Discussion help /advice Pc build with low power consumption with 3Dlearnign and some gaming in mind

Feb 23, 2023
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Hi there .. ok some context .. because in my country electricity bills will increase ( dramatically in the upcoming year)
I want /need to build a pc. with the more efficient power consumption as possible ..
and nope. no i3 xD
my focus will be in 3d learning. modeling , and sculpting ..
and some gaming in 1440p monitor. (maybe 4k) I still don't know..
I was a pc user but it was like 4-5 years go(I was using Mac .. because of co. I work the use Mac .. etc,,) .. so. IM sure there are some things Im not in the same pages/out of date.. :p or very confused .
IM not a hardcore gamer so andIM not looking for 1xx fps .. 50-70 fps. it's ok .
about 3D.. my main focus will be in modeling polygons and brush sculpting .. I understand this is mostly single thread tasks .. rendering will be done with gpu .
my idea is a good speedy i5 13600k. (underplot it later) with 32gb ram 660 motherboard ( and a couple of m.2 ssd's obviously)
and gpu : a 3060ti or a 3070.
but as nowadays cpu's and gpu's are super power hungry .. I thought undervolting them a bit.
is this possible ? I mean it will reduce the electrical power consumption or its more like a .meeh ?
or going something. with no (K) 13500 , 13600 ? 12700? or AMD ?

[ I had the crazy idea to by a mini pc ( minis forum 6900hx ). but connecting an External GPU its like. seems crazy .. I mean or I have to sacrifice an pcie 4.0 ssd port and connect that gpu with those egpu sockets .. + a psu . then invent some diy case to hold all those things together .. ahhgg. -____-u. and buying a egpu enclosure .. its pretty but. agh. 300 bucks ? and then thb4/3. not giving all the pcie x16 .. ]

So undervolting cpu-gpu. is good thing if I want to save electricity ? pros /cons .. about cpu 's. going AMD or intel is there any difference?
any opinions thoughts ,suggestions are super welcome :)
 

Eximo

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Ryzen 7700 would be pretty decent as well. But avoiding the K chips is going to keep the wattage down, but not as much as current Zen 4 parts. You could re-prioritize efficiency cores to handle the bulk of tasks and only call up the P-Cores when you want to game or do workstation tasks, but that seems inconvenient.

Waiting for the 4060 might be worth it, but yeah 3060 12GB might be the wiser choice for VRAM right now. Or an AMD 6800 / XT with 16GB.
You'll want to overspend on the PSU, Titanium rating will save you some power from the wall.

You can certainly power limit a GPU and undervolt the CPU if you want. Undervolting is more about extracting more performance per watt. If you really want to save power you can just throttle them a lot.
 
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DSzymborski

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An external GPU doesn't save you any power. It'll be more power for less performance.

In any case, there's no magic solution here. Undervolting won't save you that much in the way of power. Your power savings will be determined by the equipment you choose, not by how you undervolt it. So you'll have to decide for yourself how much performance to trade for power. There's no magic shortcut to get X performance without paying for it with the amount of power needed for X performance under current efficiency; you can tinker with it the balance of undervolting, but you're not going to see huge performance-per-watt savings there.
 
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Feb 23, 2023
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Thank you all for all your thoughts /info. really appreciate it .
about egpu power consumption yeap I know. it would not give me much of a difference.. but maybe in the cpu-system side ? but yeah all that trouble joining those parts .. and thunderbolt 4 performance its like a downgrade ... bit absurd I think .
about cpu's so. I should look of an intel 12600 or 13600. ( non k). or AMD 7700 . those are most power efficient right ?
any advice what MObo should I get ?
Also to invest in the best PSU I could find . platinum plus something like that right ?
about undervolting .. doing it .. it will prevent gpu and or cpu to reach maximum limits like instead of 150watts. doing rendering (as an example) will be limited to .. lets say 120watts ?
or it will affect base speeds too ? what I mean. it will make slow all the cpu or just the upper limit peak ?
GPU: oh yeah I forgot about the rtx 3060 12gb .. but I heard it have some drawbacks about those 12 gb and the use of it ?
hmm. yeah maybe waiting for the 4060 would be smarter .
 

Eximo

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Depends on your target power profile I suppose. If you are planning to make everything run at least at maximum, you probably want something like a 650W if you go past the 3060 and a 100ish watt CPU.

EVGA Supernova Platinum, SuperFlower Leadex Platinum / V, Seasonic Focus Plus Platinum and the like. Also a few 550W on the cheaper side of things that would work.
 
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Feb 23, 2023
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Depends on your target power profile I suppose. If you are planning to make everything run at least at maximum, you probably want something like a 650W if you go past the 3060 and a 100ish watt CPU.

EVGA Supernova Platinum, SuperFlower Leadex Platinum / V, Seasonic Focus Plus Platinum and the like. Also a few 550W on the cheaper side of things that would work.
thanks. yeah I will try to look for a 650. or 750 platinum . thanks for all the info again .
Im going with he i5 13500 . looks like a good cpu .. I thought to go with i5 12600 or some older and 5600 but ahh -___- u. electrical consumption what Im going to save is so minimal .. :/.
better to invest in a good psu . fine tune windows and hardware .. ( and not gaming at full ultra settings in a 4k 1xx monitor xD for many days. lol ..). joking .. I like gaming but I want to focus more in 3d practice..
and photoshop , z brush . blender/Maya modeling and texturing .. seems more focused in one or 2 cores .. (faster cores better)