I have a few PC's in my house, ranging from an i5-2500k, i7-5820k, 1700X, 2600. All are hooked up to large APC battery backups that have digital displays showing power draw. Most of the systems draw 50-75w in idle state, all having discreet graphics cards.
I recently wanted to buy a cheap prebuilt PC to use as a Plex server, since upgrading to Plex Pass, which allows hardware transcoding. I found a killer deal on this i5-3470 Lenovo PC on ebay ($69), took out the HD and threw in a small SSD for a boot drive. All movie storage is on my NAS.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1VK-0003-002K2
I plugged it into my battery backup, and after booting I was sitting at 11 watts power draw in Windows 10. I was shocked. I then downloaded Cinebench R15 to stress it, and it drew a maximum of 52 watts while scoring 480. After running Cinebench, back down to 11 watts. I know some devices aren't accurate at reading low loads, so I plugged a 5 bulb lamp into it, with 5 23 watt bulbs. Reading was around 110 watts. I turned on the PC, and sure enough, it went up 11 watts. I even tested it with my Kill-a-Watt meter and got the same thing.
Sorry if this is old news, but I had no idea you could get a cheap, fast Plex server that just sips power and can handle 5 transcodes (max I tested; still headroom) with hardware transcoding.
I'm still scratching my head. All reviews show this should be drawing way more power, even with the iGPU. Take a look:
https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i53470-quadcore-cpu-review?page=8
I recently wanted to buy a cheap prebuilt PC to use as a Plex server, since upgrading to Plex Pass, which allows hardware transcoding. I found a killer deal on this i5-3470 Lenovo PC on ebay ($69), took out the HD and threw in a small SSD for a boot drive. All movie storage is on my NAS.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1VK-0003-002K2
I plugged it into my battery backup, and after booting I was sitting at 11 watts power draw in Windows 10. I was shocked. I then downloaded Cinebench R15 to stress it, and it drew a maximum of 52 watts while scoring 480. After running Cinebench, back down to 11 watts. I know some devices aren't accurate at reading low loads, so I plugged a 5 bulb lamp into it, with 5 23 watt bulbs. Reading was around 110 watts. I turned on the PC, and sure enough, it went up 11 watts. I even tested it with my Kill-a-Watt meter and got the same thing.
Sorry if this is old news, but I had no idea you could get a cheap, fast Plex server that just sips power and can handle 5 transcodes (max I tested; still headroom) with hardware transcoding.
I'm still scratching my head. All reviews show this should be drawing way more power, even with the iGPU. Take a look:
https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i53470-quadcore-cpu-review?page=8