New SageTV HTPC recommendations?

[jnmfox]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Can you point me towards a review or two? I don't mind a slightly higher cost if I can get more bang without a lot of extra heat and electricity costs. The server is on 24x7 so the difference between 35W (or 65W) and 95W would be substantial. The server does sit idle most of the time so hitting 95W at peak isn't a big deal if the idle power consumption is comparable to the i3.

Tom

My fav tech review website:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/t...2100-tested/21

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jnmfox

My fav tech review website:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/t...2100-tested/21

Thanks, that is a good review. The Sandy Bridge seems pretty amazing, 5W at rest for the i5, wow!

The price jumps by $50 between the i3 and the i5

The i3-2100T seems to be an underclocked i3-2100 and it costs more than the 2100, so I'm not sure that's worth it.

I have more thinking to do......

[jnmfox]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Thanks, that is a good review. The Sandy Bridge seems pretty amazing, 5W at rest for the i5, wow!

The price jumps by $50 between the i3 and the i5

The i3-2100T seems to be an underclocked i3-2100 and it costs more than the 2100, so I'm not sure that's worth it.

I have more thinking to do......

With the i5 you are getting 4 physical cores + Turbo with a small increase in load power. Figure-in you will be at load a shorter amount of time with the i5 the power difference is negligible.

But then again it's not my $...

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Can you point me towards a review or two? I don't mind a slightly higher cost if I can get more bang without a lot of extra heat and electricity costs. The server is on 24x7 so the difference between 35W (or 65W) and 95W would be substantial. The server does sit idle most of the time so hitting 95W at peak isn't a big deal if the idle power consumption is comparable to the i3.

Tom

Here is a good one I noted recently it is mainly a review of the new low power AMD E-350 but has a lot of good information on system power usage. A lot of the point is about how a low power cpu may use more energy over time if it runs at max usage and take forever to complete a task as opposed to a good processor completing the task quickly and returning to a low power idle state. Something like comskip maybe.

You can see the difference in idle between a lot of different cpus here. THe system draw on the i3, i5 and i7 are all very similar at idle. It is only when you stress it that the power draw really differs but the overall efficiently may still be better depending on how you work.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20401/5

[Wakecrash]

I just recently rebuilt my server using this MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128435 and a 6 core CPU in a dedicated server. I am glad i went this route. At one time I can be recording 3 OTA 3 STD def directv and one HD-pvr, while com skip is running on 4 files. It does not miss a beat.
I have a 2250 as well, setup did mess up but reinstalled driver and all is good.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

I just recently rebuilt my server using this MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128435 and a 6 core CPU in a dedicated server. I am glad i went this route. At one time I can be recording 3 OTA 3 STD def directv and one HD-pvr, while com skip is running on 4 files. It does not miss a beat.
I have a 2250 as well, setup did mess up but reinstalled driver and all is good.

I use this MB as well for my server. I have a RAID mirror (2x1TB) for the boot drive and a RAID5 (4x1.5TB) setup for a large data drive. Another 2TB for backups. Win7-64 with AMD X3 with core unlocked. All runs great! Very Stable.

1xHDHR plus 2xHD-PVRs, testing Colossus.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jnmfox

With the i5 you are getting 4 physical cores + Turbo with a small increase in load power. Figure-in you will be at load a shorter amount of time with the i5 the power difference is negligible.

But then again it's not my $...

You're probably right. I priced out the Motherboard, CPU and memory at Newegg and it's right at $325 with the i3. Adding an extra $50 won't kill me. I've already got an SSD, Win7, case, power supply, hard drives and capture cards....

[jnmfox]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

You're probably right. I priced out the Motherboard, CPU and memory at Newegg and it's right at $325 with the i3. Adding an extra $50 won't kill me. I've already got an SSD, Win7, case, power supply, hard drives and capture cards....

Which SSD do you have? I have a 80GB X-25, been fighting the urge to get a 2nd for my other PC.