Hi guys,

I am wanting to reduce the power consumption of my Mythbox even more than I have by finally getting Mythwelcome to wakeup to record. As it stands at the moment my current Mythboxen (see sig below) runs at a hot 62 C and that in the BIOS. Yikes.

I looked through marc.aronson's thread here: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18185&start=30 and he draws some interesting conclusions about several cpu's. I too have done some research into the watts used by cpu's, and found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation Marc's post is now several months old and technology moves on swiftly. I think Marc' conclusion was the E7200?

This upgrade is going to include a new TV too. I'm planning on buying a Samsung 37' LCD tv. This one I think:http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146278 which supports 1080p so the system needs to be able to cope with that. I'm hoping my graphics card be up to it. I intend to connect via DVI - HDMI.

As there are almost as many Intel cpu chips as there are flavours of icecream I am unclear which is the best way to go.

Any thoughts, suggestions and recommendation could prove very useful to my final decision.

On a final note, motherboards. The stability and performance depends so much on which mother board you choose, what do you have in your Mythbox to go with your cpu?

Regards Chris

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Unfortunately, hidef decode (especially for H.264/MPEG-4) and low power are currently mutually exclusive. Both SageTV (better) and MCE have low power hidef extenders... but not MythTV. I would suggest a Core2Duo processor.

I think 'low power' in my case is relative... lower than currently using is better. I will be getting hold of a wattage meter thing later today and tell exactly how many watts my mythbox is using.

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Tophee, times do change and while the E7200 is still a very reasonable choice, I finally did my new build using an MSI P6NG Neo-Digital motherboard and an E8400, as described here. I selected the E8400 because they were on sale for $149 -- only $49 more than the E7200.

More generally, the Intel Wolfdale cores run very cool and consume very little power. This articleshows you how little power they draw.

Here are some additional notes on my new build:


My 3 tuners consume 25 watts and the 2 disk drives consume ~15 watts, so the CPU+MOBO consume 40 watts at idle; 65 watts when fully loaded.

Marc

Marc,
You're a star. That's exactly the sort of information I'm looking for.
Thank you very much.

The E8400 looks like an excellent chip and the reduced power consumption is brilliant. I think my current Pentium D is the same as the one you had. Runs way too hot and uses too much juice.

Now to see the motherboard you list isn't available here directly - it appears it can be shipped from the states, but it doesn't have optical out... I'll keep looking for a suitable board and post back with a likely looking candidate. Mind you I do have a sound card not doing much at the moment.

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Just spotted this: http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=1929&l1=3&l2=11&l3=584&l4=0

Anyone used this? Anyone know if Knoppmyth plays nice with the G35 chipset?

Thanks

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Tophee, that Asus MB certainly looks interested -- I'll be interested in hearing the outcome if you decide to use it. The one potential "gotcha" is that it uses intel integrated graphics. Intel integrated graphics is quite good these days, but I'm not sure how well that's supported in Linux land.

One more data point on power consumption you might find interested: I connected my system to a kilowatt 7 days (169.5 hours) ago. Over that interval it has consumed 4.18 kilowatts, which averages out to 24.7 watts/hour. Some comparison points:

1. Dual tuner TIVO-HD: 37 watts/hour.

2. Comcast's PVR: 125 watts/hour.

3. My old Pentirum D-930 based system: 42 watts/hour.

Clearly the big win in power consumption is to have the system shutdown when it's not needed, but the wolfdale processor also contributes a significant energy savings. The lower power draw also has reduced system noise quite a bit -- the power supply fan used to get rather noisy when my old D930-based system got really busy on a warm day...

Marc

Hey Marc,
The Intel graphics is what worried me. However, I did a bit of searching and Intel have a Linux package of drivers for that board. Will search a bit more and see what's what, or not.

Thanks for your power usage figures. I should have hold of a kilowatt meter later today or tomorrow -it's dependent on a friend bringing it round.

I don't know if they do a similar product over in the states, but I have several of these Intelliplug expansion sockets to reduce power consumption of those items that like to be left on standby such as tv's or av recievers. I've one for my mythbox setup. It has the tv, av receiver and the mythbox plugged into it. http://www.oneclickpower.com/store/

Regards Chris

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Just done a bit more looking around, and the micro variant on the P5E-V motherboard appears to work as shown here:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/349860?page=last

A guy called Jo posted a response to a similar query to mine:


Whether the relevent drivers are included in 5.5 I don't know, but it looks promising. Need to brush up on my Linux skills if I'm going to undertake compiling my own drivers...

Any pointers would be welcomed / probably needed. Especially if I am to stay in the other half's good books. lol.

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Unfortunately, I can't help on the driver question. On the power strip -- I have an old X10 system I use so that my mythbox is able to control the power supply of any device I want switched on and off. Works quite well and I use it to cut the power to the Comcast digital tuner when the mythbox powers down.

Marc

I thought I'd just mention the powerstrip, because it's probably one of the best bits of power saving kit I've bought in recent times.
Regards

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

Back to the motherboard thing.

On another board I post on I was asking a similar question: Recommend me a motherboard.

It was suggested that I look at Intel G45 motherboards. There was a link to an article which had this in its conclusion:


Is this supported currently by KnoppMyth? Even though I don't own the board suggested, it sounds like exactly the thing that should be!

Oh the article I took that from can be found here: the bit I've quoted is on the last page.

_________________
Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)