There shoul be some very good credit/watt machine by the time Intel finish releasing the next round of chips.

I haven't chased no kitties in ages.

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There shoul be some very good credit/watt machine by the time Intel finish releasing the next round of chips.

I haven't chased no kitties in ages.

Catch us if you can.........LOL.....MEOWOL.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I just wanted to check first whether anyone had experience with mini- or nano-ITX form factor boards.

They just dont have the CPU grunt.

Even if you build an Atom system, it's probably going to suck 20 or 30 watts total (40-50% or the power), but get about 15% or 20% of the RAC.

Most of us say "mini-ITX" and think Via C3/C7. There are mini-ITX boards that use "mobile" chipsets and nice processors. They're just a little harder to find.

If (and I'm not planning on it) I was going to build a farm, the individual workstations would be diskless. They'd boot off the network, and one server would hold the data.

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Most of us say "mini-ITX" and think Via C3/C7. There are mini-ITX boards that use "mobile" chipsets and nice processors. They're just a little harder to find.

True, things like this exist.
http://www.bvm-store.com/ProductDetail.asp?fdProductId=410

A mini-itx board that supports a Q6600. Expensive still, and probably uses the same power as a micro-atx board anyway. Would crunch fine, great if you want to build your PC into a shoe box or something, but not so good on the $$ and only average on the watts front.

I'm sure that next year there will be new chips that will crunch more for less power. But if you allways wait for the next big thing then you will never build anything. ;-)

Ian

Most of us say "mini-ITX" and think Via C3/C7. There are mini-ITX boards that use "mobile" chipsets and nice processors. They're just a little harder to find.

True, things like this exist.
http://www.bvm-store.com/ProductDetail.asp?fdProductId=410

A mini-itx board that supports a Q6600. Expensive still, and probably uses the same power as a micro-atx board anyway. Would crunch fine, great if you want to build your PC into a shoe box or something, but not so good on the $$ and only average on the watts front.

I was thinking more of something like this http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9803

No quad-core socket-P, but I've heard decent things about the GME965 power-wise, and some of the socket-P chips are around 25w TDP.

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I was thinking more of something like this http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9803

No quad-core socket-P, but I've heard decent things about the GME965 power-wise, and some of the socket-P chips are around 25w TDP.

Agreed. Certainly using fast, modern mobile parts (CPU and chipset) in a stripped boxed system is a very high road to high credits/watt. You do, however, pay for the privilege, and that is likely to remain so.

You can't get there by just buying the regular desktop parts and undervolting them either. Intel takes good care by selection and perhaps otherwise that the desktop parts won't go down to the voltages required.

Sadly the published TDP is only a very rough picture of actual power in service. I think Intel's official position is that it is a spec requirement upon the system, not a commitment with regard to the chip. So, for example, the exact same TDP is published for multiple frequencies, for which the higher frequencies not only burn extra CVf current from frequency, but additionally demand higher voltage--thus raising not only CVf-related power but also leakage power. This gives room to Intel to ship a few leaky parts into the slower bins, but for most units shipped it just is poorly correlated. Now when you buy a special S-spec of the same logical/stepping part same frequency spec'd for lower TDP there is real information content (cherry-picked for meeting speed at a lower voltage, combined with decent leakage). It depends on the details.

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I was thinking more of something like this http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9803

No quad-core socket-P, but I've heard decent things about the GME965 power-wise, and some of the socket-P chips are around 25w TDP.

I doubt that this combination will work. All the Pxxxx intel mobile cpus (the 25W types) use a FSB1066, but GME965 only supports upto FSB800. Better look for this MSI-board.

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U r s

Sadly the published TDP is only a very rough picture of actual power in service.

I agree.

All TDP really says is "your case/heatsink/cooling system needs to get rid of 25w of heat and the thermal guidelines will not be exceeded."

Power consumption will be something less than TDP.

It does suggest that a 25w TDP chip will very likely draw less power than a 65w TDP chip.

... and it's the best we can get from the published specifications.

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I was thinking more of something like this http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9803

No quad-core socket-P, but I've heard decent things about the GME965 power-wise, and some of the socket-P chips are around 25w TDP.

I doubt that this combination will work. All the Pxxxx intel mobile cpus (the 25W types) use a FSB1066, but GME965 only supports upto FSB800. Better look for this MSI-board.

In other words, if you're buying this from Logic Supply, pay for assembly and test. :-)

From what I've read, the GME965 is pretty low power, I don't know how the other chip set compares.

What I really want is an Atom Z520 with the right chipset -- somewhere around 5w.

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This Intel page says a system with T7700 cpu and GME965 Express Chipset has a TDP of 51W. The T7700 has a TDP of 35W.

There is an interesting system design page at http://ark.intel.com/searchfeature.aspx which you could try.