Eco friendly builds

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mrapoc

New member
Alright
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I'm looking to primarily provide eco friendly, efficient pcs as times are hard and people (not overclock3d-ers!) are trying to save money on bills and protect the environment

I don't want to sacrifice any performance whilst doing so. Got any ideas for specs?

I'm thinking low power, low heat, quiet/silent and as a potential bonus maybe (as an option) made from recycled material (the case?)

Think this is what is going to take off especially if I can get them at a low price
 
Sounds interesting. I think one of the biggest savings will be from the PSU you use. Normally a PSU, even Gold rated, doesn't hit its peak efficiency until it hits at least 20% load. So you need to closely match the power draw of the system to the size of the PSU. You'll probably want to run the system drawing over 20% load from the PSU at all times.

The lowest gold rated PSU I can find is a 350W unit from bequiet , but even this unit doesn't hit 90% efficiency until its at 20% load - 70W. I'm sure you can build a system which draws a fraction of that, in which case a Bronze rated lower wattage PSU might be better.

This is quite an interesting read.
 
Don't see why not. Slap the green/eco logo about and you'll attrach a crowd.

I'd investigate AMD's cpu line up. I know they don't slap Intel about, but imo they have very capable models, and the bunch they're about to bring out are meant to be more attractive in that sense.

Recylced material cases.... they'd have to be good, but I'd see them as not all that cheap. Some very stylish £15 cases out there, that the non-enthusiast would lap up. How to beat those sort of prices for a case ?
 
I think if you can pull this off it'd make for a very interesting build. I can def see there being a niche for relatively high performance "greener/efficient" computing. There's def a market for it as we know with western digital's green series hard drives for example. Look forward to hearing what you come up with
 
The recycled case thing was more of a gimmick I suppose or a dream ahha!

Interesting about the efficiency being best at 20% onwards. I'm thinking at the moment, a nice micro-atx setup, as rast suggested one of the AMD range and probably 4gb of RAM. For a basic spec like that i'd probably be looking at 320w max
 
wait for the new i3 IB cpus and getr a S or T version + when needed a gtx 550 ti + this gold be quiet psu + an cheap ssd maybe from mushkin.+ 1 4GB low voltage ram dimm

casewise Have you got some LEGO ™ stuff ? there are some casecons with that like this one
 
mrapoc said:
Alright
smile.png


I'm looking to primarily provide eco friendly, efficient pcs as times are hard and people (not overclock3d-ers!) are trying to save money on bills and protect the environment

I don't want to sacrifice any performance whilst doing so. Got any ideas for specs?

I'm thinking low power, low heat, quiet/silent and as a potential bonus maybe (as an option) made from recycled material (the case?)

Think this is what is going to take off especially if I can get them at a low price
Click to expand...

what's is this going to be use for i.e gaming, htpc, or internet/word processing?

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]CFI A8989 Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black +p&p £36.71 http://linitx.com/product/12434

MSI E350IS-E45 M1 with E350 Processor SATA6 VGA HDMI mITX Motherboard £74.99

http://www.ebuyer.com/345309-msi-e350is-e45-m1-with-e350-processor-sata6-vga-hdmi-mitx-motherboard-e350is-e45

　

Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1066Mhz Memory Kit CL7 1.5V Unbuffered Non-EC £45.90

http://www.ebuyer.com/248528-kingston-8gb-2x4gb-ddr3-1066mhz-memory-kit-cl7-1-5v-unbuffered-non-ecc-kvr1066d3n7k2-8g

　

WD 500GB Caviar Green SATA-III 3.5" Hard Drive £55.00

http://www.ebuyer.com/341377-wd-500gb-caviar-green-sata-iii-3-5-hard-drive-wd5000azrx

　

Samsung SH-B123L SATA Blu-Ray Optical Drive | Retail £49.98

http://www.ebuyer.com/240172-samsung-sh-b123l-sata-blu-ray-optical-drive-retail-sh-b123l-rsbp

　

Xenta LP4 Molex MALE to 2x Serial ATA SATA Power Adapter £1.59

http://www.ebuyer.com/261502-xenta-lp4-molex-male-to-2x-serial-ata-sata-power-adapter-connects-4pm15pfsata[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Total £264.17[/font]​

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Peak power use 100 watts[/font]​

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]or[/font]​

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Acer Revo RL70 Nettop PC[/font]​

 
I'm thinking about selling them to the average joe market in the local town to compete with the everyday rip off stores. Only as a hobby really.

Mainly internet, office based work - gaming can come as an additional extra
 
E-350: 18w TDP & DX11 onboard 6310. Some are silent and other have small (60mm?) fans.

Using one to type this and it does every sort of end-user type task you can imagine.
 
Wow, those nettops do look the business I must admit! That kinda spec doesn't feel like a netbook then? I think netbooks in general are too slow for everyday use
 
Check out these cardboard computer cases. http://recomputepc.com/ great for eco friendly build. They are a bit expensive, but you can definatly use this as an idea to create your own.

Frys has one for $99.00

Model Name:​

Frys A8​

CPU: AMD A8 Quad core @ 2.9 GHz​

Memory: 8GB DDR3 1333 MHz​

Hard Drive: 1TB SATA 2​

Video: ATI Radeon 6650 Hybrid GPU​

OS: Windows 7 Home 64Bit​

USB ports 8 Total​

Ports VGA, HDMI, 6 channel audio, RJ45 LAN, PS2​

Power Supply 400 Watt​

Warranty 1 year parts and labor​
 
mrapoc said:
Wow, those nettops do look the business I must admit! That kinda spec doesn't feel like a netbook then? I think netbooks in general are too slow for everyday use
Click to expand...

It's highly optimised for everyday use so performs like a much faster (Ghz) Intel solution.

Unless you're trying to play Crysis 2 grade games on it, anything else runs smoothly as any other system runs it.
 
mrapoc said:
Are they serviceable? Or just about as much as a laptop?
Click to expand...

It's as serviceable as a normal desktop board except I don't think the CPU is removable (never taken the HSF off) - but that won't matter as there's no other CPU to upgrade to any better than the E-350 anyway (think there may be an E-450 that's 1.65Ghz instead of 1.60Ghz, but you can easily OC to those speeds). Uses desktop memory up to 1333Mhz (2x4GB max). CPU power is quite obviously 4pin.
 
The e350/e450 boards are pretty decent I have a itx e350 gigabyte only 4gb or ram installed all running of a 60 watt picto wise..I have it running linux I use it as a day to day pc and even gaming to a limit most upto date game I got running was diablo 3 on low to medium settings..but games like fallout 3 run really well.

I also ran some emu such as n64 and on a few games I was gettting full speed.

for a low power system pretty decent.

heres a thought would it be possible to run a e350 board and a ssd of a decent solar panel??
 
I was pricing something like this up the other week to use as a little allways on media server to my tv to watch stuff in bed without f@h lagging everything up and making me stop folding just to watch some youtube stuff (and then inevitably falling asleep without restarting it which happens 90% of the time)

I have it all in a bookmarks folder somewhere but im pretty sure i got a pretty reasonable system priced out that was more than good enough for every day use and to play light games like the sims/track mania/free to play shooters for around the £125-150 mark or a little more with a low powered GPU

Ill dig it out and post it up when i get in in a few hours when i get in.
 
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