I am looking at building up a new media center PC. My current system has a 2.5GHZ 35W Intel CPU.

Newegg doesn't have anything affordable in that configuration. The do currently have a 51W option.

The new media center will likely not get much use and just serve as a secondary backup. But in the event it needs to become my primary it would get more use. My current PC is probably sleeping most of the time. Only time it is awake is while viewing or recording. And it probably is no recording all that often.

Assuming the new PC becomes my primary, is the additional power consumption of the 51W anything to worry about from an operating cost standpoint?

 

Yes......sixteen watts worth....ha ha. I know that I would not notice the difference.

 

I am looking at building up a new media center PC. My current system has a 2.5GHZ 35W Intel CPU.

Newegg doesn't have anything affordable in that configuration. The do currently have a 51W option.

The new media center will likely not get much use and just serve as a secondary backup. But in the event it needs to become my primary it would get more use. My current PC is probably sleeping most of the time. Only time it is awake is while viewing or recording. And it probably is no recording all that often.

Assuming the new PC becomes my primary, is the additional power consumption of the 51W anything to worry about from an operating cost standpoint?

Hi,

Mostly depends on if you intend to run on battery power or use the AC adapter.
If you run on battery power, then you have to compare the batteries. If the batteries are the same, then the 51 watt unit could run the battery down faster, roughly twice as fast unless it is not dong anything then it may last longer. if the battery of the 51w unit is twice as powerful as the 35w unit, then they will run about the same time on battery.
Also, the 51w unit will generate more heat.
Check your CPU power options in the software.

 

Hello,

The given powers are probably the TDP values.
TDP is the thermal Design Power, the power needed to calculate the heating properties.
The real power depends on the settings in the bios and the load of the PC.

Bertus

 

bertus makes an important, I think, point. Those numbers you quoted are thermal dissipation under maximum normal load with, I assume, oem heatsink fan combo.

I also sort of assume that both chips going to have the same oem heatsink fan combo. Which may or may not be true.

Are you shopping for factory box cpu+heatsink+fan or just naked cpu chip?
Are you going to put aftermarket heatsink on it or reuse something from previous build?

Since you are doing media pc, I assume smallest case, similar to business sff cases or even smaller. That sort of brings those refurbished sff pc you can buy for 150-250, get complete system and maybe add small ssd for OS. I think they now have i3 and maybe i5 intels, graphics usually suck since it is usually intel 2d/3d stuff, but then I don't really know how powerful you need your graphics to be. Could buy used/refurbished low profile gt730 or 740 from evga for 40-60 usd, will play movies like a champ and play older games ok.

 

bertus makes an important, I think, point. Those numbers you quoted are thermal dissipation under maximum normal load with, I assume, oem heatsink fan combo.

I also sort of assume that both chips going to have the same oem heatsink fan combo. Which may or may not be true.

Are you shopping for factory box cpu+heatsink+fan or just naked cpu chip?
Are you going to put aftermarket heatsink on it or reuse something from previous build?

Since you are doing media pc, I assume smallest case, similar to business sff cases or even smaller. That sort of brings those refurbished sff pc you can buy for 150-250, get complete system and maybe add small ssd for OS. I think they now have i3 and maybe i5 intels, graphics usually suck since it is usually intel 2d/3d stuff, but then I don't really know how powerful you need your graphics to be. Could buy used/refurbished low profile gt730 or 740 from evga for 40-60 usd, will play movies like a champ and play older games ok.

Naked PC And it is a tower because I want lots of hardrives. I need to shop at New egg because of a gift certificate btw.

 

Naked PC And it is a tower because I want lots of hardrives. I need to shop at New egg because of a gift certificate btw.

Newegg got a bunch of refurbished towers, third generation i5 with 8 gb of ram and win7-64 is 250: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883158994

 

Newegg got a bunch of refurbished towers, third generation i5 with 8 gb of ram and win7-64 is 250: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883158994

I already have the case, PSU and HD. And those refurbished systems aren't very expandable in my experience.

 

I already have the case, PSU and HD. And those refurbished systems aren't very expandable in my experience.

You are right.