5 ms·

On the contrary in 2013 the kind of person who builds their own PC's is the only one who likely cares about technical specs. If "good enough" is good enough for

by dman 14y ago

On the contrary in 2013 the kind of person who builds their own PC's is the only one who likely cares about technical specs. If "good enough" is good enough for you there is very little reason to build your own box these days.

freehunter 14y ago
For performance applications on the desktop though, power draw at idle doesn't matter too much. It's all about power draw at load. Power from the wall is cheap and easy to forget about. If I'm building a machine that draws 750W at load, drawing at idle is fairly insignificant. It's laptops where power draw at idle really matters, which are rarely home-built.
criley 14y ago
On the contrary to your contrary: the kind of person who builds their PC is the kind who customizes how it works when they're using it. There's no automatic assumption that they also harbor green feelings and want lower power consumption for idle/sleep. Hell, many are proud of their beefy 1kW+ power supplies and the ridiculous power load they draw. Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups. You certainly can't assume that the home builder cares at all about power consumption.
- dman 14y ago
  Fair enough. On the other hand segments of the market who think of the computer as a blackbox that is a bicycle for the mind are even less likely to care about any individual specification. Most people I know who build their own PC's are trying to optimize for some spec that manufacturers dont usually care about - loudness, gpu performance, low power draw, size, aesthetics.
- jkldotio 14y ago
  >Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups. I'd be proud of my bitcoin mining setup too if it could violate the laws of thermodynamics.
  - criley 14y ago
    I meant destruction to be synonymous with consuming, such as "Wow, I just destroyed that burger" ;)
  - solistice 14y ago
    On the opposite side, if you had an energy creating bitcoin setup, why would you care about the bitcoins?
- jlarocco 14y ago
  On the other hand, you can't automatically assume they don't care about it at all. I build most of my desktops, and I certainly want to reduce power usage when I'm not using them. Enough so that I'd pay for a power supply that supports the lower power states. Not everybody who builds their own PC is doing so to make a ridiculously over powered system.
  - AUmrysh 14y ago
    I agree. It really depends on why someone is building the PC. Sometimes you want to optimize the gaming performance, or video editing performance, or the file transfer speed and lower latency for a NAS box, or other times you're looking to optimize video playback, low power consumption, and low noise on an HTPC. All of those could be built by ones self, and each will usually require certain choices and trade-offs to achieve the desired goals.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- rosser 14y ago
  Anecdata, but my current build has been stalled on the availability of the i7-3770T (the 45W TDP part). I'm already using LV-DIMMs and SSDs. My actual, active goal is to build a quad core machine with 16 gibibytes of RAM that can draw < 100W at full bore. IOW, you can't assume that those of us who build our machines are all, "Look how big my electric bill is!" wastrels, either.
  - wtallis 14y ago
    That CPU won't be appreciably more power efficient than a standard i7-3770. It just constrains its clock speeds in order to stay within a lower power ceiling. TDP is all about cooling capacity and PSU capabilities. If you're worried about saving energy, get the processor that will run at the highest speed while computing so that it can get back into power-saving mode sooner. And you can always under-clock the standard desktop CPUs if you really want to - a 3770 can be configured to behave pretty much like a 3770T by tweaking the base and Turbo multipliers.
hga 14y ago
How about the MTBF spec? I exclusively use server or workstation/server class motherboards from Supermicro or Tyan not just for myself but also for my parents, so I can then largely ignore the hardware for 5+ years plus not worry about non-reproducible errors from radiation flipping a DRAM bit. I've done this since 1995-6 and never had one fail in the field except through an act of God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado). For this purpose, decreasing stress from thermal cycling is good. (Yeah, they're grossly overpowered for what my parents do, but since I'm not including my labor in the cost they really don't cost that much.)
- EvilLook 14y ago
  I consider it borderline negligent to use anything other than ECC RAM in any machine where you care about not corrupting your data with a flipped DRAM bit.
  - ars 14y ago
    Except it's virtually impossible to find a CPU that supports ECC. I've used ECC in every one of my machines for the last decade or so - except for the very last once since it's was impossible to get without spending a crazy amount of money (xeon processor).
    - tolle 14y ago
      Most AMD processors support it. At least the AM3/AM3+ ones. But only ASUS seems to have support for it enabled on the motherboards.
    - EvilLook 14y ago
      It's not virtually impossible. It may be virtually impossible in crappy cheap boards from Taiwan, but if you're buying cheap parts then you're likely not making money off the results that you're producing.
      - ars 14y ago
coldtea 14y ago
>As it appears, end-users will either have disable low-power states of Haswell or get a new power-supply units compatible with the new Intel chip. Low power consumption is not one of the specs the PC building crowd really cares about. Especially if it means taking a performance hit.
- wmf 14y ago
  Except in the case of HTPCs.

by dman 14y ago

freehunter 14y ago

For performance applications on the desktop though, power draw at idle doesn't matter too much. It's all about power draw at load. Power from the wall is cheap and easy to forget about. If I'm building a machine that draws 750W at load, drawing at idle is fairly insignificant. It's laptops where power draw at idle really matters, which are rarely home-built.

criley 14y ago

On the contrary to your contrary: the kind of person who builds their PC is the kind who customizes how it works when they're using it. There's no automatic assumption that they also harbor green feelings and want lower power consumption for idle/sleep. Hell, many are proud of their beefy 1kW+ power supplies and the ridiculous power load they draw. Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups. You certainly can't assume that the home builder cares at all about power consumption.

dman 14y ago
Fair enough. On the other hand segments of the market who think of the computer as a blackbox that is a bicycle for the mind are even less likely to care about any individual specification. Most people I know who build their own PC's are trying to optimize for some spec that manufacturers dont usually care about - loudness, gpu performance, low power draw, size, aesthetics.
jkldotio 14y ago
>Others are proud of their energy-destroying bit-coin mining setups. I'd be proud of my bitcoin mining setup too if it could violate the laws of thermodynamics.
- criley 14y ago
  I meant destruction to be synonymous with consuming, such as "Wow, I just destroyed that burger" ;)
- solistice 14y ago
  On the opposite side, if you had an energy creating bitcoin setup, why would you care about the bitcoins?
jlarocco 14y ago
On the other hand, you can't automatically assume they don't care about it at all. I build most of my desktops, and I certainly want to reduce power usage when I'm not using them. Enough so that I'd pay for a power supply that supports the lower power states. Not everybody who builds their own PC is doing so to make a ridiculously over powered system.
- AUmrysh 14y ago
  I agree. It really depends on why someone is building the PC. Sometimes you want to optimize the gaming performance, or video editing performance, or the file transfer speed and lower latency for a NAS box, or other times you're looking to optimize video playback, low power consumption, and low noise on an HTPC. All of those could be built by ones self, and each will usually require certain choices and trade-offs to achieve the desired goals.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
rosser 14y ago
Anecdata, but my current build has been stalled on the availability of the i7-3770T (the 45W TDP part). I'm already using LV-DIMMs and SSDs. My actual, active goal is to build a quad core machine with 16 gibibytes of RAM that can draw < 100W at full bore. IOW, you can't assume that those of us who build our machines are all, "Look how big my electric bill is!" wastrels, either.
- wtallis 14y ago
  That CPU won't be appreciably more power efficient than a standard i7-3770. It just constrains its clock speeds in order to stay within a lower power ceiling. TDP is all about cooling capacity and PSU capabilities. If you're worried about saving energy, get the processor that will run at the highest speed while computing so that it can get back into power-saving mode sooner. And you can always under-clock the standard desktop CPUs if you really want to - a 3770 can be configured to behave pretty much like a 3770T by tweaking the base and Turbo multipliers.

hga 14y ago

How about the MTBF spec? I exclusively use server or workstation/server class motherboards from Supermicro or Tyan not just for myself but also for my parents, so I can then largely ignore the hardware for 5+ years plus not worry about non-reproducible errors from radiation flipping a DRAM bit. I've done this since 1995-6 and never had one fail in the field except through an act of God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado). For this purpose, decreasing stress from thermal cycling is good. (Yeah, they're grossly overpowered for what my parents do, but since I'm not including my labor in the cost they really don't cost that much.)

EvilLook 14y ago
I consider it borderline negligent to use anything other than ECC RAM in any machine where you care about not corrupting your data with a flipped DRAM bit.
- ars 14y ago
  Except it's virtually impossible to find a CPU that supports ECC. I've used ECC in every one of my machines for the last decade or so - except for the very last once since it's was impossible to get without spending a crazy amount of money (xeon processor).
  - tolle 14y ago
    Most AMD processors support it. At least the AM3/AM3+ ones. But only ASUS seems to have support for it enabled on the motherboards.
  - EvilLook 14y ago
    It's not virtually impossible. It may be virtually impossible in crappy cheap boards from Taiwan, but if you're buying cheap parts then you're likely not making money off the results that you're producing.
    - ars 14y ago

coldtea 14y ago

>As it appears, end-users will either have disable low-power states of Haswell or get a new power-supply units compatible with the new Intel chip. Low power consumption is not one of the specs the PC building crowd really cares about. Especially if it means taking a performance hit.

wmf 14y ago
Except in the case of HTPCs.