Acceptable performance, less heat

D

dirtboy

n00b
Joined
Aug 26, 2004
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9
Here's the situation. I have an Athlon 1700 running as a Linux server hosting websites and such, and I have an AMD 2100 running as my main machine. In my main machine I have some PVR software that dumps some television shows directly to my harddrive, so it must stay on all the time. My Linux server has its hosting duties, so it stays on all the time. Both of these machines are in the same room and it gets blisteringly hot, so much so that here in the summer my power bills are sky high because my A/C has to run constantly.

I know I don't need the horsepower these machines have in order to do what they do, so I am going to build two new machines, a linux server and a windows server. That will let me turn on my main machine when I use it and turn it off when I am done. My question is what hardware produces the least amount of heat and draws the least amount of power to get this done? I thnk I will have to stay away from AMD for always on machines, but I am not sure. Does a Celeron produce less heat? Any other suggestions?
 
well right now I have a similar setup just not in Linux. I have the always on PVR type system you do and a gaming machine. funny thing even with encoding and recording at teh same time my PVR system stays cooler thanks teo WC and a large case then my new SFF system. BTW both my systems are Intel based heat makers. Only thing a Celeron will do is give you no cache which I do not htink would make a difference in your heat issues. I would suggest that if you have the room in the PVR system slap in water and/or some fans to move more air in and out of the case as well.
 
Does your PVR machine unload a lot of heat into the air? That's the problem I am having. Having both computers on in the same room is just like running 10 hairdryers all at once for the same amount of time. I don't even want to go in there and play games because the room is so uncomfortable. I've tried putting a fan in the doorway, but that just moves the heat into the living room where the rest of the family can suffer.

I'm not having performance related issues with heat. I just want to make a computer capable of performing some basic tasks without turning my computer room into a sauna. I don't want to decrease the heat in the case, I want to decrease the heat in the room (the amount of heat coming out of the case). What components run cool? I already know that I will not get an NVidia or ATI card, I would probably just use onboard video with an addon capture card. I think I am leaning more towards Intel instead of AMD processors, but I can't seem to find any data on heat output comparisons for the two.
 
well My PVR system only has WC on the proc and I do use a Hauppague card for all my recording. I thikn under load it gets a little warm but nothing like you are talkign about. I have not had any issues with the heat pushing me out of the room and I do not have the luxury of AC like you have :( At this point I think my worst temp I have reach is around 105F (Sorry stoopid american only knows Feirenhit scale :( ) in middle of summer while recording and playing games at the sametime.
 
yea that would help too. Then again I do not turn off my monitors. Actually when you are running your PVR there dirtboy do you have the timeshift enabled or are you doing just straight recording?? IF you do turn that crappy feature off its rather useless.
 
Just recording. Its not even hooked up to a TV. I use it to dump shows to MPEG2 for burning to cd or viewing on other computers. I'm thinking of getting a SFF barebones system and putting a baseline Celeron in it with all the power save modes on. Eventually I will use it for output to the TV, but that can wait.
 
if you have a fully featured motherboard you can downclock it a little and lower the voltage. It'll give you a LOT less heat output. I'd consider a mobile barton just because the operating voltage is so low.. a 35w 2400+ might just do the trick. Personally i think that is your best route. Turn off your monitors, too.
 
you can, but it won't recognize the processor. It works just fine, though.
 
dotZIP said:
you can, but it won't recognize the processor. It works just fine, though.
Click to expand...

if it won't recognize the processor, then how does it work fine? Or do you mean you'll need to set all values manually in the bios? Or could it mean you'll need to modify the tiny little bridges on the cpu?

I simply underclocked my CPU and downed the voltage going to it. I have a single fan in my custom mini atx case (low profile case). I was only able to put a 1u heatsink on the processor and the fan had to run nasty loud to keep it cool. Once underclocked to about 70% of its original speed, i was able to slow the fan down to where i couldn't hear it anymore, and temps were still reasonable.

if you really want to spend your money, you could get one of the VIA chips... last I looked (and it was quite awhile ago) they had a 1ghz processor that could run passively (no heatsink at all) I believe it was socket a too, so you should be able to simply throw it in your current motherboard.
 
I'll probably go with an Asus Pundit or the cheapest Shuttle case I can find, just so it passes the "cute" test with my wife and can be allowed in the den. That leads to a good question. After underclocking by 70%, how well did it perform? What was your final clock speed?
 
I started out with an athlon 1800xp, and underclocked completly by lowering the FSB. Default fsb was 133, and multipler 11.5 so originally it was set to 1533 mhz. I lowered to about 95 fsb, making the to total speed of about 1100. Droping the speed allowed me to lower the voltage to it.. i can't remember what it was, but it was 2 or 3 notches lower than default. The motherboard I have allows for sep timing of the ram and PCI bus, so I left them at their normal speeds.

The machine still performs very repsonivly, and works great for showing divx, xvid, dvds, recording tv shows, listening to mp3's and my wife's favorite showing all of our digital pics on the tv.
 
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