Question Most Power Efficient CPU?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

Andrewbandrew05

Honorable
Jun 30, 2019
245
17
10,615
I've recently been tasked with speccing out a portable desktop for use at baja style off road races. It's run off a 1500watt jackery so it can't be crazy powerful (which is fine because I'm building it to replace a raspberry pi that wasn't quite fast enough for us), but power efficiency is a must here. I was initially planning to go with AMD due to the incredible power efficiency of ryzen 7000 under load, but I've heard that intel's E cores lead to some incredibly low idle power draw, something that I assume will be much more important to us since we'll mostly be running code. I tried to find a T series chip for sale, but, since they seem to be more-or-less oem only, I think it's down to either the i5-13400 or an undervolted i5-13600k. Any suggestions?

Also, sidenote, how locked down is Intel's B series platform? I'm planning to run DDR5 for it's better power efficiency, and the kit I found is 5600 at CL46. Will a B760M motherboard let me run those timings?
 
I think the plan was originally to use something like that, but our organization runs through a college, and if we buy a complete system they have to put all sorts of fun *cough* malware *cough* I mean "protective measures" on it. However, if we buy a bunch of "replacement parts"........ Basically, bureaucracy is annoying and it's more fun to build one anyway.

This is what I have so far btw https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XBLLPF. I chose the 850watt both because it's sfx and the 80+ titanium should help since I doubt we'll pull much power running code anyway.

Edit: I swapped the power supply to a seasonic 1000 watt since it has both more headroom and a better efficiency curve.
 
Last edited:
Andrewbandrew05 said:
I think the plan was originally to use something like that, but our organization runs through a college, and if we buy a complete system they have to put all sorts of fun *cough* malware *cough* I mean "protective measures" on it. However, if we buy a bunch of "replacement parts"........ Basically, bureaucracy is annoying and it's more fun to build one anyway.

This is what I have so far btw https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XBLLPF. I chose the 850watt both because it's sfx and the 80+ titanium should help since I doubt we'll pull much power running code anyway.

Edit: I swapped the power supply to a seasonic 1000 watt since it has both more headroom and a better efficiency curve.
Click to expand...
A 1000W PSU for a system that may not draw 300W ?
 
Yeah it's probably the intel NUC that you want. That said...

Usually speed and low power aren't used in the same sentence. Still, in modern times you just might be able to find something that's notably quicker than a Pi. Just about anything is.

What is your maximum wattage draw you'll allow for? You have a 1500w inverter, but obviously you don't want a 1450w computer system. You could figure out that number, then ask Perplexity what the fastest computer that only draws X wattage is. That would be about as fast as you can go.
 
Andrewbandrew05 said:
since I doubt we'll pull much power running code anyway.
Click to expand...
Everything you run on a PC is "just code" ,that's the only thing any PC can run.
You can do some tests on whatever system you currently have to see how much of the CPU your code can use and how much power it draws, if it only uses one core then power draw will be very low even if you get a k cpu BUT you will also have the ability to push the power to gain some speed if and when it is necessary which is something you won't be able to do with a non-k CPU.
 
TerryLaze said:
Everything you run on a PC is "just code" ,that's the only thing any PC can run.
You can do some tests on whatever system you currently have to see how much of the CPU your code can use and how much power it draws, if it only uses one core then power draw will be very low even if you get a k cpu BUT you will also have the ability to push the power to gain some speed if and when it is necessary which is something you won't be able to do with a non-k CPU.
Click to expand...

He might mean a different code. The codes for the vehicle. Essentially saying it's only used for one task that doesn't draw much power.
 
Photonfanatic said:
He might mean a different code. The codes for the vehicle. Essentially saying it's only used for one task that doesn't draw much power.
Click to expand...
Yeah, closer to this. I think it just runs a bunch of arduino stuff and whatnot.

Edit: Also yes, the 1000watt PSU had the best efficiency I could find for even the sub 100 watt category.
 
Photonfanatic said:
He might mean a different code. The codes for the vehicle. Essentially saying it's only used for one task that doesn't draw much power.
Click to expand...
Andrewbandrew05 said:
Yeah, closer to this. I think it just runs a bunch of arduino stuff and whatnot.

Edit: Also yes, the 1000watt PSU had the best efficiency I could find for even the sub 100 watt category.
Click to expand...
But then the Pi would be fast enough to do that. Unless there is a protocol or port issue that doesn't allow for data to be transferred any faster than that, especially if that restriction is from the vehicle.
 
As I understand it, we're running a collection of code and a GPS/transmission protocol to communicate with the car. I don't know a ton of stuff about the exact load (I'm fairly new), but I figure good power efficiency+strong single/multithreaded performance when we need it will be nice.
 
Andrewbandrew05 said:
As I understand it, we're running a collection of code and a GPS/transmission protocol to communicate with the car. I don't know a ton of stuff about the exact load (I'm fairly new), but I figure good power efficiency+strong single/multithreaded performance when we need it will be nice.
Click to expand...
What is all of this supposed to do? Like what are the features you're trying to implement here?

I can at least tell you on the outset that unless you're doing some real-time hard crunching of a lot of data here that needs to feed back into the car in some way, a desktop computer of any sort is overkill.
 
I agree the computer's overkill, we're just in a pretty unique situation due to our inability to buy a pre-built. I also think there's some interest in running windows instead of a lighter weight operating system, necessitating the additional processing power. I think this is the main computer we use for events, and having a lot of horses under the hood could come in super handy if our dataload and/or processing gets more compute intensive (both of which we're expecting to happen). Furthermore, the desktop allows us to add a GPU if we end up needing CUDA for anything and just enables more flexibility in general. All that being said, I do think one of those souped up raspberry pies might also work (atleast when it comes to just the code).
 
If it is just data logging and basic communication to the car, then I agree some Raspberry Pi or similar solution would be better. If it doesn't run an OS the university supports, then they won't have much say in putting their software suite on it.

Being a university you could probably track down a student messing with ATMega FPGA and get something bespoke written in assembly.

Many years ago we did something similar to get a full digital dashboard readout for an EV conversion.

Could also just be a laptop or NUC running Linux...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom