap, AMD's definition of "energy efficient" is quite different from my own! Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

I'm struggling to track down someone selling the T5500 so I might be snookered in the short term regardless. I'll keep looking!
 
I'd go with an amd 3600 x2 and the Abit NFM2-nView nForce 6150 the onboard nvidia 6150 would nice for linux with Beryl.The 3600 x2 can be had for £60 inc vat and the are reports of them clocking to near 3gig on stock volts so they should under volt nicely at stock speed.The AMD 3600 x2 will not be as fast as the C2D 6300 but it will be much much faster than 2 of your present Cpu's .There a big difference in performance from socket A to K8 single core never mind dualcore .
 
Yes 45w AMD's are available, but some are even rated at 35w.

Heres some thermal info you asked after:

"Orleans" (EE SFF, 90 nm)
3500+
1.20/1.25 V
35 W
Socket AM2
ADD3500IAA4CN

"Windsor" (EE SFF, 90 nm)
X2 3800+
1.025/1.075 V
35 W
Socket AM2
ADD3800IAA5CU/ADD3800IAT5CU



E6300
1.225-1.325 V
65 W
LGA 775
HH80557PH0362M

T5500
1.0375–1.3 V
34 W
Socket M
LF80537GF0282M



Obviously you can see the 6300 gives off a lot more heat than the rest, any of them will be powerful enough for what you want to do. Just make sure if you go after one of the AMD's, you get the correct EE SFF version (Energy Efficient, Small Form Factor).
 
I’ve been messing with my HTPC setup which has a x2 3800+ on a Asus M2V, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re going to run HD material as it will put too much load on the CPU making it run hot. A 1080p mkv runs the 3800+ at 91-100% (clocked to 2.2gig drops to 89% max but makes the pc run at 62c on my setup) load which also results in a bit of stuttering of the picture. With the E6300 on a Asus P5N-E SLI NF650i in the same setup cpu load drops to about 43-56 and stays a bit cooler then the AMD at full load.
 
No low power 939's as such but Venice 3000's/3200's would've had a TDP of around 45W anyway. Additionally my experience with most Venices is that they can undervolt very nicely.
 
i dont know but amd always record the power of its highest on load so it will do 35w and no more on load which is pretty good for a desktop cpu
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Isn't the most efficient proc available now the Intel Merom (Core 2 Duo mobile)? Its TDP is 35W with an average power dissipation of 1-3W.
Click to expand...

The T5500 is the core 2 duo mobile, which is what I had just assumed was the lowest thermal output "modern" cpu available today.

Anyway great information lads - just what I wanted (especially Mikeymike - I've been looking for the T5500 thermal output for weeks!). I didn't realise AMD had actually managed to produce a cool CPU.

Looking at the prices - the AMD ones are very much cheaper than the Intel, for example:

AMD 3800+ + 6150 mobo + 1 Gib ram ~ £150 which is a bargain really.

An Intel T5500 + "all in one mobo" + 1Gb ram is around £300.

Plus the T5500's seem a little more tricky to track down. Also, running in 64-bit mode, the AMD chips seem to perform more on par with the Core 2 Duo (whereas in 32-bit the C2D seems to leap ahead). Looks like I'll be returning to the AMD stable once more. Thanks everyone!
 
Last edited:
Excellent choice. Tubblestop, be sure to get the new 65nm AMDs, rather than the older 90nm AMDs. The process size will be a significant factor in power dissipation.
 
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