Please recommend me a cheap low power PCIe card

spectrumbx

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I am looking for a very cheap PCIe card that consumes very little power.
The card is for a server that will only be accessed remotely.

Actually, low power consumption is more important than price.

Thanks!
 
Thanks guys.

Is there anywhere where PCIe video card power consumptions are compared?
That bios tweak guide looks awesome Flak! :)

No matter which card I get, I will definitely undervolt it.
 
7300 would consume less power.. since its on a lower micron process as the above guy stated.

yea.. underclocking it might be the ticket .
 
i'm a server noob

why is it exactly that you want it to be so power consumptionless? <-- i'm postitive that's not a word lol
 
Also curious.. why the focus on power consumption?

geekcomputing said:
if you want a card that can game a bit more check out a 6600, it will eat more power though.
Probably wont be gaming remotely.
 
Um... if it's only being accessed remotely...

Why would it even _need_ a video card?

And even if it does... why not use a low power, low heat, no fan PCI card?
 
markintosh13 said:
Um... if it's only being accessed remotely...

Why would it even _need_ a video card?

And even if it does... why not use a low power, low heat, no fan PCI card?

All computers need a video card; else, they won't boot.

A low power PCI card is more likely to consume more power than a low power PCIe card.

Also guys, it is important to focus on idle time power consumption since the card will always be idle.
 
i still don't get it

are you worried about your power bill or?

also boards with integrated graphics = the vast majority of motherboards in existence, don't need video cards to boot
 
spectrumbx said:
All computers need a video card; else, they won't boot.
.
wrong, go into the bios settings and change the halt on to nothing, most modern mobo's provide this function, doesn't matter if it has a vid card or not, no power consumption, however you will need one to boot initially and get windows installed, after which set up the bios, remove it, and boot it, then access purely remotly :D
 
toddm27 said:
wrong, go into the bios settings and change the halt on to nothing, most modern mobo's provide this function, doesn't matter if it has a vid card or not, no power consumption, however you will need one to boot initially and get windows installed, after which set up the bios, remove it, and boot it, then access purely remotly :D

Err... wrong... no computer will boot without a video card.

You can set the bios to boot without keyboard or floppy and such, but not for the video card.
Try it and you will see.
 
spectrumbx said:
Err... wrong... no computer will boot without a video card.

You can set the bios to boot without keyboard or floppy and such, but not for the video card.
Try it and you will see.


we'll have to agree to disagree
 
Err... wrong... no computer will boot without a video card.

Google "headless server," look for the "slashdot|upgrading a headless server" link a couple results down.

It's possible to run headless, but I don't see why it's all that important. If you underclock and undervolt, whatever you get should run on fairly low power.
 
malicious said:
i still don't get it

are you worried about your power bill or?

also boards with integrated graphics = the vast majority of motherboards in existence, don't need video cards to boot

I am set on a Bad Axe 2, which does not have integrated video.
The fact that the board I have in sight does not have integrated video should have been pretty obvious.

I am not worried about power bill, but I just care for efficiency.
Why should I have a power hungry video card when my needs are simple?

My laptop runs totally fanless and really cool after I undervolted the CPU and GPU. => makes me happy... :)

I undervolt all of my systems and disable all unneeded integrated peripherals in the bios.
All of my towers only run two fans: a 12cm CPU fan@1200rpm and a 12cm PSU fan@4-500rpm.

Also, I should add that I am going with a quad CPU + 5 HDs and would like to use my existing 430 watt PSU because it is really efficient and silent.
I don't want to add any device to the system that's going to require me to upgrade the PSU.
 
Servers on PCI-E video? Not really. Even low end Dell servers with PCI-E don't officially support video in these slots. Their 4x pci-e is theoretically for Raid cards and they seriously go out of their way to make it tough to fit a video card into them (like sticking a heatsink right behind the slot - though a wear out adapter does the job if you need to frankenstein a dualhead card into there).

Most servers I've seen that didn't have some POS integrated video used some crap PCI card like a Rage II+, even in the last couple of years.

Idle power? Uh yeah. Now there's a concern every server builder goes through.
Are you running this on frikking batteries or something? Lets see - PCI-E slot spec has a max power draw of something like 75 Watts, AGP tops out at I think 40 watts, and PCI... at 15 to 25 watts and I think a Rage II+ would probably use something like .5 Watts of power.

Seriously, run the damn thing headless and call it a day, or slam a Rage II+ into it and be done with it.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Google "headless server," look for the "slashdot|upgrading a headless server" link a couple results down.

It's possible to run headless, but I don't see why it's all that important. If you underclock and undervolt, whatever you get should run on fairly low power.

I stand corrected.

However, since I will be using a GUI based OS, I will need a video card.
 
markintosh13 said:
A gui based OS on a server that's being accessed remotely...

doesn't need a video card.

Sure I could use a PCI card install the OS and then remove the card.
That won't work because, though not often, I would need to access the machine locally.
I sure don't want to have to install/uninstall the card every time that happens.

Can we get back to the request?

Can someone post about a specific card and how much power that card consumes?
 
Radeon x300 video card, passive.

Available on ebay for $19.99.

Which is about $17.99 more than a PCI Rage II+ and probably uses more power as well.

Power Management Features

* Single chip solution in 0.13 micron, 1.0V-1.2V CMOS technology.
* Full ACPI 1.0b, OnNow, and IAPC (Instantly Available PC) power management.
* Static and dynamic Power Management support (APM as well as ACPI) with full VESA DPM and Energy Star compliance.
* The Chip Power Management Support logic supports four device power states - On, Standby, Suspend and Off - defined for the OnNow Architecture. Each power state can be achieved by software control bits.
* Clocks to every major functional block are controlled by a unique dynamic clock switching technique which is completely transparent to the software. By turning off the clock to the block that is idle or not used at that point, the power consumption is significantly reduced during normal operation.

For further information on power consumption, how to access the onchip energy management suport states please feel free to bother ATI or the manufacturer of the specific card you select.
 
According to this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000662.html
The 7300 GS requires the least power, a whole 9 watts at idle. There's a link on that page to the full study at X-Bit Labs.

I would either find an old low-end pci video card or grab the lowest end GeForce 7300 GS you can get. If you get some old PCI card, you shouldn't even have to install drivers to make it work, assuming you're using Windows XP or Server 2003. You could pull it out when your done upgrading or whatever to save power.
 
It is really looking like a PCI Rage II+ is what I need.
It is also well supported since it is integrated on most server boards.

Anyone has some info on its true power usage?

Thanks guys! :)
 
Hum... I am starting to lean back toward an undervolted 7300 GS instead of the Rage II+.

Bah... I have a while to decide.
 
Yup, if its running server duty with remote access, all you need the vidcard for is to install the os and get the network connected.

You can then remove the vidcard after that. I've got a server here that is videocardless, and only accessable via remote access/VNC, etc...
 
Yes, the Rage II+ or IIC is probably what you want.

Its the vidcard that most servers use. There isn't even a heatsink on it, and if you touch the bare chip, it doesn't even get warm (it must be putting out much less than 5 watts if it doesn't use a heatsink.)
 
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