Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: jack21 on December 03, 2015, 08:06:47 AM
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I've recently put together a very low wattage desktop PC for my day-to-day needs; it may be of interest to you.
Over the years I've aimed for a low power consumption desktop which would perform well as a general-use computer. I gradually moved away from a PC to laptops, most often with their screen removed and with output to a 19" monitor, and found that I could get wattage figures down to around 25-30 for a machine with good overall performance. I could get even lower power figures on certain laptops by employing under-clocking, even as low as 12W on a Toshiba down-clocked to 175MHz, but performance was too poor to be acceptable. A Raspberry Pi at 2-3W did well as a router stats gatherer, and still does, but it isn't up to use as a desktop.
So I investigated low-wattage chipset motherboards and eventually settled on a Gigabyte mini-ITX J1900N motherboard with Celeron quad core 2.4GHz/core inclusive - a snip at £50 from eBuyer. Add in an ITX case at £10, a 2GB stick of low voltage RAM at £10, and using a Pico-style power unit at £10, spare 2.5" SSD, and a spare 12V adapter, put together the whole thing for just £80.
In use, the machine performs really well, responsive, quiet (it comes with passive cooling), and it consumes between 9W at idle and 13.5W with all cores forced to run at 100%. Though it is targetted for use with Windows, and comes with said drivers, I'm not a Windows fan, and instead run Linux Mint, my usual favourite Linux distro - and it runs very well indeed, so much so that It is now my main usage computer. Cooling is fine; around 45C with totally passive cooling (no case fan), but I've added in a tiny 12v quiet cpu fan which results in typical temperatures of 34-36C. I'm not a 'gamer' so can't comment on its suitability for that purpose, but as a general-use desktop it suits well.
I did also install Windows 7 as a test, and it ran with good performance too.....no issues - but that was just out of interest in case anyone asked.
http://www.ebuyer.com/725330-gigabyte-ga-j1900n-d2h-celeron-2ghz-vga-hdmi-7-1-channel-audio-mini-itx-motherboard-ga-j1900n-d2h (http://www.ebuyer.com/725330-gigabyte-ga-j1900n-d2h-celeron-2ghz-vga-hdmi-7-1-channel-audio-mini-itx-motherboard-ga-j1900n-d2h)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LVYF3HE/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LVYF3HE/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item)
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321690973400 (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321690973400)
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Thank you for posting that information. Hopefully the hardware will give you long and reliable service. :)
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I was wondering do have any temperature monitoring software running on this desktop for a comparison.
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I use the 'Hardware Sensors Monitor' app, which can be selected (and displayed) on the Mint Panel, for temperature monitoring. I used to use 'psensor' but find the panel-app handier.
In normal use, each core runs in the range 33-36C, and the cores vary from each other by +/- 1C - that's with a tiny, silent 4cm fan sitting on the heatsink. If the fan is off, the temps stabilise in the mid-40's. My Raspberry Pi, running DSLstats, runs in the range 33-39C - depending on ambient temp.
Using only around 12W, I can run it via my 300VA UPS, there to provide power to modem/router/pi, without any fear of a power outage draining the UPS too quickly.
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Looks good :) Where did you buy your memory from please?
DDR3/-L SO-DIMM
TIA
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I bought the memory from Crucial UK......speedy service - it arrived in less than 24 hours!
Their 4GB option was only about £5 more, but I didn't need it for Linux Mint.
Crucial 2GB DDR3-1600 SODIMM : CT6963101
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Thanks, that would be my choice as well...
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What do you use to power the psu?
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Because I wanted a near-silent setup, I went for a Pico-style adapter (see link above) - providing a 24-pin connector, 4-pin connector plus molex and sata connectors, which itself requires a 12V DC supply ..... I used an old 240 AC>12V DC laptop adapter "brick" from my spares box (I've seen them cheap enough on eBay) , but could have used any 12V DC supply which gave enough wattage.
The main alternative is to use a quiet-enough ATX/ITX-type PSU which has the requisite connectors; I did exactly that until the Pico-type adapter arrived. The PSU I used there was a 300W ATX and it was very quiet, unlike some others I tried.
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I've recently put together a very low wattage desktop PC for my day-to-day needs; it may be of interest to you.
I use almost the same, silent, setup for my pfSense router, though I have an ASUS N3150I-C motherboard (has AES-NI crypto acceleration) -
The Celeron N3150 is a quad-core processor with a TDP of only 6 W, 1.6 GHz base clock and turbo clock of 2.08 GHz, targeted on low-cost desktop computers
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/celeron-n3150-cpu-review/
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Interesting.....what price is that mobo? How does it do re overall pc-in-use power-draw?
After 2 months of using my setup (with Linux Mint 17.2), I'm extremely pleased with its behaviour/performance; does all my day-2-day office-type work really well. I even ran Virtualbox on it for a while, and that was satisfactory enough (but I've since moved that back to my experimentation machine, a HP 6200 Pro with an i3 CPU, and use the J1900 only for office stuff).
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The price is around £70(plus shipping) (https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/13470819878027084220?q=ASUS+N3150I-C&biw=1757&bih=929&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&bvm=bv.113034660,d.bGg&tch=1&ech=1&psi=nJKwVqKWNoqdsgGh-anIBA.1454412440659.3&prds=hsec:online,paur:ClkAsKraX2H4Q1PaNs5kO1p1VSTlQfabHyx4C3eOFTLPIvBKupF8bL_XgQQmCbHl-h1aphQtNleNa0J17gABInYJJUqDvyROkxvM0Yk35By_uHPvBuIQ7DIOAhIZAFPVH73JOyqGYoRhc-qIBD7nCvGSdzVpcQ&ved=0ahUKEwiStcfM_NjKAhWIcRQKHTrKCWEQ2SsIDQ&ei=pJKwVpLTC4jjUbqUp4gG). Don't have a figure for overall draw - has 4GB RAM, 50GB SSD, dual port Intel NIC, nothing that should use much power.