Sparked by Laurie's thread, but different so I don't want to hijack it.
My desktop PC (Intel G630 w/ 8GB RAM) is a bit slow these days. It is used for those wonderfully high memory applications we call web browsers, and for running VMs, and runs 24/7. Ubuntu 14.04 as the O/S.
I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor (and the RAM if necessary) whilst retaining the rest of the box. What would be a good motherboard and CPU combo for the above on a budget of say £150-£200? (I'd want the motherboard to support at least 16GB RAM, 4x SATA and have USB3 but other than that I'm not too fussy. I currently have onboard graphics and continuing that way makes sense for my usage, but happy to look at alternatives.)
Energy usage is something I would like to keep an eye on when the system is idle, but I don't want it to be held back when I actually want it to do something.
Mark
On 19 June 2014 17:03, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor (and the RAM if necessary) whilst retaining the rest of the box. What would be a good motherboard and CPU combo for the above on a budget of say £150-£200?
Given the silence I guess I'm not playing to people's strengths here!
Can I therefore narrow this down: What CPU would be recommended for a good low-energy-when-idle but good-performance-when-needed, at around the £100 mark? (I'm flexible on price so if there's a compelling reason to spend more I'll consider it.)
If I know what CPU I'm playing with I can pick a mobo that will support it.
On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 12:25:34PM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 19 June 2014 17:03, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor (and the RAM if necessary) whilst retaining the rest of the box. What would be a good motherboard and CPU combo for the above on a budget of say £150-£200?
Given the silence I guess I'm not playing to people's strengths here!
Can I therefore narrow this down: What CPU would be recommended for a good low-energy-when-idle but good-performance-when-needed, at around the £100 mark? (I'm flexible on price so if there's a compelling reason to spend more I'll consider it.)
When I was last looking at this the Intel I3/I5/I7 range were the way to go.
On Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:25:34 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 19 June 2014 17:03, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor (and the RAM if necessary) whilst retaining the rest of the box. What would be a good motherboard and CPU combo for the above on a budget of say £150-£200?
Given the silence I guess I'm not playing to people's strengths here!
Can I therefore narrow this down: What CPU would be recommended for a good low-energy-when-idle but good-performance-when-needed, at around the £100 mark? (I'm flexible on price so if there's a compelling reason to spend more I'll consider it.)
Mark
"That depends" (TM). How low powered and what sort of performance?
I've been looking at much the same question myself lately. My last PC build (about a year ago) was based on an AMD A4 3400 2.7GHz Socket FM1 and an Asrock A75M-HVS FM1 mobo. But that was for a headless server designed to replace (and consolidate) a bunch of other assorted NAS boxes and small ARM servers. (Note to Laurie - that machine idles at 45 watts with two 2 TB SATA drives installed in RAID 1 if that is any help). My current desktop (around 4 years old and thus due for renewal) is based on a core i3-530.
I chose the AMD A4 because I didn't need a lot of oomph for a server and the price/performance looked good (£62 for CPU and Mobo). Arguably it is really overpowered for what it does but I've been happy with it. It is also pretty damned quiet.
However, intel processors now generally run at much lower power consumption than AMD. Current conventional wisdom at the high end (gaming PCs) is that the Core i5/i7 beats any of the A6/A8/A10 or FX series AMD processors hands down. The FX 9xxx has a TDP of 219 watts for pete's sake. Even lower down the performance scale Intel seems to have AMD beat on power consumption. I'm not a gamer, but I do a lot of video transcoding so I'm considering one of the new Core i5s - possibly the latest Haswell series such as the core i5-4670 on a Z87M Socket 1150 mobo.
But if anyone else has a better suggestion for my use case I'd be delighted to hear it.
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On 24 June 2014 18:10, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
"That depends" (TM). How low powered and what sort of performance?
Well obviously what I want is teraflops of performance across dozens of cores, for under £100 and a peak of about 10W...
But realistically I'm looking for the best compromise I can find for around £100-£150. Paying more for lower energy without compromising performance would make sense where it will pay for itself in lower energy costs if left on 24/7. And in fact if there is a compelling reason to spend £200+ just for performance I'll do that but I'm assuming its a case of diminishing returns and I might as well wait a couple of years and upgrade again.
At the moment I'm looking at an i5/3340 based on the comments here. I need to see if the existing mobo will accept it, and if so whether I'd get a performance boost by spending £40-ish on a new mobo anyway (I am expecting to need a new motherboard but if I don't then so much the better).
Assuming I do upgrade the mobo, what chipsets should I be looking for? Host O/S will be Ubuntu (14.04 64-bit).
On Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:48:18 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Assuming I do upgrade the mobo, what chipsets should I be looking for? Host O/S will be Ubuntu (14.04 64-bit).
Again, that depends..... :-)
I'd probably go for the H87 chipset. Not as full featured as the Z87, but then at the pricepoint you are thinking of (and the CPU) I'd guess you aren't that interested in overclocking.
Ebuyer gives the following options for socket 1155
http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=intel+Socket+1155+motherboard
and this article explains the difference between the chipsets
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Z87-H87-H81-Q87-Q85-B85-What-is-th...
and of course wikipedia gives some useful detail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155
My understanding is that the B and Q series chipsets are aimed at business use whilst the H and Z are aimed at domestic use. So for example the Q series chipsets offer active management technology which is useful to a business, less so for a home user.
HTH
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 05:28:27PM +0100, mick wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:48:18 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Assuming I do upgrade the mobo, what chipsets should I be looking for? Host O/S will be Ubuntu (14.04 64-bit).
Again, that depends..... :-)
I'd probably go for the H87 chipset. Not as full featured as the Z87, but then at the pricepoint you are thinking of (and the CPU) I'd guess you aren't that interested in overclocking.
Ebuyer gives the following options for socket 1155
http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=intel+Socket+1155+motherboard
and this article explains the difference between the chipsets
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Z87-H87-H81-Q87-Q85-B85-What-is-th...
and of course wikipedia gives some useful detail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155
My understanding is that the B and Q series chipsets are aimed at business use whilst the H and Z are aimed at domestic use. So for example the Q series chipsets offer active management technology which is useful to a business, less so for a home user.
A major factor is power supply efficieny of course. In particular efficiency at the (hopefully low) power that you will be using most of the time. A 500 watt power supply may advertise 90% efficiency but that will only be when you're using, say, 350 watts. If you are using only 30 watts the efficiency will likely be very poor.
I have an efficient 80 watt power supply on my system (the desktop that draws 40 watts), 'ordinary' power supplies use significantly more power running this system.
On 25 June 2014 20:57, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
A major factor is power supply efficieny of course. In particular efficiency at the (hopefully low) power that you will be using most of the time.
Good point.
How do I go about determining the power required so that I can source a better PSU?
I figure that getting the right PSU will likely pay for itself pretty quickly so that should be a "no brainer".
On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 09:33:34AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 25 June 2014 20:57, Chris Green <[1]cl@isbd.net> wrote:
A major factor is power supply efficieny of course. A In particular efficiency at the (hopefully low) power that you will be using most of the time.Good point. How do I go about determining the power required so that I can source a better PSU?
You can get quite cheap and reasonably accurate power meters now. Build your system and power it from an existing PSU and use the power meter to check its consumption. Then you can buy a suitable PSU.
This is the one I have (though I didn't buy it from Maplin I don't think):- http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/15a-plug-in-energy-saving-monitor-l61aq
A Google search will bring up lots of possibles, some cheaper.
I figure that getting the right PSU will likely pay for itself pretty quickly so that should be a "no brainer".
Quite.
On 27/06/14 13:32, Chris Green wrote:
[SNIP]
You can get quite cheap and reasonably accurate power meters now. Build your system and power it from an existing PSU and use the power meter to check its consumption. Then you can buy a suitable PSU.
This is the one I have (though I didn't buy it from Maplin I don't think):- http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/15a-plug-in-energy-saving-monitor-l61aq
Maplins are always expensive (and this one is £19.99 which is too much, IMO), so I hit ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Energy-Saving-Power-Meter-Measures-Electrical-Use-...
£11.98 inc postage.
I think I'll get one to see where my power hogs are.
Cheers, Laurie.
On 1 July 2014 11:18, Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
Maplins are always expensive (and this one is £19.99 which is too much, IMO), so I hit ebay:
I ordered this one a couple of days ago: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251494899624
... because it was a couple of quid cheaper, although to be fair I've had excellent service from Energenie (the manufacturer of the one Laurie bought) in the past so with hindsight I'd have bought theirs.
Either way I look forward to finding out what my PC is using and making some improvements. Note that I don't consider "finding out I don't need to" to be a realistic result of the tests!
On Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:25:34 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 19 June 2014 17:03, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
I'd like to upgrade the motherboard and processor (and the RAM if necessary) whilst retaining the rest of the box. What would be a good motherboard and CPU combo for the above on a budget of say £150-£200?
Given the silence I guess I'm not playing to people's strengths here!
Oh - I forgot to include these references. I found them useful.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337&pgno=2 (AMD CPUs)
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337&pgno=8 (Intel CPUs)
Mick
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Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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mick