On Feb 9, 2006, at 3:35 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
hey folks,
i think you all know it - the quest for the perfect hardware.
modern hardware eats up enormous amounts of power, and for a box that
runs nearly 24/7 this is really unsuitable. i need a nice, speedy,
cool
and quiet (seems to sound a bit impossible, doesn't it?) hacking-box
and not a monster ;)
Hmm lets see low power and fast.
For processors there are a few ideas out there. There are LV Intel
Pentium III's that have thermal designs from 10.63 to 12.1 W ranging
from 800 to 1GB at a 133MHz FSB. Also you'd be stuck with finding
PC133 SDRAM for any board that would deal with that. An ideal
motherboard that would be ideal with this cpu would have onboard
video, and networking, and not necessarily sound.
I noticed hacking was an issue. Want speed? Grab a pentium-m
processor with the 90nm process technology. The power consumption
ranges from 10W to 27W ranging from 1.4GHz to 2.0GHz and the L2 cache
is 2mb. the package is even 478uFC-PGA except for the 1.8 and 1.4GHz
which is 479uFC-PGA. They also run at 400MHz to 533MHz FSB.
I don't know if you can find equivelant specs with any AMD processors
but you might.
Like I said, get a motherboard with the minimum amount of options you
need.
With your drives, you might consider solid state drives rather than
mechanical drives.
The more equipment that is plugged into the motherboard, the more
power and that includes add-on cards and ram modules.
Look for low power optical drives and hard drives (if you use the
mechanical ones).
If you get lots of heat, you are wasting lots of power.
You should aim to calculate your computer's power consumption between
100 and 150 Watts if possible.
I hope this helps you in your search. As far as motherboards out
there for the aforementioned processors, I don't know much about those.
As far as the boxes I use, they are pretty much power hungry. I think
the lowest powered box I have is the 486 which just has 64MB ram, the
486DX66 and an old 1GB scsi drive using an old adaptec VLB floppy/
scsi controller. It also has an old vlb video controller and 3 isa
network adapters.
The dual p3 500 2MB XEON box sucks power with its 2GB PC100 ECC ram,
2 processors, a 10k 9GB lvd scsi drive, a Matrox G450, 3 optical
drives, and gigabit, along with the server board.
The 486 and dual p3 xeon are on the same UPS and usually load it to
37%. Together they do about 280W.
The p4 1.8 GHz machine with radeon 7000, gigabit, 5 full height scsi
elite 47GB drives and a 4GB seagate barracuda drive with LSI Logic
MegaRAID and an adaptec 2940W is using up to 360W.
The p4 3.2GHz desktop with 2GB ram, 18GB 10k lvd ultra160 scsi drive,
36GB 10k raptor, sata plextor dvd writer, riviera sound card, adaptec
29160 controller, and. XFX 6600GT is only running at about 264W while
doing nothing crazy.
I think it is very possible for you to get a system that runs between
100-150W! Especially with those pentium-m cpus. You'll get nice speed
and low power consumption from those.
Also, my machines have a few fans so those will add to the power
consumption!
Sincerely,
William
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