What is the coolest and lowest power CPU u can buy??

What is the coolest and lowest power CPU u can buy for a HTPC ?? and wot is the lowest power and coolest motherboard u can buy (mini ATX)

A burnt up CPU
The highest performance / power consumption goes to Core2 CPUs, and for the same core; the lower the frequency, the smaller power consumption. Also cache affects it, but usually, very low power consumption gives performance penalty.

I'm in full agreement. I did a little bit of research at one point, when i was considering a compact HTPC.

If you're hoping for HD and potentially a bit of gaming as well then i would suggest a Core2Duo and a graphics card with HDMI connectors (if only for simplicity).

If however you want the quiet, low power and extremely compact then have a browse round mini-itx.com/store. They have some interesting articles and projects listed on their website mini-itx.com, it's worth looking at for ideas.

A little too much of a trade-off in power with VIA though. Their cpu's are about as powerful as a PII.

This is not true!
Core2 Duo Low Voltage L7400 1.5GHz/4MB L2/FSB 667MHz/15W TDP/0.9W deep sleep TDP
What is offering VIA is just pathetic compared to C2D. L7400 is at least 3 times faster than the best C7 for any singlethreaded software and at least 6 times faster for any multithreaded software. The TDP of C7 1.5GHz/1.8GHz/2.0GHz is 12W/15W/20W. In the worst case, the L7400 has at least 3 times better performance/watt factor than the best C7.
There is no better performance/watt CPU than C2D LV7400.

I would get a 2MB allendale (e4300) and underclock it to something like 1Ghz @ 0.9v. It should beat the VIA by a large margin in terms of performance.

A little too much of a trade-off in power with VIA though. Their cpu's are about as powerful as a PII.

While i agree that the performance of the VIA platform isn´t quite what it could be, the OP asked for the lowest possible power consumption and heat generation and i guess VIA is as good as it gets for the ordinary consumer.

I can't wait to see how low the power consumption of the LV and mobile chips will go once the industry is working with high-K and metallic gates in about a year's time. For now, I'm using an old laptop for my HTPC (Centrino 1.3 GHz). It works just fine, but it's a little slow with the games and storage is limited to external drives/media server. I can hold out for another year or so on the current setup, but I've been eying the mini-itx store and VIA processors. Learning about these Low-Voltage Meroms is fantastic, since they'll come with considerably more power for video editing/gaming. Maybe in a year's time they'll be down to 10W.

So we've seen some data on the VIA and Intel low-power CPUs, but what about AMD? Do they have a low-voltage version of the Turion out there? I thought AMD was getting into embedded processors, but maybe I have low-power and embedded confused in my mind. What about other manufacturers?

Looking at the long-term prospects, power costs money, so how long will it be before the lower power X2 3800+ reaches the break-even point? If we go with a typical $.10 per kWHr, the X2 3800+ consumes 37W less at idle and 48W less at full load. If that seems like a lot of power initially, it actually only works out to $32-$42 per year, running both systems 24/7. That means you're looking at a minimum of four years to reach equivalence in price+power. What about the 920 versus 805 power costs? The difference there is even less in terms of power use, so even at full load you're looking at $16 per year, or seven years to reach the break-even point.

Really sweet, but pricey ...
Will take everything from a 8-watt single core Athlon to 125-watt Phenom (not real sure I'd want to go there - ) - a downclocked Athlon X2 4850e is probably the sweet spot ...

J&W Minix 780G-SP128MB MINI-ITX AM2+ 780G: $171
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JetWay JNC62K AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Mini ITX: $169
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Yup. Back from the dead

What are the experiences on the graphics side?
Reading through the various forums (mythtv.org and linuxtv.org) nvidia (VPAU) seems to be the best option for hd video stream replay ( blu ray).

Would like to find a low power board with nvidia graphics , hdmi/vdi out + digital audio out.
Support for PCI riser card for 2 PCI slots for DVB-S tuners, sata for hard disk and sata/ide for blu ray player.

Any suggestions?

A C7 in combination with an nvidia would be great, but I have not come across a vendor making something like this.