Low power, "good enough" performing HTPC?

T

TheSmJ

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
2,749
For the past 3 years I've been using my gaming rig (in my sig below) as an HTPC. It works great, but the machine is not cheap to leave on 24/7 for downloading/seeding Linux distros.

I've been looking into building a cheap, low power HTPC that would handle playing HD video, Bittorrent seeding/downloading, and filesharing with my other Windows PCs. The Raspberry Pi may or may not be good for this, but its not going to be easy to come by for quite a while so I might as well look into other options in the meantime.

Does anyone else use anything similar to the Raspberry Pi as a HTPC system? I'll consider anything at or below the $150 mark.
 
Raspberry pi for torrents... not gonna be very fast in that aspect.


You can get an atom system for 150 now probably, they don't cost much to leave on all day.
 
I use a Zacate system (E-350) for all my HTPC work. The motherboards can be had for as little as 75$, but you'll need to supply memory, PSU, hdd and case on top of that. i don't think that can be done for less than $150 all told. That said, it is a very capable system for the costs and power consumption, I leave mine on 24/7 and it handles HD playback like a champ including live cable from my cablecard. I don't know if Atom's graphics have stepped their game up recently, but they always came up short for anything other than the most basic tasks in the past. If they have been improved, you may be able to find an atom barebones system that'll do the job.
 
Activate: AMD said:
I use a Zacate system (E-350) for all my HTPC work. The motherboards can be had for as little as 75$, but you'll need to supply memory, PSU, hdd and case on top of that. i don't think that can be done for less than $150 all told. That said, it is a very capable system for the costs and power consumption, I leave mine on 24/7 and it handles HD playback like a champ including live cable from my cablecard. I don't know if Atom's graphics have stepped their game up recently, but they always came up short for anything other than the most basic tasks in the past. If they have been improved, you may be able to find an atom barebones system that'll do the job.
Click to expand...


can you play hd netflix? i am having an issue where i am getting stuttering. seems hw acceleration isnt working.
 
Has the Atom been changed to an Out of Order Execution processor? If not, Go with the Zacate over the Atom.

Silverlight is to blame for the stuttering. Silverlight 5 addressed some of it. Fixes it for some. Microsoft still needs to improve Silverlight more.

I love my Zacate systems. I find that I use them more than my big rig simply because it's more convenient, consumes less power, and the speed is adequate. With a descent SSD they are great. I'm only using the big rig for video editing & gaming now instead of using it for everything (except HTPC) like I used to.
 
tricky0502 said:
can you play hd netflix? i am having an issue where i am getting stuttering. seems hw acceleration isnt working.
Click to expand...
I can't confirm this since I don't use Netflix streaming, pretty much everything is across the network or CableCard content. tikiman2012 is right though, the stuttering is/was an issue with the hardware acceleration in silverlight, so its Microsoft's problem.
 
Best bang for the buck for this is going to be a cheap socket 1155 board and a Sandy Bridge-based Pentium. It'll handle all the tasks you've listed and uses very little power. Atom is outdated and slow compared to Sandy Bridge, and Zacate's only advantage over the Pentium is a better GPU if you want to game. But that is negated by having slower CPU cores.
 
+8, don't bother with an atom as it will be struggling. The 1155 is the way to go unless you can find a deal on an older 775 build. I have a dual core 775 with 2 gigs of ram and a 430gt video card and it plays anything I throw at it;blu-ray, 3-d movies, whatever with out any problems
 
I second a 775 build too, if you can still find them cheaper than a i3 or cheaper 1155 system. I've had no problems out of a e3200 system I built a couple of years back.
 
if you're looking for "low-power", then the 1155(sandy bridge or ivy bridge) options will hold a significant advantage over the older options which consume a lot more power, especially during idle times, which if its on 24/7 will be almost all the time.
 
ghostdunks said:
if you're looking for "low-power", then the 1155(sandy bridge or ivy bridge) options will hold a significant advantage over the older options which consume a lot more power, especially during idle times, which if its on 24/7 will be almost all the time.
Click to expand...


I dunno, mine is hardly anything at idle.
 
Having both an i3 and a zacate e350 both on SSD's, if i had the chance to do it again, it would have gotten the i3 and spent the extra money.

The zacate is a capable system, but the power savings compared to the i3 is not much at all @ idle. The zacate can get bogged down easilly, where the i3 is pretty much a modern day main stream cpu.

FYI, i installed symantec anti virus on my zacate system. After installing symantec, doing a network transfer will push the cpu to 100% and the network speed dropped to 20-30 meg/second. Uninstalling the antivirus fixed the issue.
 
My HTPC is basically some old Core 2 hardware:

C2D e2160, 2GB DDR2-800, Powercolor HD3450.

I ran the C2D and a couple of HDDs (using intel graphics) on a 100w Shuttle K45 for a long time. A low-power video card and it's pretty easy to get a reasonably performing box for 100w-150w and under.

It handles 1080p and such just fine under the newest release of XBMC.

If you don't have some old core2 hardware laying around, I'd personally go with an AMD Zacate / APU setup.
 
Verge said:
I dunno, mine is hardly anything at idle.
Click to expand...

What's "hardly anything" to you? I think its a subjective question as everyone's perception of high power use is different.

As an example, a HTPC I built based off a Pentium G620(Sandy Bridge) idles around 20W(measured from wall using a cheap kill-a-watt meter), while another older HTPC I have based off the ASROCK Core100-HT barebones(uses previous gen mobile i3 cpu - Arrandale?) idles around 30-35W if I remember right.

While 30-35W still isn't much, its at least 50% higher than the semi-equivalent SandyBridge option(and thats comparing a laptop cpu to a desktop cpu...)

Of course, if you're used to a desktop idling at 100-150W, as quite a few of the older desktops do, then 30W is nothing. I don't personally consider systems consuming 50-100W at idle "low power".
 
Last edited:
ghostdunks said:
What's "hardly anything" to you? I think its a subjective question as everyone's perception of high power use is different.

As an example, a HTPC I built based off a Pentium G620(Sandy Bridge) idles around 20W(measured from wall using a cheap kill-a-watt meter), while another older HTPC I have based off the ASROCK Core100-HT barebones(uses previous gen mobile i3 cpu - Arrandale?) idles around 30-35W if I remember right.

While 30-35W still isn't much, its at least 50% higher than the semi-equivalent SandyBridge option(and thats comparing a laptop cpu to a desktop cpu...)

Of course, if you're used to a desktop idling at 100-150W, as quite a few of the older desktops do, then 30W is nothing. I don't personally consider systems consuming 50-100W at idle "low power".
Click to expand...

I'll have to hook up my kill-o-watt again to make sure. I remember i could have my htpc displaying the menu of a dvd for less watts than my dvd player doing the same.
 
I've had some people tell me that my Plasma is a electric hog and is horrible with power. The cost maybe $30 bucks more a year. I had a point I was going to make but my a.d.d is kicking in and I'm to lazy to undo what I just typed. 30 watts here, 50 watts there, I guess if I was that worried about saving pennies on my electric bill, I wouldn't have all these computers and a big ass plasma.
 
Verge said:
I'll have to hook up my kill-o-watt again to make sure. I remember i could have my htpc displaying the menu of a dvd for less watts than my dvd player doing the same.
Click to expand...

Verge, did you ever have a chance to do this? I'm still curious as to your power consumption. Also, post the setup too please. Just like to compare.
 
ghostdunks said:
Verge, did you ever have a chance to do this? I'm still curious as to your power consumption. Also, post the setup too please. Just like to compare.
Click to expand...

Ok, will do tonight. Used my Kill-o-watt all of twice since i bought it lol. Time for #3.
 
Great! Grab a measurement while idle and also while its doing something like playing a movie or whatnot.
 
agent8 said:
I've had some people tell me that my Plasma is a electric hog and is horrible with power. The cost maybe $30 bucks more a year. I had a point I was going to make but my a.d.d is kicking in and I'm to lazy to undo what I just typed. 30 watts here, 50 watts there, I guess if I was that worried about saving pennies on my electric bill, I wouldn't have all these computers and a big ass plasma.
Click to expand...

They are just repeating what they've heard. they'll probably tell you how they are easy to burn in around the same time too. next time it happens, ask them what TV do they own, and if it's off brand bring up how the brand name ones usually are drastically lower. for instance, I noticed yesterday while killing time a Samsung 46 inch TV had a energy guide rating of $10 a year, while a Insignia 46 inch with similar specs was $19. the 60Hz version was $30. Bet they still want the cheapest model however.
 
ghostdunks said:
Great! Grab a measurement while idle and also while its doing something like playing a movie or whatnot.
Click to expand...

37.0 Idle
42.9 Playing Warrior blu-ray from hard drive. Probably higher if the bd spins up.


I spent a good 30 minutes wondering what happened, because it was a lot higher than the last time I checked with my Kill-o-watt, then i remembered i upgraded to a dual core 3200 and overclocked it. Used to have a stock celeron 430 in there that dropped about 5-10 watts off everything.
 
Ryokurin said:
They are just repeating what they've heard. they'll probably tell you how they are easy to burn in around the same time too. next time it happens, ask them what TV do they own, and if it's off brand bring up how the brand name ones usually are drastically lower. for instance, I noticed yesterday while killing time a Samsung 46 inch TV had a energy guide rating of $10 a year, while a Insignia 46 inch with similar specs was $19. the 60Hz version was $30. Bet they still want the cheapest model however.
Click to expand...


I'm poor and I have a computer, reciever, and projector running, and sometimes a video processor, all with my high metabolism ass in a very small theater room. If i had a 250w PC cranking away as well it would become unbearable.

I either need a much bigger house, or dedicated AC, neither of which I can really waste thousands on at the moment. Thus, I pay attention to how much wattage stuff is using, especially in the summer when i'm sweating my butt off.
 
That's all good. I'm not too far from living like that myself. All I was saying was that a lot of people who go on and on about how Plasma is a power hog are also the ones that tell you that an Insignia or some other bargain basement TV is just as good as a name brand when it likely uses double the power. It's just people parroting what they read somewhere 5 years ago as it still is true.
 
Verge said:
37.0 Idle
42.9 Playing Warrior blu-ray from hard drive. Probably higher if the bd spins up.


I spent a good 30 minutes wondering what happened, because it was a lot higher than the last time I checked with my Kill-o-watt, then i remembered i upgraded to a dual core 3200 and overclocked it. Used to have a stock celeron 430 in there that dropped about 5-10 watts off everything.
Click to expand...

Thanks for checking. Sounds about right, slightly higher power consumption than my ASROCK Core100HT running an Arrandale i3.

Those SandyBridge cpus(and I'm assuming IvyBridge as well) are really good for idle power consumption. Have seen quite a few articles where regardless of whether the chip was a Pentium, i3, i5, i7, dual core, quad core, etc.. they all idled at around the same power consumption(around 5W if I remember right). the ability to power gate and both throttle down and switch off unused cores really pays dividends for idle power consumption.
 
ghostdunks said:
Thanks for checking. Sounds about right, slightly higher power consumption than my ASROCK Core100HT running an Arrandale i3.

Those SandyBridge cpus(and I'm assuming IvyBridge as well) are really good for idle power consumption. Have seen quite a few articles where regardless of whether the chip was a Pentium, i3, i5, i7, dual core, quad core, etc.. they all idled at around the same power consumption(around 5W if I remember right). the ability to power gate and both throttle down and switch off unused cores really pays dividends for idle power consumption.
Click to expand...


If only they could get a low power projector, i feel safer investing in that as opposed to a dedicated air conditioner. The old sony will really heat a room up.
 
HP N40L with a AMD 5450 card, plays anything I throw at it and uses less than 50w with 4 hard drives in it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top