Efficient rig thoughts?

[DrPop]

Kim wants to switch the living room furniture around, and that includes swapping the big desk for an armour type desk that folds up. Cheetah's full tower won't fit inside, so I might take it to the office to crunch 24/7 and build a smaller rig for the house. This would be a good move because I can write off the electric at my office, whereas I can't at home.

Looking for some ideas on the most power efficient rig to build up, since I've been out of the new hardware loop so long. The most taxing thing it will do other than crunch is photo editing. Kim likes to use the latest Photoshop and Lightroom programs a lot.
Largest case I could do is a mid tower on this.
Thanks for any ideas.

[STMahlberg]

Like you, I've been out of the hardware loop for a while; however, here is my personal experience over the past 2 years. My last build and my current system is a Intel Core i7-4820K Ivy Bridge-E Quad-Core 3.7GHz on a MSI X79A-GD45 Plus LGA 2011 board. I run Photoshop, Lightroom and After Effects on this rig with no problems; so just about any processor in that class will run those applications.

As far as power consumption, the i7 processor I have is a 130 watt design and they're not kidding... it is a hot running processor. I have a power data logger that I put on this rig which had one of my old HD5870's in it and it would run at about 300 watts crunching boinc. I don't know about your power rates in California but ours here are 0.102/kw which would be ~$22 a month.

I know AMD still makes processors that are a 95 watt design; I'm sure Intel has something similar but I haven't looked.

As far as hard drives, my system has (4) 1TB Western Digital Black series in it and they tend to run a little hot. I know their Green series are a little more energy efficient. Here are the numbers and I have included the link to the spec sheet.

Black Series 1 TB (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771434.pdf)

Average power requirements (W)
Read/Write 6.8
Idle 6.1
Standby/Sleep 0.8


Green Series 1 TB (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771438.pdf)
Average power requirements (W)
Read/Write 3.3
Idle 2.5
Standby/Sleep 0.4

So if you build a simple system with a low-watt processor, 1 HDD, and 1 GPU, I'm betting that you would come in at under 200 watts.

I hope some of this helps.


Edit: I just read that WD re-branded the Green as Blue last year. Sooo... I don't know, maybe a solid state drive. :D

[c303a]

The I7 6700K is a 95 w Thermal design and the I7 6700 is a 61w thermal design CPU. They are also less expensive then the I7 4970K at Newegg. The I7 is only $299 at Amazon if you don't need the oc speed. I just built a 6700K for myself and a 6700 for a friend and both are running cool.

[DrPop]

Yeah, I have the i7-e series CPUs in Lynx and Cheetah. Too much heat output and electric use for what I'm looking for here. Probably have to go regular i7 or even a special low power version. I know they made one last gen that was 65W rated. Pretty cool, put one in a rig for my brother's commercial fishing boat. Have to see what they have now.
The bummer with residential electric in SoCal is that it's tiered by usage. Sure, tier 1 is pretty reasonable, but if you even so much as run a light bulb or two and turn on the garbage disposal once, you'll go over that usage in a hurry. If you start hitting usage into tier 3 or 4, you pay for it through the nose.
And don't ask how I know they even have a pricing for Tier 5 (running a welder in my garage while crunching BOINC) was not exactly an inexpensive hobby month. ;)
So if I can offload the second big rig to the office electric for the tax write off, and make a very efficient rig for home use, I see that as a win... would make the wife happy and we get more cores at the same time. :D

[DrPop]

@C303a - thanks for the info. Is that the latest i7 version ? I wonder if the built-in GPU is good enough for Photoshop use yet, or if I need to look at another GPU as well? That would save some watts if I could just let it use whatever is on the chip. Having the i7-e CPUs, I've never actually had the built-in Intel graphics to know yet.

[scole of TSBT]

Don't forget a miserly GTX 1070 @150 watts. Or if that's still too hot you could wait for the GTX 1060.

[c303a]

The I7 6700's are the latest for normal crunching as far as I know. The 6700 runs at 3.4 gb and I put 16 gb of Ram into my friends box and it is running real well. He doesn't do any graphics and I haven't tried any with the internal graphics.

[FourOh]

There's a 35w version of the i7-6700... the i7-6700T. It launched in '15 but I've only seen it shipped in pre-assembled systems from Dell, HP, Lenovo. I plan on using one when I upgrade my HTPC, which is in a closet with no ventilation along with routers, DVR, AV receiver, etc. You can get one on ebay or Amazon (third party), but the online retailers don't have them yet.

I'll keep my trusty GTX 750 Ti in that rig... sucker barely generates any heat :cool:

[c303a]

I'll keep my trusty GTX 750 Ti in that rig... sucker barely generates any heat :cool:[/QUOTE]

Love those GTX 750ti's. They run quite and as stated very cool.

WOW! I just looked at ebay and the cheapest I7 6700T is $499.99 used and if you want a boxed one it is $551.95......from Israel!

[DrPop]

So is the consensus that the integrated GPU isn't good enough yet and I should still look at a dedicated GPU? Looks like AMD has a new 150W GPU coming out in a few days as well, they showed it on Anandtech.

[scole of TSBT]

I'll keep my trusty GTX 750 Ti in that rig... sucker barely generates any heat :cool:

Love those GTX 750ti's. They run quite and as stated very cool.
The GTX 1050 and 1060 will supposedly be released in Q3. Neither GPU will have a PCIe power connector.

[zombie67]

Get yourself an i7 NUC.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/products-overview.html

[c303a]

I'd try a I7 6700 without a video card. You can always add it if needed.

[John P. Myers]

Gigabyte Brix (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=47&ck=104)is a great choice. Can get up to 4 cores/8 threads with 128MB Iris Pro graphics (can crunch Collatz and such on the on-die graphics processor).

Most (if not all) models include VESA mounts so you can attach it to the back of your monitor. This way it takes up no desk/floor/shelf space at all ;)

[zombie67]

Gigabyte Brix (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=47&ck=104)is a great choice. Can get up to 4 cores/8 threads with 128MB Iris Pro graphics (can crunch Collatz and such on the on-die graphics processor).

Have you checked out the new i7 NUC? Completely different form factor. Not sure what I think of it yet.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/change-the-game-with-nuc.html

Anyway, a bit more expensive than the brix, but also a bit faster CPU.

[DrPop]

Wow! Those things are tiny. And to think I thought the Mini ITX rig I built for my bro a year ago was small. OK, I'll have to check into these, might be worth it not to mess with a build and just use what they have...strange to think that way, but kind of neat.

[zombie67]

An no 3.5 or 2.3 inch HD. The SSD is a stick of gum now.