i7 vs i3 power

T

ToddW2

2[H]4U
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Nov 8, 2004
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I have an extra i7-950 setup laying around and have had it for sale a while with no bites... I need to replace my OLD SLOW ReadyNas with a home-built solution and was hoping to sell the i7 and go with an i3 for power consumption & heat savings.

However, I got to thinking... if the NAS I build is only used as a NAS (for now) will the i7 throttle down and use nearly the same amount of power as the i3?

Can I also throttle down the i7 in bios for even more reduced power?

I figure since I have this i7 already it may be beneficial to use it.

Power consumption and heat output are very important for my setup if there's a noticeable difference. To save 10%-15% power/heat I don't think that's worth it for me to upgrade.
 
You can turn of HT on the i7, lower the multiplier down quite a bit and it will be very low on the heat/electricity bill.

The reason I say lower the multiplier is that, even with just a 5-10% cpu load it will throttle back up to full speed/voltage. So just lowering it down 1.x ghz all the time will be cooler and less power usage.
 
not only lower the multi, but lower the vcore too. that is if you still can't get it sold
 
ToddW2 said:
Trade me a Intel Core i3-3220T w/Mobo and i`ll trade you the i7-950 w/Mobo ;)
Click to expand...

Well dang just in case your interested i've got a brand new in box Sandy Bridge Pentium G850 2.9 GHZ + a 6 month old Asrock z75 full sized 1155 ATX board I would trade for it. The TDP on the CPU is rated 65W by Intel but I'm pretty sure it's actually closer to 35W TDP since they basically rate the TDP artificially high on these so they arn't competing against the i3-T lineup. I've got two of these chips and use one on my 2nd PC and the temperatures on these things are incredibly low. Just thought i'd throw that out there just in case. :)
 
Dang, I'd trade you my mATX board and G840 with some cash for that i7 setup, I'm using it as a folding machine but the PPD sucks. On the plus side it only pulls 58W from the wall at full load.

Downclocking the i7 might work, but bloomfield is pretty power hungry. I would be curious to see how low you could get it.

Ninja edit: lol looks like ZodaEX had the same thought.
 
:D

Looks like I'm going to hold out for the i7 Haswell

I still have the i7 for sale though ;) but will use it until it sells when I get around to putting this system together :D
 
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