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SonicSilicon
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Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 17, 2012 12:03 pm

I'm looking to build a new system for video capture and editing as well as gaming. I've settled on a low power CPU (AMD 620e)and GPU (Power Color AX7750 1GBD5-NH) and will most likely go for maximum RAM, but for other parts I'd appreciate recommendations and input on. Below is a list of components and features I'm looking for in them:

Motherboard:
AM3 compatible (I'm assuming AM3+ will work with 620e)
Micro-ATX
At least one SATA 6 GB/s port (to maximize an SSD)
USB 3.0 port(s)
16 GiB support or more
Room for passive CPU heatsink (i.e. RAM slots, capacitors, heatsinks not placed immediately near the CPU socket.)
Back-up BIOS / UEFI

Power supply:
Fanless and reliable
Clean power output

I do have a case, so this isn't crucial, but have been thinking about:
2 unit tall (2U) rackmount (19")
Shallow (15 inch or so)
Parallel-to-motherboard "full-height" slots (passive cooling issue?)

Heatsink:
Fanless, air-cooled
Can accommodate a 2U case
Mounts safely for transport (or am I just wishing?)

Storage will likely be whatever is best bang for buck, but any recommendations for quiet ones is appreciated.
I'm hoping to make this system my move to Linux as I certainly will not appreciate Windows 8. (I just don't want to go installing a version of Windows that already has "soon to be outdated" written on it.)
I'm not certain what features I may be willing to compromise on, though I'll gladly take input into consideration.
Thanks!
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:14 pm

If you're going to add a graphics card at all, you would be better off with an Ivy Bridge Core i3 processor on an LGA1155 motherboard with a Radeon HD7770 1GB. For HTPC considerations, you might look at this recent thread for some inspiration.

If you're not going to install a dedicated graphics card for gaming, then an A10-5700 APU on a socket-FM2 motherboard might be a good choice.

If you're going to play games or use a cablecard tuner, you need Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit for this system.
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:47 pm

Once again I forget details and to be clear in my initial post.

I do want this to run with lower power to keep heating down while being reasonably performing. That includes the processor being quad core. The Athlon II 620e has a TDP of 45w. Would a Core i-series really provide that much better performance or efficiency? For the same wattage there's only the i5-3570T at 2.3 GHz versus 2.6 GHz. (I can't even locate a unit for price comparison.)

For the performance difference between Radeon 7750 and 7770, I couldn't really justify having a built-in fan or increase in wattage. The most intensive game I'm running is Guild Wars 2 and I've found that to be far more CPU-bound and throughput-bound. (I still manage to play it on a laptop with Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz, 2 GiB RAM, and G 105M at 1024 by 768.)
As for needing Windows for gaming, I doubt it. Players managed to get GW2 running under WINE with a tolerable performance penalty. Other games are either have low requirements or Linux native executables.

While I won't be needing a cable card, it does bring up a point I forgot to ask. What ATSC tuner cards are good? Has running them under Linux improved? What software works well with them?

I'll certainly think of other questions, later.
 
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:10 pm

SonicSilicon wrote:
I do want this to run with lower power to keep heating down while being reasonably performing. That includes the processor being quad core. The Athlon II 620e has a TDP of 45w. Would a Core i-series really provide that much better performance or efficiency? For the same wattage there's only the i5-3570T at 2.3 GHz versus 2.6 GHz. (I can't even locate a unit for price comparison.)

I would take an i3-2100 over any AMD quad at this point for both speed and efficiency. The newer Ivy Bridge variants are even better.

I replaced a pretty high-clocked Phenom II quad in my HTPC with an i3-2120 and it is by far better in terms of power consumption and performance even at stock clocks.


It is also running a 7750 if you want me to run some benchmarks of anything you're concerned about being slow. :)
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vargis14
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:56 pm

I have a i3 2120 system with 8gb ddr3 1333 with a HIS Icooler gddr5 hd7750. It has no pcie power connector so it gets all its juice from the pcie 16x slot. The graphics card is equipped with a 50 or 60mm artic cooling fan. AC makes very quiet high quality fans! The only time you can hear it is when your ear is next to the case and i mean you can barely hear it. That passive powercolor card is going to run too hot unless you have case fans along with circulation. Thus the case fans will make more noise then the HIS 7750 Plus it costs a good bit more then the virtually silent HIS icooler 7750. My His 7750 overclocks like a champ also"note even with the gpu fan on max speed its is very very quiet. My stock core speed is 800 MHZ she is overclocked to 1125mhz, memory from 1125 to 1335mhz and score over 3300points on 3Dmark11 "and it can go higher but the risk outweighs the benifit, besides i only OC for gaming.
On BF3 on med setting i get 50-70fps.

The i3 2120 cpu is more powerful then that 45 watt AMD cpu plus the intel cooler is quiet and more then good enough for the i3 2120 with a quoted tdp of 65 watts i do not think it uses any more then 40watts fully loaded when you are using a DEDICATED gpu and not the I3 2120s IGP.
It may be a dual core but it does have hyperthreading and it does help performance.

Besides if you ever want to upgrade the CPU down the road at least you have options, but i do not think you will ever need to.
I have a 4700mhz 2600k and the i3 2120 feels just as snappy as the 2600k doing HTPC duties. I have 2 HTPCs with i3 2120s and neither of them ever get bogged down even when i am downloading @ 10800kb a second 83mbps, watching a 1080p flick and burning a bluray @ the same time.

Note both my i3 2120 systems are gateway refurbs one was 229$ with a 220watt psu slim case design i added and overclocked a hd 6570 low profile card from asus. a 7200rpm 1tb drive and 4gb or ddr3 1066. all on a h61 chipset.
My other gateway refurb was 329$ i3 2120 with 8gb ddr3 1333 a 1tbHDD on a h67 chipset. I added the HIS icooler 7750 and another 1tb caviar black drive to go with it's 5400rpm seagate 1TB HDD plus i added my bluray burner from my gaming tower since it is hooked up to my beloved 55" panasonic vt30 3Dtv so it has 2 optical drives and all that other stuff with a acer/gateway bobo 300watt psu.
The slim is going on about a year old and the short fat tower is allmost 7 months old.

I just wanted to add the only reason's i bought the "gateway refurbs" was price and the fact they were sandy bridge based and i had to replace 2 old dell hd zinos that had slow am2 3250e cpus in them 1.5ghz dual cores one had a dedicated hd4330 notebook card and the other had the 780 IGP. Needles to sat they were getting long in the tooth. One day the hd4330 equipped model started having hardware issues. Plus it was the only one that could handle 1080p without dropping frames.
Now 229$ and 329$ for sandy bridge pcs with a os is a price i could not beat building them myself. I saved at least 300$ perhaps more since the cheapest windows OS is 99$ per rig. Note i did add a 60$ Asus LP 6570 in the slim tower and a 90$ HIS iCooler hd7750 in the short fat tower. I could not be happier with my purchases they both work fantastic!. They made me a believer in the i3 series of dual cores with HT. They are quick....i know if i had SSDs in both systems they would be much more impressive!

But for 2 little cheap boxes they game at 1080p just fine....the 6570 LP vid card limits the settings but they can both pretty much run anything acceptably.
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 2:57 pm

I found the 3570T commands around US$260. The 620e is $85 at Tiger Direct. (Other i5 quads had TDPs above 45W with graphics disabled.) The prices for motherboards with the features I'm looking for could balance out. If throughput is better with i5, that could sway me.
Also, I'd rather not have Hyper-Threading at all. Thankfully there are Intel options.
Maybe the discussion should turn toward MBs for now.

If the Power Color 7750 does run hot, I can add a fan later. (I have a few 80mm units hanging around.) The larger surface area of the heatsink will be a benefit either way.

Last thing, before anyone asks: there are no Fry's, Microcenter, or any other chain stores for computer parts nearby. I am limited to online vendors.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 3:33 pm

Ivy Bridge processors:
$130 Intel Core i3-3220 3.3 GHz hyper-threaded dual-core LGA1155 CPU w/ HSF
or $205 Intel Core i5-3470S 2.9/3.6 GHz quad-core LGA1155 CPU w/ HSF
or $215 -15 code "EMCJJJF35" Intel Core i5-3570 3.4/3.8 GHz quad-core LGA1155 CPU w/ HSF


LGA1155 micro-ATX motherboards with 4 DIMM slots and USB3:
$118 ASRock Z77 Pro4-M
or $140 Asus P8Z77-M Pro
or $95 Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H


Graphics card:
$130 -15MIR Sapphire Vapor-X 100358VXL Radeon HD7770 1GB (1100 MHz)
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 4:00 pm

I need a quad-core; yes, I can easily imagine needing that between even just a game, recording A/V from it, and the OS, plus a tuner that may kick in for PVR.
I honestly don't get why everyone keeps recommending dual cores with hyper-threading. All I've read seems to indicate that it only really helps singular applications with multiple threads, not multiple applications with dedicated workspaces. HT seems more like an overhead in case things overload by a margin for a while, but not really something to rely on for a regular basis. Further reading did show that HT can be disabled (at least on older Intel processors) so if having it means a cheaper price or lower wattage, I can't bemoan it.

I'm sorry for being stubborn on this; I just can't seem to see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU, so far. Now I'm worried it may be a mistake, but don't know why.
 
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 4:41 pm

Sounds like you have your mind set on CPU and GPU which are pretty much the only things that produce any heat (and noise, indirectly). I wouldn't worry too much about your choice of processor either; it may not have the best performance per watt, but it's probably the most affordable true-quad core under 45W that will fit into a standard motherboard. The intel 1155 T-variants may be quicker but they'll cost you $200 too.

Your real focus should be on a good case with damped drive bays and large-diameter, slow-RPM fans. I don't know of anything 2U that will fit the bill for you, expecially not one that takes a standart ATX PSU and mATX board. On top of this, passive coolers tend to be huge. If you are not actually rack-mounting this case, but want something in a similar short-depth (comms rack) format, then have a look at the various Silverstone Grandia variants. I have one in my media unit and it comes with all the essentials for quiet computing in a tight-space:
  • 3x 120mm, golf-balled and filtered fans (which you can run at 5V by just flipping the molex pins)
  • Short depth (about 12")
  • Rubber-dampened drive cage mounts
  • An optional passive CPU cooler specially designed for the case series
  • Optical drive bay (if you want a blu-ray drive)

I would absolutely recommend getting an efficient, low-power PSU in the 300-500W range, try and find something gold-rated or higher and DON'T look for fanless. IMO, fanless is a gimmick that doesn't really help since they all get hot and radiate their heat into the case, making other fans spin harder to compensate for them. They are just about the worst thing you can have in a case that reliase on passive cooling for other things. Realistically, the PSU fan serves a much more important secondary purpose - to act as an extra exhaust fan.
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:46 pm

SonicSilicon wrote:
I'm sorry for being stubborn on this; I just can't seem to see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU, so far. Now I'm worried it may be a mistake, but don't know why.

I think the point is that a "lowly" dual core i3 with hyperthreading is faster in essentially everything (including video encoding) compared to the quad core you chose and uses less power as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/106?vs=289
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vargis14
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:07 pm

Waco good find . IForgot about that.

You had it set for a sandy bridge 2100.......that 640 is slower at everything when you select the i3 3220 ivy based lowly dual core:) It has lower power use too.

Well proves a fast ht dual core is better then a slow quad core :D
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kc77
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:32 pm

Waco wrote:
SonicSilicon wrote:
I'm sorry for being stubborn on this; I just can't seem to see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU, so far. Now I'm worried it may be a mistake, but don't know why.

I think the point is that a "lowly" dual core i3 with hyperthreading is faster in essentially everything (including video encoding) compared to the quad core you chose and uses less power as well.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/106?vs=289

I was about to agree until I looked at the price of the AMD processor. It's a $70 processor. The 3220 is $130. At that price the AMD chip actually makes some sense and it's not nearly as crazy of an idea.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:15 am

SonicSilicon wrote:
I'm being stubborn on this; I just can't see any reason to budge on my choice of CPU...
Waco wrote:
A "lowly" dual core i3 with hyperthreading is faster in essentially everything... and uses less power as well.
That's why folks keep recommending Ivy Bridge processors.
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:49 am

Yeah, like I said, the 640e isn't the fastest, but it's cheaper and lower power than the Intel alternatives.

If you're going to be gaming a lot, an i3 is the smarter choice because games are heavily dependent on one, or two-thread IPC performance and even the older AMD architecture is pretty dire in this respect.
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southrncomfortjm
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:23 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
If you're going to add a graphics card at all, you would be better off with an Ivy Bridge Core i3 processor on an LGA1155 motherboard with a Radeon HD7770 1GB. For HTPC considerations, you might look at this recent thread for some inspiration.

If you're not going to install a dedicated graphics card for gaming, then an A10-5700 APU on a socket-FM2 motherboard might be a good choice.

If you're going to play games or use a cablecard tuner, you need Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit for this system.


Hey, that's my machine you are talking about :P

That build runs amazingly for me. The only limits I've experienced on that processor are the hard drives. There's plenty of room in that case to add a solid graphics card and SSD with plenty of cooling left over, especially if you use the front drive bay with an SSD, tons of room for cables as long as you are somewhat organized.

The 3 fans will keep everything super cool as long as you aren't bothered by the noise. The fans aren't really that loud at all, just too loud when the room is quiet. An easy fix would be to replace one or two of the stock fans with other fans that have speed toggles on them.

Not sure if the deal is still up, but MicroCenter was offering $40 off when you bought a processor and MOBO together. Got my processor and MOBO for $139 together.

Good luck with the build!
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Waco
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 19, 2012 11:18 pm

kc77 wrote:
I was about to agree until I looked at the price of the AMD processor. It's a $70 processor. The 3220 is $130. At that price the AMD chip actually makes some sense and it's not nearly as crazy of an idea.

An i3-2100 is barely over $100. It also allows you to use Smart Response with a compatible motherboard. A 3220 just pushes the difference between the 2100 and the 620 to new heights...

The $30 difference is easily worth the ability to drop in a real performance quad down the road as well as the ability to run SSD caching. That, and lower power consumption.
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Tue Nov 20, 2012 8:26 am

Uh, Waco, that was a 620, not the 620e I've been discussing, that you compared to the i3 2100. There's a 50 watt difference in TDP between those two AMD chips.

It may be a moot point, though; finding a motherboard for the 620e with the features I want is proving to be rather difficult. It seems all of them top off at DDR3 1066 without having to overclock (which would defeat the purpose of going low power.) Wouldn't that would become a major bottleneck?
 
Waco
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:51 am

Okay, so nix the power consumption argument (although I'd bet that the i3 still uses less power overall when considering the board power).

The i3 is faster and has room for more upgrades down the road as well.

God I sound like an Intel fanboy. I just know I like my i3 HTPC setup FAR more than my Phenom II HTPC setup...speed, efficiency, everything.


DDR3-1066 versus DDR3-1600 versus even DDR3-2400 isn't going to make much of a difference in normal use...most applications aren't very memory-intensive and even those that are will be limited primarily by the CPU. That said, most motherboards won't list the capability to run "stock" speeds over 1066 anyway...and it's not really overclocking (or more power-wasting) to run your sticks at rated speeds. The newer Intel and AMD chipsets all handle high-speed RAM fairly well without any voltage increases or anything like that.


What boards in particular are you looking at?
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:36 pm

Waco wrote:
DDR3-1066 versus DDR3-1600 versus even DDR3-2400 isn't going to make much of a difference in normal use...most applications aren't very memory-intensive.
If you're using integrated graphics, increased memory bandwidth can provide a measurable increase in performance. If you're using a dedicated gaming graphics card so that the CPU isn't competing with the IGP for bandwidth, there's much less difference.
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:15 pm

I just realized that the 620e (and all Propus Phenoms) are limited to DDR3-10600 (1333 MHZ; I mistyped the throughput and clock rate together in my last post.) That means I'd have to overclock to use faster RAM as well as have support for that on the motherboard, correct?
Anyways, one of the motherboards that kept coming up in my searches is ASUS' M5A88-M.

Playing Guild Wars 2 on my current laptop is a bit of pain, but is mostly from the slow loading times. I managed my first dungeon fairly well last night, though had occasional fetch lagging. GW2 does not seem to have a best system build, though; there are people overclocking i5-2500K processors to 4.4 GHz or more and still get CPU bound in the most demanding areas. (Framerates of 40 to 45, if I recall correctly.) I can't see much point in me striving to find the end to that race.

Regardless, I will be looking more into the Ivy Bridge solutions. I just wish finding TDPs for deactived graphics was easier. (Seems to be a difference of around 8 watts, comparing i5-34500 and i5-3350p.)
 
SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Fri Nov 23, 2012 5:57 pm

I may have found a major reason to give up on the 620e :
http://techreport.com/review/23246/insi ... day-cpus/7
If a Phenom II X4 850 is being burdened so much with both a game and transcoding a prerecorded video, I doubt a 620e with less processing power could handle a game and recording a live stream simultaneously.

Unfortunately, I'm having absolutely no luck finding power consumption for CPUs with integrated video disabled. (I find the lack of search results baffling.) I thought it was covered in some of the Tech Report benchmarks, but I'm still not having any luck. Honestly, I'm feeling rather overloaded with information at this point.

[EDIT] Is ECC memory something recommended? I vaguely recall it having a performance penalty, but I'm not sure if that's true any longer. I'll need to look into prices.
 
kc77
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 24, 2012 1:21 am

SonicSilicon wrote:
I may have found a major reason to give up on the 620e :
http://techreport.com/review/23246/insi ... day-cpus/7
If a Phenom II X4 850 is being burdened so much with both a game and transcoding a prerecorded video, I doubt a 620e with less processing power could handle a game and recording a live stream simultaneously.

Unfortunately, I'm having absolutely no luck finding power consumption for CPUs with integrated video disabled. (I find the lack of search results baffling.) I thought it was covered in some of the Tech Report benchmarks, but I'm still not having any luck. Honestly, I'm feeling rather overloaded with information at this point.

[EDIT] Is ECC memory something recommended? I vaguely recall it having a performance penalty, but I'm not sure if that's true any longer. I'll need to look into prices.

I think you may be over-thinking this. Your CPU isn't transcoding when you record. You transcode when you want to make a recording smaller, or when you have other devices that need the content downsampled (like iPod's, iPad's etc). TV Tuners offload most of the processing during recording unless they are cheap. Ceton, most Hauppages (not all) off load a good deal of the capture process. In the case of when you need to transcode, any HTPC software worth it's weight will pause the transcoding operation, or transcode during off peak. The last thing you want is transcoding to kick off when your HTPC is active. The problem of interrupting a recording is often related to i/O more so than anything else once you have a DC processor of any kind.

Regarding ECC only pick it up if you are going to be writing a lot of data to the unit. If not you can skip it.

Regardless of what chip you pick you'll be fine. The world won't come crashing down.
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vargis14
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sat Nov 24, 2012 7:12 am

OK for one i love AMD i always have. I went from a intel 60mhz pentium to a 120mhz overclock cpu i popped in the same rig to a p2 300 with dual vodoo2 8mb cards in sli:) ...Then i found AMD and started with a 900 tbrd to a 1400 tbrd to a 2400xp all on the same ECS k7s5a motherboard that supported 2 kinds of memory. Then i built a 940 pin fx-51 then to a 939 4800x2 water cooled
So enough with that you know i like AMD :)

I am very glad you are now looking at the intel solution I have t i3 2120's using intel like coolers and they idle at around 22c loaded they might hit 45c. They say they are 65 watt cpus but with the IGP disabled and using a dedicated video card it has to be 15-25% lower for cpu TDP. Plus Intel and AMD use different formulas to calculate CPU tdp. My 2120s could easily be passive cooled but with my fans running at 1000rpms at full load its quiet.

Sure you might pay a little more for the intel solution but the gains are well worth it. On top of that you have real upgrade ability down the road. G-luck
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 25, 2012 1:45 pm

Current plan :
An i3-3220T (~$125) dual core and supporting motherboard. This saves 10+ watts on the CPU and leaves room for an upgrade later on.
ECC RAM pricing isn't terrible as long as it is buffered, not registered. (I think I have that straight. They used to be used interchangeably.)

I nearly tripped myself up on this Phoronix article : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTIzNDQ
I can live without an actual open source driver at this point.
There was some mentioning on SPCR's forums about some video decoding hiccups. Does anyone else have any information on that or Linux Catalyst issues?
 
Waco
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:25 pm

You're not going to be running ECC RAM without a Xeon CPU...it'll run (I think) but I'm pretty sure it won't utilize the ECC capability without a Xeon CPU...


EDIT: You'd probably be better off getting the "normal" Ivy Bridge i3 equivalent and not the low-power version since the GPU isn't going to be utilized anyway. The real difference in power is going to be very slight...but the overall speed difference could be fairly substantial when loaded down.
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kc77
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:39 pm

Waco wrote:
You're not going to be running ECC RAM without a Xeon CPU...it'll run (I think) but I'm pretty sure it won't utilize the ECC capability without a Xeon CPU...

The chip has ECC, but he's going to need a c204 MB mostly like from ASUS or Supermicro to take advantage of it.
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SonicSilicon
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:32 pm

I've been going trough Intel's ARK section of their site, and the only information on whether or not any particular motherboard supports ECC is this disclaimer:
Graphics output, multiple displays, ECC memory, specific PCI Express configurations, Intel® vPro™ Technology, Intel® Trusted Execution Technology, and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) may not be available on all computing systems. Please reference the system, motherboard or chipset specifications for compatibility.

It's a bit frustrating reading that over and over since I went there to find out in the first place. I guess I'm looking at the wrong articles.

As for 3.3 versus 2.8 GHz, would less than 20% gain in performance really be that noticeable?
 
Waco
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:55 pm

SonicSilicon wrote:
As for 3.3 versus 2.8 GHz, would less than 20% gain in performance really be that noticeable?

Do you think the 5 or 10 watt difference under load would be noticeable on your power bill? 99.9% of the uptime is going to be idle anyway and IIRC most Intel CPUs (of similar vintage and core count) idle at roughly similar wattage regardless of their binning for the most part.

Personally I'd rather have the higher clock rate at the same price, but that's just me.
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chuckula
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:13 pm

SonicSilicon wrote:
I've been going trough Intel's ARK section of their site, and the only information on whether or not any particular motherboard supports ECC is this disclaimer:
Graphics output, multiple displays, ECC memory, specific PCI Express configurations, Intel® vPro™ Technology, Intel® Trusted Execution Technology, and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) may not be available on all computing systems. Please reference the system, motherboard or chipset specifications for compatibility.

It's a bit frustrating reading that over and over since I went there to find out in the first place. I guess I'm looking at the wrong articles.


Intel puts up that disclaimer because even if its chips support those features, they also need to have motherboard support and there is not guarantee that your motherboard will provide support for those features. In general, if ARK says that a chip supports or doesn't support feature X, then you can be confident that the *chip* does or does not support that feature. YMMV on motherboards though, and that is really beyond Intel's control in many situations (the exact same situation applies for AMD chips too).
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Waco
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Re: Cool running game & video HTPC

Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:22 pm

chuckula wrote:
Intel puts up that disclaimer because even if its chips support those features, they also need to have motherboard support and there is not guarantee that your motherboard will provide support for those features. In general, if ARK says that a chip supports or doesn't support feature X, then you can be confident that the *chip* does or does not support that feature. YMMV on motherboards though, and that is really beyond Intel's control in many situations (the exact same situation applies for AMD chips too).

It'd be nice if they actually supported what they intended to though.

My EeePC with an Atom N2600 is hobbled by zero BIOS support for 64 bit (because Intel never certified it on the chipset), zero driver support for 64 bit, and zero driver support for DX11 at all.

Intel still claims that the chip can do all of the above though...
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