On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 11:56:38AM +0100, Martijn Koster wrote:
On 19 Jun 2014, at 09:27, Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
I've had a look at the local guys at http://www.linitx.com (Needham Market) but the choice is mind-boggling, and I haven't really kept up to speed with this stuff.
I’ve been lusting after some low-power hardware for a while. Bewildering choices, aren’t there? The latest low-power options in that space are based on Intel’s Bay Trail system-on-chip, which has a whole range of CPUs.
They’re showing up in motherboards for self builds (e.g. Gigabyte J1800N-D2H /J1900N-D3V, see mini-itx.com), and small all-in-one devices like the latest Intel NUC, GigaByte Brix, and others, in various levels of capability, from home pcs to higher-grade server board options like ASrock-c2750d4i, Asus P9AIC25504L, Supermicro X10SBA and MBD-A1SAi-2750F-O.
Some point out that these boards seem to come at rather a premium, partly because of the “low power” appeal, but especially for the ones aimed at the NAS market with lots of SATA ports, and the server-grade machines that have remote management facilities built-in.
Do any of these 'low-power' systems actually quote total power consumption when integrated into a complete system?
I spent a long time finding a reasonably low power motherboard for my desktop system. With an efficient 80 watt power supply it runs at around 40 watts typically. Since my desktop is on all the time it was worth trying hard to keep the consumption down. It's a quad-core Intel I3 based motherboard by the way.
For comparison typical Intel Atom based systems of about the same vintage (e.g. my Acer Revo) consume around 26 watts for a *much* feebler system.
It's very, very difficult to get actual power consumption figures 'before you buy'. My figures above are actual, measured by me, power consumption figures. The meter I used seems pretty accurate on most loads until you get down below 5 watts or so.