[LINUX] HTPC low power consumption
#1
Hello,

i have done some reading and search at different places out there in the WWW and am stuck in between different setups. First I thought the AMD E-350/450 (Zacate) would do fine for me, but there the lack of Linux support for the ATI IGP is too poor (it's so bad that AMD bought ATI instead of nVidia in the past)... then i went on to the atom series (D525), but then I have read absolutely contrary opinions about the ION2 IGP. And lastly i passed the Intel i3/Celeron corner, but got no result so far... do i need a separate graphic card, what's a realistic power consumption scenario...?

So i wanted to ask you for some hints. My requirements are:
- play 1080p movies
- do some minor shell stuff via ssh
- play a DVD or blueRay
- only optional (should not be focussed if power cons. would rise by this requ.): some recording stuff via DVB-S2/timeshift
- LINUX-only (preferably Debian with XBMC)
- low power consumption

I don't play games, so that's no criterium for me.

Now my question is, what the best components for the lowest power consumption would be. I have read about the systems of eskro, but there I have not read about the power cons and I think that it is not low since a separate graphic card is always present. Maybe some more energy-efficient sceanrios can be possible for my requ.?
So give me some hints...

Thanks
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#2
Rasp pi? http://www.raspberrypi.org/

And a usb-bluray reader. Very low power consumption. Probably not good for DVB-S2 though.
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#3
I built my machine based on this one from eskro, which has a separate fanless GPU card. The CPU is rated at 65W max. Running Linux Mint (therefore Ubuntu->Debian) with XBMC on top. Absolutely awesome and solid machine.

About power, I do not know exactly how much it's drawing. But I do know that even though it is turned on 24x7 (due to running a PBX in a VM as well on it), I cannot see a difference in my monthly electricity bill Smile

Perhaps any of those builds, but choosing a 35W processor is your best bet. But for what I've seen, those CPU's tend to be pricey, and harder to find in retail.

Possibly using a PicoPSU would help with efficiency too; in fact I'm thinking of changing the current PSU for a PicoPSU at least to make it 100% silent (I can hear the fan, it's not bad but if I can improve it...)
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#4
Thanks for the replies.
Raspberry Pi is hard to get at this side of the blue ball Wink.
Your configuration is nice, but I think the dedicated graphics card draws more watts than an onboard variant.

After some little research I put myself between three choices, where some opinions of you all would be nice:

1) Intel Atom D525 with ION2 graphics (some kind of Zotac board)U

2) Intel Atom D2700 + IGP PowerVR SGX545

3) Intel Celeron SU2300 + ION (first generation)
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The necessary tasks it should do is watching FullHD content, some Linux cronjobs and music playback as well.

All opinions are welcome... Smile.
Thanks.
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#5
I just recently got a Foxconn R20-A1 (AMD e350) box. There are still some rough edges on XBMC's support for the E-350, but Eden Beta3 XBMCbuntu handled it without any special steps at all. The rough edges were around switching to the linux desktop by logging out of XBMC session -- it lost the audio device every time when doing that. XBMC handled 1080p with VAAPI acceleration straight out of the box.

My box pulls 26 watts max with a SSD. Fans aren't the quietest, and Flash in linux browsers still sucks (I'd love to be able to watch Crunchyroll and similar, but no dice). My machine is definitely cheaper than any ION type machine I could have gotten ($110 for barebones + RAM when it was on sale).
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#6
(2012-03-13, 22:27)pfennig Wrote: I just recently got a Foxconn R20-A1 (AMD e350) box. There are still some rough edges on XBMC's support for the E-350, but Eden Beta3 XBMCbuntu handled it without any special steps at all. The rough edges were around switching to the linux desktop by logging out of XBMC session -- it lost the audio device every time when doing that. XBMC handled 1080p with VAAPI acceleration straight out of the box.

My box pulls 26 watts max with a SSD. Fans aren't the quietest, and Flash in linux browsers still sucks (I'd love to be able to watch Crunchyroll and similar, but no dice). My machine is definitely cheaper than any ION type machine I could have gotten ($110 for barebones + RAM when it was on sale).

I priced it out today and that barebones kit, a pair of 1TB refurb WD green drives (for RAID1), 2GB RAM, and an 8GB USB flash drive = $325. Very reasonable price for a 1TB fileserver and 1080p capable HTPC. I'm purchasing it now and will gauge whether I need to replace the fans with something quieter when it get setup at the house. It's replacing a 10 yr old mid-tower ATX first gen Intel P4 with 4 old UltraATA drives totalling a capacity of 120GB, so noise and power will be significantly reduced while increasing my storage capacity by shy of 10x! Smile
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#7
Hello guys,

I just ran into the wikipedia page http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA of the intel graphics chipset PowerVR SGX545 and it handles 1080p very well but does not have the hardware acceleration for H.264 and MPEG2, do you think that it will run well with xbmc ?

Thank you
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#8
(2012-03-10, 18:11)bruce.wayne Wrote: 1) Intel Atom D525 with ION2 graphics (some kind of Zotac board)U

2) Intel Atom D2700 + IGP PowerVR SGX545

3) Intel Celeron SU2300 + ION (first generation)

Hi, i am searching a configuration for an htcp very similar to yours. especially, the hardware must be as much as possible linux compatible. can you tell me about your project?
i prefer intel cpu (atom or celeron) but i need some advice for mobo and graphics. zotac has very good hardware but is expensive..
Thanks
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#9
#2 is being discussed in this thread: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=124955
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#10
Power consumption of my HTPC:

win7 idle: 20 W
win7 fullscreen divx: 22 - 23 W
win7 fullscreen x264 1080p: 23-24 W
win7 fullscreen Blu Ray disc: 27 W
win7 DVD burning: 24 - 28 W
win7 BD burning: haven't tried yet

the highest number on the measuring device was around 52 W while executing that windows experience test when testing aero/graphics performance

My build:
CASE: Akasa ITX-03 with 60W pico PSU
APU: Intel i3 2120T
MB: ASRock B75M-ITX
RAM: 2x2 GB HyperX Blu 1666 MHz with XMP support
SSD: SanDisk Extreme3 120 GB (SATA 3)
HDD: none - all media streamed over network from NAS using cable
BD: Sony BD-5850H (slot load slimline)

It was under £400 and it's used only for media playback and internet browsing, no games, that's why I went for the 35 W TDP processor
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