Retiring, so downgrading to low power system

[skygod12000]

Currently have an Intel Sandy Bridge 2500k with Asrock P67 Extreme 4, HD5670, 2 x 4Gb Corsair XMS3 and 2 x 100Gb & 1 x 1Tb Sata HDDs, which is run for 15-16 hours a day.

As I will no longer need to be running Virtual Box systems and extensive Adobe Photoshop / AI sessions, my needs will now be mostly be limited to BitTorrent downloads, Web browsing, Excel, Word & VLC playback, (no gaming!) this system is overkill and will be highly inefficient in power terms.

I'm looking to simply move to an N3700 micro ATX board which provides full DDR3 slots and use the integrated Intel graphics, whilst replacing the 2 x 100Gb disks with a Samsung 850 EVO 240Gb SSD.

I'm hoping this system will be reasonably quiet and save a couple of kw a day in power consumption and with any luck I'll recoup a few bucks from selling on the CPU.

Comments on the suitability of the system and any alternative options appreciated.

 

[itmoba]

Unless you swap out your PSU, your computer will still be guzzling energy. Even if you get rid of your graphics card and other superfluous devices, you'll still be drawing too much power. As an alternative, you might want to sell of your rig and buy a thin laptop. If you want to save money on software, you may as well make the switch to some Linux distribution and use LibreOffice. Doing this will save you money on your energy and software bills.

 

[skygod12000]

I have far too much time investment in Excel spreasheets with macros, VB routines and ODBC connectivity to sqlite (I'm currently migrating MySQL databases to avoid needing to run a SQL Server) databases for me to consider moving to LibreOffice and I already have Windows & Office licences so it's not about saving money on software.

My PSU is a Corsair CX500 which I was looking to retain. Is it really the case that if I take out 2 HDDs, a graphics card and a more powerful CPU with cooling fan, I'm unlikely to reduce the overall power use, as I was projecting I'd reduce consumption by around 150 watts an hour.

150 watts an hour for 15 hours a day would be 2.25kWh a day, which would mean the new components would pay for themselves in around 3 years. If I can get 70 - 80 dollars from selling the old CPU and motherboard, the payback time would be reduced to around 18months and I seriously hope that my 'lifetime' is going to be longer than this.

 

[itmoba]

PSUs have efficiency ranges and such is easily demonstrated graphically with a curve. You'll note that there's a certain point where there is optimum efficiency, and that throughout the rest of the curve's domain it isn't optimal. It's as simple as that.

 

[skygod12000]

PSUs have efficiency ranges and such is easily demonstrated graphically with a curve. You'll note that there's a certain point where there is optimum efficiency, and that throughout the rest of the curve's domain it isn't optimal. It's as simple as that.

Not much of a curve though in real world terms once you get above 10% load.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/343495-28-power-supply-efficiency-myths


I should amend my original statement to read "highly inappropriate" rather than "highly inefficient", as it's a case of simply not requiring such a poweerful CPU to meet my new requirements.