Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
kumori wrote:If anyone thinks AMD is worth it even with the increased TDP I'd love to hear about it.
What hard drives or SSD or whatever are you going with?
A Trinity will run most modern games well at 720p with medium/high details whilst An i3 will require you to turn settings down to minimum to maintain playability.
Not sure you can shave much off that.
Cheaper RAM maybe.
kumori wrote:Yeah, I was kind of thinking Trinity so I could have the option to run games, but I think I'm leaning toward a lower energy footprint.
I think Trinity is the better option for you, unless you plan to have this thing running full load 24/7
2) You will probably only run full load a few hours a day. From this TR article, idle power consumption is roughly the exact same for a Trinity APU and an i3. The ~60W difference at full load, even if you're fully loading it 3 hours a day, that is only 1.8 cents per day cost difference. That's $6.50 a year. And that's for an A8/A10, and you could save quite a bit of cash by getting an A4 or A6, which would have lower power consumption.
Also, you may want to check out anandtech's articles regarding Trinity and Ivy Bridge from an HTPC perspective. I found them very helpful.
kumori wrote:Not sure you can shave much off that.
Cheaper RAM maybe.
I've gone back and forth on this. I've had so many problems with RAM in the past that I think I'm willing to go with slightly more expensive RAM to be sure that it works without a hassle.
I was thinking about maybe only getting 4gb, but with 8Gb being so cheap I went for that because I'm not that sure what an HTPC requires. Would 4gb be plenty?
MadManOriginal wrote:watch for price+MIR deals on the Corsair CX430
MadManOriginal wrote:But yeah, the build is pretty barebones already so not much left to shave off without further deal hunting.
Heck, an A4-5300, 4GB RAM, CX430, AsRock FM2A75M-DGS, using the same ML03B case would only cost about $220 and would play/record movies just fine. $130 SHAVED!
Speaking of which, why does the OP live in Tokyo and is shopping on US sites?
MadManOriginal wrote:If gaming is something you 'might' do, you could always look at cases that accept full-height cards instead of half-height. There are solidly mid-range cards like the GTX 650 to GTX 660 or equivalent Radeons that are virtually silent and have very low power draw at idle, and are not loud when gaming too.
kumori wrote:350w 80 Plus Gold certified PSU