egordon

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Mar 20, 2009
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Im looking to build a quiet, efficient system for use as a media server. I wont need anything fancy and am willing to pay a little more upfront for power savings over the long term.

Anyone have suggestions or links to builds for this type system?
Thanks!
 
Do you mean a PC where you will watch movies, or a PC that will be on a LAN and will store movies for watching from other PCs?

I suspect something based on a 780G (or 790GX) motherboard and Corsair 450VX would be a good start. That is, it will be quiet and power efficient all right if you don't need to buy a video card at all.

I like the WD6401AALS disk a lot, but in your case it's probably worth going with the WD 640GB Green because it's quieter and consumes less, and the lower speed won't matter at all for playing movies.

The Antec P182 is a great case if you can afford the money and want a quiet PC.
 

egordon

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Mar 20, 2009
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Thanks for the suggestions!

Im looking to cut my satellite bill and replace it with faster internet, then stream media through the quiet, efficient box both for viewing on our main TV and other PCs. Therefore it will kind of need to be able to both store and be able to watch off.

Ill take a look into those products and would love to hear any other suggestions.
 
Tomshardware built a low power consumption pc based on an e7200/ g31 mb . Total power draw was around 75 watts

The AMD 780 is great onboard gfx but the chips are hungrier and I doubt it can compete .

Im not sure if the e7200 is available any longer but the e7300 is much the same .
You could even underclock the cpu . It should throttle back in most BIOS to a multiplier of 6 which would reduce the speed and power usage about 40% . Maybe more if you undervolt it too .

Add a WD green hard drive , 4 gig of RAM , turn the case fans to low if you have the antec case and it would sit three 24/7 using half the power of a light bulb
 

xthekidx

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Dec 24, 2008
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I'd go with the Hush Case, that Combo deal I showed you and then this:
Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208353
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703018&Tpk=370w
HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298
Optical: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133
or if you don't need blu-ray: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152

Maybe add a tv tuner


You can use onboard graphics of the 790gx chipset and should be fine for anything unless you will play games on this rig, but doesn't sound like you will.
 

xthekidx

Splendid
Dec 24, 2008
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Thats true the 7750 BE is more power hungry because its a 65nm process...opposed to the 45nm on the core 2 duos...

I guess you could go with an e7300 or e5200 on this mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128357

and then get a cheap GPU;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102816
But then you would need to power the GPU, which would probably end up consuming more power, but you would have better video handling and playback with the discrete gpu...Depends what your priorities are I guess, you would get more performance out of the intel build though.
 

egordon

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Mar 20, 2009
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For that card, since you dont need to power a fan what would the draw be?

It appears to be 3 times as efficient per watt as the 3650, but that doesnt tell me very well what the draw would be.

Thanks!
 

egordon

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Mar 20, 2009
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Sounds good. I found a review on newegg (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814102816) that lists it with the passive cooling as 11-15W. The pertinent post is by Billy Buerger.

Im still looking for other reviews but it seems this is what Ill benchmark for power consumption.
 

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