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Low power consumption build help?

K

Kaitian

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 12, 2008
Messages
4,868
I have an older system which is the AMD Phenom 9950 / Gigabyte K9A2 Platinum, Radeon 6950, etc for the last 3 or so years. The thing sucks down around 700W or so which I'm looking to cut that down a lot. I'm in South Carolina which energy prices are really high whereas being back in Washington I had benefited off BPA rates.

However I'm really out of touch on technology today since I've kind of dialed down my enthusiast side.

So I'd like to scrap my entire system (except drives) in favor of something more energy efficient saving me money in the long run. I'm in IT so running my machine is a must for my work but my power bill (gas is included since it's South Carolina Electric & Gas) really takes a dent on my pocket ($180 for this months).

I'm looking at the Kaveri A10 APU's for my machine but as for the rest I don't know what I want.

1. AMD A10-7850K APU - $150ish
2. Some FM2+ motherboard variant
3. 2x Dell UltraSharp U2412M - $800ish (I really need to upgrade my monitors and I figure these will do nicely for IPS monitors)
4. Some kind of DisplayPort accessory to allow me to use 2 DisplayPort (unless I just do DVI + DisplayPort?)
5. Kingston HyperX 2x8GB or Kingston HyperX 4x4GB (unless there's better recommendations?)
6. A recommended PSU for low power consumption
7. No video card

The list can be changed if a regular CPU + video card can save more power than the Kaveri APU. I really like to see my usage drop down to the ~300W range

I do not need a case as I will just reuse the tower I have. The same applies for the drives I have which I'm going to eventually replace but not now.

Edit: Answering sticky questions.
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming / IT work
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
My budget is probably 800 or so (not counting monitors). Just not going to be extravagant.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
SC
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU / Mobo / RAM / PSU
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Hard drives / case are being reused.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
With the Dell monitors = 3840 x 1200 (1920x1200 each)
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
After tax refunds are in
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
No preference really if the APU can handle the GPU aspect of it.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, 64-bit Windows 8.1
 
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700W out of an AMD Phenom 9950 and RAdeon 6950? Now that's funny.

What exactly are you doing with your rig? If you aren't gaming then you'll want an Intel Pentium or at most i3 setup and you'll be well below your max 300W and by below 300W I mean close to 100W tops.

Almost forgot, would you please answer the sticky questions.
 
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no GPU with 2x monitors not gonna happen unless you have a damn good board and i do mean damn good. im not an expert but i doubt that a board could handle that but than again what do i know...........:) :) :)
 
Running dual displays isn't that demanding. Intel HD Graphics can display to more than one monitor easily.

Gaming on two or more displays at once is a little different story though.
 
i figure an A10 78XX would be a complete and utter waste if your not gaming even though intel would serve better but running APU that would make it a bit better, meaning the on-board graphics
 
OP never mentioned gaming on both monitors or gaming at all.
 
so then, you claim a stupid high power even though the cpu alone is ~125w average best, gpu is maybe another 250 tops add in everything else you might be ~525 at the absolute peak and you would have to be overclocking like crazy.

Anyways, a silver gold or platinum rated power supply would be more efficient and not waste as much power providing the system with its actual needs if you do not plan on nor want to add a discrete graphics card, a decent ~450w is overkill (I prefer Modular myself, Neo Eco 420c is a highly regarded one) if you will add a gpu at some point even if it is not now, 550-650w 650 really is pushing but will give some headroom.

BenQ for monitors IMHO instead of those dells performance is that much higher though they definitely need calibration for color accuracy.

I myself have and continue to use Gskill memory, but for Kingston the Hyper X beast (2133) are apparently very nice memory kit, I would say 2x4 minimum.

So with A10-A8 Kaveri you can pair them up with a R7-240 or R7-250/250x(250x is more or less a 7770 level of performance which is decent when paired with dual graphics and quite low power draw)

Anyways. 7850k can game by itself not needing a dedicated card and does so quite well, the other "option" is something like an i3 3330 or a lower i5 paired with a lower end low power draw card.

Either way its up to you, but your power draw figures are way out to lunch.
 
OP, are you talking about actual power draw at the wall, or what the power rating of the PSU should be? Because there's no way your current system draws 700w constant. It won't even draw 350w at full load, not by a long shot.

As Skillz said, what will you be doing with the system? You could even go ultra low voltage CPU (or a mobile CPU).

Not to get too preachy, but have you broken down how much of your utility bill is actually due to your computer? If you're buying a new system to save money on electricity, it's highly unlikely you'll recoup the cost of the new system in the power savings over the life of the machine. Not sure if I'm reading undue emphasis on power consumption being the main desire to upgrade. Looks like SC power rates are around 14.7 cents/kw-hr. Assuming you run a 300w continuous draw computer (unlikely) 24/7/365, that only amounts to $368/year due to the computer. Even if you got a system that was twice as power efficient, you might save $184/year. But you'll be spending hundreds to upgrade. Keeping in mind that your current system probably does not draw nearly 300w all the time 24/7/365 (unless you're bitcoin mining all the time or something), the power savings differential between the two systems will be even less and it would take even longer to recoup the cost of a new computer in terms of electricity savings, especially if a lot of the computer on-time is idle).

But of course, if the desire to upgrade is the primary emphasis, with the desire to have more efficient parts as secondary, then I guess the above can be disregarded, just don't get your hopes up on impact to your overall electricity bill.
 
Actually that CPU under load is around ~210W. The GPU is ~380W. So in theory under 100% load on boht the CPU and GPU it could be as much as 590W before overclocking. Still a lot less than 700W and I doubt the OP is stressing that rig beyond 300W anyway. Really depends on what he is doing with it.
 
I do play games, watch videos, etc by the way. So I'm just wanting to cut my watt usage in half. Plus I have a ton of hard drives (7 in total with them on power saving). My PSU is maxed out for 700W so I'm probably doing 600W at tops. Sorry for the impression.
Skillz said:
Running dual displays isn't that demanding. Intel HD Graphics can display to more than one monitor easily.

Gaming on two or more displays at once is a little different story though.
Click to expand...

I just game off 1 monitor in Windowed Mode. I'm not into the whole Crossfire thing.
 
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no way in hell is a 6950 380w that's more then a 6970 by a very large margin lol. I just finished reading numerous articles on this so I was not talking out of my ass, unless he is clocking the cpu up, AVERAGE is 125w it can draw ~140w at most.

Lets use a ~ this amount power draw system
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_6950_6970_review,11.html not saying they are right or wrong but it would suck more power in context.

I was using dual 7870 and a highly clocked Phenom II 955 so going by your numbers skillz I would be smoking my power supply xd.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2559/16
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/24
they are extremely biased against AMD so, 140w seems about the highest average said cpu would be using I say average of ~125w probably lower then this considering most systems are idle ~12hrs per day. GPU wise seems the ~200-220w is about right when gaming, so that places it in the ~500 at most IMHO i.e 140 cpu 250 gpu + 100w rest of system.
 
1292337625zR9jST7GBp_8_1.gif



9950 BE @ 223W
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_phenom_x4_9950_be_processor_tested,10.html
 
Well that's interesting. What games do you normally play?
 
so that would be 191w for gpu :) and I seriously do not see such cpu drawing that much juice, hell my brother has a shitty power supply powering a 9950 AND my old 6870 with the rest of the rig, 500w total available power and it runs perfectly fine, so, going by these numbers, said power supply would be blowing up, constantly crashing etc, something is just not right with these competing numbers.

140w TDP minus 220=80w are we sure that is not the remainder of the system as in motherboard and so forth, cause I am quite positive most motherboards trying to power that would just nuclear meltdown, I know even with current boards they can and do have trouble throwing that kind of juice at an FX8350 and very certain its power draw is much higher.
 
Skillz said:
Well that's interesting. What games do you normally play?
Click to expand...

Europa, Starbound, Saints Row IV, Eve, whatever that is interesting to me. I also kind of got back into WoW to burn time everyone and then.
 
dragonstongue said:
so that would be 191w for gpu :) and I seriously do not see such cpu drawing that much juice, hell my brother has a shitty power supply powering a 9950 AND my old 6870 with the rest of the rig, 500w total available power and it runs perfectly fine, so, going by these numbers, said power supply would be blowing up, constantly crashing etc, something is just not right with these competing numbers.

140w TDP minus 220=80w are we sure that is not the remainder of the system as in motherboard and so forth, cause I am quite positive most motherboards trying to power that would just nuclear meltdown, I know even with current boards they can and do have trouble throwing that kind of juice at an FX8350 and very certain its power draw is much higher.
Click to expand...

Just because you have a 9950 and a 6870 does not mean you're stressing both of them at 100% simultaneously. Most gamers don't. Also a 6870 pulls on the low end of 300W. Not 380W like a 6950.

Do you even know what TDP means?
 
Kaitian said:
Europa, Starbound, Saints Row IV, Eve, whatever that is interesting to me. I also kind of got back into WoW to burn time everyone and then.
Click to expand...

Gimme a second and I'll get you a build put together. I'm assuming since you're wanting low power consumption high detail in those games isn't expected. Gotta do some research though.
 
Looking at my tower, I'm probably going to chuck it. I'll probably get a Corsair Obsidian 650D w/ a Corsair 100i or something for watercooling.
 
Not to mention that's a shitty case anyway. No cable management features and unless you added some fans to it not enough cooling to cool modern systems. Anyway, I am fairly sure you're gonna be getting an Intel setup with a Nvidia GPU. Simply because AMD's GPUs prices are inflated due to the mining craze and Intel's CPU have a much lower power consumption that AMDs.
 
Skillz said:
Not to mention that's a shitty case anyway. No cable management features and unless you added some fans to it not enough cooling to cool modern systems. Anyway, I am fairly sure you're gonna be getting an Intel setup with a Nvidia GPU. Simply because AMD's GPUs prices are inflated due to the mining craze and Intel's CPU have a much lower power consumption that AMDs.
Click to expand...

Oh I bought it back in 2008. So this case has served me for a long time. The parts are newer though. I already had added fans for air flow for example in the hard drive bay and back portion after the fact. As for Radeon, I'm kind of on Team Red because I have been using Radeon since the Radeon 9800 :)
 
Alright and you have 7 SATA hard drives you intend to reuse correct? Gotta make sure to get a motherboard with enough SATA headers.
 
Skillz said:
Alright and you have 7 SATA hard drives you intend to reuse correct? Gotta make sure to get a motherboard with enough SATA headers.
Click to expand...

I have a raid card actually that is PCI-Express which suits 4 drives. Plus, I'm just going to dump a lot of them anyways.
 
Should have listed that in parts you intend to reuse. Le Sigh.
 
Alright here we go.

$200 - Intel Core i5-4570 3.2Ghz
$120 - MSI CSM-Q87M-E43 LGA 1150 Intel Q87
$140 - G.SKILL Value 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
$280 - ASUS R9 270X 2GB
$86 - SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W

If you read the benchmark here you'll see that even the i7 4770k overclocked at 4.8Ghz pulled 186W under full load. The i5 4570 wont be anywhere near that. The i7 4770k at stock clocks under load was 108W.

If you take a look at this benchmark here you'll see the ASUS DC2T had a power consumption of 223W.

Combined you're looking at less than 331W and a much, much more powerful system than that AMD setup you posted before.
 
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Wow, thanks for the list. I appreciate the help. I'll post the results probably in a month. My tax refunds don't arrive until at most the 24th.
 
TDP thermal design power, and it means far different to AMD Nvidia and Intel. what does a 6950 use for pci-e connectors, 2x6pin plus power from the slot which is 300w total +/- a touch not nearly 100w more. 150(for slot 2.0 spec)+75+75 so going by your numbers it still does not add up. either way if said 4870 or the 6870 he now uses draws say 300w and cpu draw 140+ watts on a full gaming load the POS power supply would not have worked as long as it has, your numbers are off my man.

but whatever you will recommend the build you will, I will recommend what I will, for the games he is mentioning, Kaveri will be fine no need of a dedicate gpu and no need to pay that much either.

A10-7850k decent cooler (hyper 212 or similar) with a decent set of 1866-2133 ram will give quite nice performance.
 
Right. My point is TDP has nothing to do with power consumption. The difference between what Intel, AMD and Nvidia claim TDP on their processors is how they measure it.

Feel free to recommend him a build list with a $185 CPU, a motherboard with two Display Ports and DDR3 1866 or 2133 RAM.

If the OP didn't want to spend $800 he would have lowered his budget and I would have simply given him less of a GPU.
 
he said 800ish didn't say that was for build, he stated for the monitors unless he put it in wrong place and I am misunderstanding which happens.

Never claimed TDP was the actual power used as it is far form the truth in most cases, it is a reflection of cooling capacity needed really in most cases. Intel is more efficient though the new ones also throw off a lot of heat in many cases, so I still recommend a cheapo but decent aftermarket cooler, tend to be quieter and keep the cpu happy :)

Depends on needs which he attested to, if he feels spending more then what he outlined is worth it, then it is, but from what he "wanted" I think it will be a waste to go for a higher end build to begin with really.

Intel wise maybe the i3 will be fine, maybe the i5 will be much better $/performance though seems more shall we say casual gamer so i3 might be better? AMD he picked the right chip really as it is decently power efficient, great performance for what it is and can game just fine unless you want it running balls to the wall then by all means a discrete card is the way to go.

Mentioned ram or Kingston Beast, Corsair Vengeance, Gskill IMHO is what I use but there are others to choose from of course, for performance reasons 1866 for Kaveri minimum as it does help the IGP get its performance, for Intel I still think 1866 is the way to go but you can get away with 1600 really.

Anyways so lets get this correct.

how many sata ports do you have to have/need?

you need at least 1 pci-e slot if I am understanding this correctly any needed speed in this regard (like a x1 or a x16 is needed) as I am not all that familiar with raid cards and such for storage purposes.

400-550w power supply (which for the most part no gpu is overkill but hey) CX430/430m, Antec Neo Eco 420c/450, Rosewill Capstone 450, Seasonic X-560, Antec VP-450 all are good choices in their own way, I would say 550 just in case you want to add a gpu at some point of course, just don't cheap out on this to much though of course no need to spend a fortune on one either.

For the motherboard there is many options totally depends on needs of course.
Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4, Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-HD3, MSI FM2+ A88XM-E35 etc
a nice list here to peruse at your leisure http://www.overclock.net/t/1398175/kaveri-apu-amd-socket-fm2-guide-and-discussion
 
Power draw for the build in my sig:

Idle: 70-80 watts
Gaming: 150-170 watts
AIDA64 stress test without GPU option: 150 watts
AIDA64 stress test with GPU option: 250 watts
Greatest I ever saw while gaming and transcoding video: 265 watts

It also pulls much less if I don't OC the CPU.

You should definitely greatly reduce your power use just by building a much more modern PC.
 
dragonstongue said:
he said 800ish didn't say that was for build, he stated for the monitors unless he put it in wrong place and I am misunderstanding which happens.
Click to expand...

Go read the OP again. He specifically stated the monitors are not part of the 800ish budget.

dragonstongue said:
Never claimed TDP was the actual power used as it is far form the truth in most cases, it is a reflection of cooling capacity needed really in most cases.
Click to expand...

Well you didn't out right say TDP = Power Consumption... no wait. You did.

dragonstongue said:
140w TDP minus 220=80w are we sure that is not the remainder of the system as in motherboard and so forth, cause I am quite positive most motherboards trying to power that would just nuclear meltdown, I know even with current boards they can and do have trouble throwing that kind of juice at an FX8350 and very certain its power draw is much higher.
Click to expand...

Right here. Comparing a CPU's TDP to it's loaded power consumption measured at the wall. It's in your own math.

dragonstongue said:
Never claimed TDP was the actual power used as it is far form the truth in most cases, it is a reflection of cooling capacity needed really in most cases. Intel is more efficient though the new ones also throw off a lot of heat in many cases, so I still recommend a cheapo but decent aftermarket cooler, tend to be quieter and keep the cpu happy :)
Click to expand...

I see you still do not understand TDP. The new Intel Haswell CPUs put off LESS heat than Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. Just because their temps get higher has little to nothing to do with the TDP it lets off. I can explain this more if you'd like me to.

dragonstongue said:
Depends on needs which he attested to, if he feels spending more then what he outlined is worth it, then it is, but from what he "wanted" I think it will be a waste to go for a higher end build to begin with really.
Click to expand...

My build meets all of his requirements. If you can do it for half the budget then by all means please do.

dragonstongue said:
Mentioned ram or Kingston Beast, Corsair Vengeance, Gskill IMHO is what I use but there are others to choose from of course, for performance reasons 1866 for Kaveri minimum as it does help the IGP get its performance, for Intel I still think 1866 is the way to go but you can get away with 1600 really.
Click to expand...

The performance difference between DDR3 1600 and DDR3 1866 on an Intel platform is only measurable in benchmarks. You wont notice an iota bit of difference in regular computing or gaming. Zero.

Don't forget he wants two display ports for his monitors with those FM2+ motherboards now. ;)
 
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Skillz said:
Don't forget he wants two display ports for his monitors with those FM2+ motherboards now. ;)
Click to expand...
When I looked at the video card, there's only 1 displayport. Is there a good adapter that I can buy to get 2 displayport monitor out-1 displayport-in?
arentol said:
Power draw for the build in my sig:

Idle: 70-80 watts
Gaming: 150-170 watts
AIDA64 stress test without GPU option: 150 watts
AIDA64 stress test with GPU option: 250 watts
Greatest I ever saw while gaming and transcoding video: 265 watts

It also pulls much less if I don't OC the CPU.

You should definitely greatly reduce your power use just by building a much more modern PC.
Click to expand...
Yep, I view mine as inefficient when it comes to power consumption. With SC rates, it's a bitch (around 14-18 cents a kilo depending on seasons). I was living in Southwest Washington which I had benefited greatly off the BPA consistent rates which was around 8 cents a kilo.
 
There is a display port on the motherboard as well.You can plug one monitor into the GPU (The main monitor you intend to game on) then plug the other monitor into the motherboard and use the onboard iGPU to run it.
 
Comparing a CPU's TDP to it's loaded power consumption measured at the wall.

I did not at all say this. you want to be technical or at least sound like you are, lets pull actual info on the so called TDP, ACP and all that technical BS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...ces-xeon-measuring-processor-power-paper.html
"The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, refers to the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU, which the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate."

“TDP. Thermal Design Power. The thermal design power is the maximum power a processor can draw for a thermally significant period while running commercially useful software. The constraining conditions for TDP are specified in the notes in the thermal and power tables.” Notes: - TDP is measured under the conditions of all cores operating at CPU COF, Tcase Max, and VDD at the voltage requested by the processor. TDP includes all power dissipated on-die from VDD, VDDNB, VDDIO, VLDT, VTT and VDDA. - The processor thermal solution should be designed to accommodate thermal design power (TDP) at Tcase,max.TDP is not the maximum power of the processor.

- Due to normal manufacturing variations, the exact thermal characteristics of each individual processor are unique. Within the specified parameters of the part, some processors may operate at a slightly higher or lower voltage, some may dissipate slightly higher or lower power and some may draw slightly higher or lower current. As such, no two parts have identical power and thermal characteristics. However the TDP specifications represent a “will not exceed” value. - Because TDP is a worst case value when running a “worst case” application, most processors, when running a more “typical” workload, will dissipate power that is less than the rated TDP value; how much less will depend on the application and the specific part being tested."

So again I did not state in wording "its a 140w TDP cpu therefore the max it can draw is 140w" it is an average, which it very much is. In this alone it is right, this is no different then gpu, if a gpu is rated for say 175w like the 6870 or even my 7870 sure it can draw more, but the average will be no more then this amount.

Makers of motherboards etc. have power/thermal budgets to go by, if it is rated for say 140w and yet can/will draw on average say 240w then things would have massive failures, remember the 8000 series from Nvidia and their motherboards? +/- a couple % sure, +/- like 30+% I just do not see it, does not add up.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/kaveri-memory-speed-performance-scaling/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2014/01/14/amd-a8-7600-kaveri-review/11
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/5

So, yes there is a benefit of faster memory in things other then benchmarks, did I say MASSIVE no, and I did state IGP which there is, again, whatever

The relation to CPU TDP vs the amount of heat given off are correlated (and for that matter avg power used) this is what TDP is meant to reflect. Example Intel say you have a 65w TDP cpu, expect a heatsink that is capable of dealing with 65w heat to be just fine. The fact is nothing is perfect, and every part of the computer no matter how efficient it is has loss so therefore generates heat, is haswell more efficient then sandy or ivy yes, but from what I have read the difference is virtually negligible under load compared to Ivy.

Small die less overall heat though more intense like a lighter vs a pen torch I think this is what you are hinting at no?

I was quoting from that article you pulled info from, they didn't state the actual system power consumption, nor did they say in words system or standalone so in this, one is almost inferencing their own meaning from what is written.

Now that I re-read the OP it said 800 twice once on the monitor statement and another time further down but saying around 800. So then I missed that part, thanks for pointing it out.

Either way, I am done with this.
 
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