150W idle? You crazy?

[Pentium4]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

That's actually pretty good considering the old hardware, how efficient is the PSU powering it? I tested a setup with a P4 Prescott 3GHz, 1GB RAM, 9800GT, 2 hard drives and it idled at 222W!

[Per Hansson]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

Any mid range 3D video card draws at least 75W at idle and 120W under load. The cheapies draw 12W-20W so try a cheapie or onboard to see how much the consumption drops.

Orly?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/N..._Titan/25.html

[mariushm]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

Yes, new video cards are quite efficient at idle, any card in the last 2-3 years or so will idle at under 15-20 watts.

The values just don't make sense, when you do the math and look at what the card can draw from the power supply.

A 6pin connector is supposed to provide a maximum of 75 watts to a video card, while the pci express slot can give another 60 watts (on 12v, 15w on 3.3v or 1.8v)..
So to say a card that has no 6 pin connectors uses 75 watts when it can only draw 60 watts from the slot in total is a bit far-fetched.
That's obvious from the link above, you can see cards like Radeon 6670 using only 50w peak.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

More than roughly 75 W probably requires an external connector.

Even with PCI-E.

[severach]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

In the winter the cost is irrelevant as all heat goes towards heating the dwelling regardless of source. In the summer it's a different story. I had to get the room heat down and i3 based systems did it.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

lol those pentium 4s are power guzzlers esp those 3ghz and faster. my p4c northwood 3.2ghz with 875p chipset, 4 modules of 512mb ddr400, 128mb ati radeon 9800 pro, one 500gb ide hard disk, one dvd burner and 4 fans idles at 137w.

good thing i decided to stick with the cooler northwood version instead of the presshot. i'd bet the idle power wud be 155w if it was the presshot 3.2ghz... keke~

[TELVM]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

... AMD FX64 dual core 2.8GHz (not overclocked.) ... ... Completely idle, and it is pulling 150W... I was shocked.

You need this great piece of software: K10Stat

With K10Stat you can adjust C&Q, freqs and voltages at your will, for overclocking, undervolting, or both.

To give you an idea of the possibilities, I use K10Stat both to overclock a six-core Phenom II to 4100MHz @ 1.5 volts (320W from the wall grinding Prime95) on full swing, and then to underclock it to 800MHz @ 0.78 volts (just 80W from the wall) at idle.

K10Stat: A Guide to Increase Power Efficiency

K10STAT AMD Griffin Processor UnderVolting Guide

Tuning Cool'n'Quiet voltages using K10STAT

[newtothis]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

I dont even want to know what my system draws on idle!! My cpu has a 140w rating! nevermind running 8gb of high end RAm, a hd 6970 plus all my case fans!!

[tom66]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

I still think 80W is insane.

The computer is sitting there, copying data from video memory to the display output, and idling... it should be using a couple of watts, not 150W.

Yes, I know a computer is doing a lot more (HDD, fans, background tasks, for a few) but I think the focus on energy efficiency has been lost so it's got to the point of "we don't care, it's your bill."

My Raspberry Pi has about a fifth the clock speed and yet uses under a watt in most instances. It can decode full 1080p at about 1.5W power usage, whereas my PC uses 220W to do the same thing.

Anyway, I am building a HTPC, I aim for low power during idle, and high (=typical) power during usage. I want to have as much shut or slow down when the system idles. What are the best ways to achieve minimum idle power?

The downstairs/basement PC will be a Pi, as it can be configured to stream everything over LAN, including 1080p compressed video, and pipe it straight into the desired video sink (probably a big plasma pulling 200~500x the Pi's power.)

[newtothis]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

Using 'green' rated hardware, effecient cooling solutions, least amount of system services and processes running when not in use.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: 150W idle? You crazy?

The original FX chips, the FX53, FX55 and FX57 IIRC used a lot of power.

When FXs were known for being prohibitively expensive. (2004, 2005 and 2006)