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"Green" performance build?

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bujumbura   10-03-2008 at 04:35:16 AM

Hi guys
I was wondering if you can recommend some performance "green" parts. I was going to build a new computer but after I decided on the parts I realized that the video card alone was going to draw more than 350 watts under load. Do you think that you can put a computer that would be very fast while still being economic?
Any advice would be highly appreciated.


Message edited by bujumbura on 10-03-2008 at 04:35:49 AM
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gators1223   10-03-2008 at 04:42:35 AM
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what is your budget what do you plan to do with it, anything you have, etc

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bujumbura   10-03-2008 at 04:47:38 AM
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Budget is 2-3000, some gaming, video and photo editing. Nothing really hardcore. I'm basically trying to get some opinions on what a power saving build would be mainly because this computer will stay on 24/7.
Thanks

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dirtmountain   10-03-2008 at 06:11:40 AM
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The graphic card will only pull that much wattage at load. Not trying to sound like a smart ass, but why can't you turn it off when you're not using it ?

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bujumbura   10-03-2008 at 03:06:05 PM
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It will probably be doing some download at night. Even at idle a high end gpu draws over 100 watts; add a quad core to the mix and a good mobo 3-4 harddrives and 4-8 gb of ram and I think you'll be getting some high wattage out of the wall.
Maybe a solution would be to build a high end computer and use it only when gaming or when editing and turn it off the rest of the time. I have 2 other older computers so maybe using those for all the rest of the not so demanding activities would be the way to go.
But it would be such ashame to have such a nice build and not use it all the time...

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malveaux   10-03-2008 at 05:39:24 PM
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Heya,

If you can afford $2,000 to $3,000 to dump into a `performance' rig and you want it to be `green' then there's a few things we should talk about.

1 - Spend $1,500 on the actual gaming/editing performance rig.
2 - Spend the rest of that money on a low power laptop, USB external drive and either a wireless router or a wired router.

You can build insanely good performance rigs for very cheap these days. Quadcore, latest gen GPU, RAID0 or Raptors, 4+gigs of ram, etc, for well under $1500. So go ahead and do that. And turn it off when you're done.

The Laptop will pull very little power. You can find them with extremely low wattage, like 15w sometimes. You can use this as your download slave. A unit with a built in head (monitor/lcd) that you can use. When you need additional space, you add USB external drives. They're huge, cheap, and draw little power and you can move them around and store themselves, since you don't have to get messy and plug things in the guts of your computer. This laptop can also serve as a lot of things, like an mp3/video server or whatever you wish. Keep the media here and anyone can get to it without having to slow down your gaming/editing rig to play music while you do whatever you please.

Use a wireless router or wired router to connect it all. Your gaming rig powers off at night. Your laptop can stay on 24/7 and it won't eat tons of energy to stay on and do it's business.

Very best,

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emp   10-03-2008 at 05:46:40 PM
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+1 to the above post, I would get one of the newer extremely low power consuming laptops for your overnight tasks and get a gaming rig if you're concerned about being green.

Here's the kind of thing that you want:

Acer Aspire one AOA150-1029 Netbook Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) 8.9" Wide SVGA 1GB Memory DDR2 533 120GB HDD Intel GMA950 - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834115509

Dump the rest on a great gaming rig with a Q9550, HD 4870 X2, and 4GB of ram.

------------------------------ Anxiously awaiting the Hydra 100 and the Hydra Engine...
www.lucidlogix.com
 Reply to emp
bujumbura   10-03-2008 at 05:55:59 PM
- 0 +

Thanks for your input. I was thinking about doing something like what you were suggesting. The only thing that kinda bugs me is the fact that I'm getting ready to pour all this money in a new system and than I'll still have to keep another computer on. Right now I have 2 desktops running and a laptop so I was kinda hoping to use the new build the whole time.

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