CPU/Mobo I have brought my old r3 2200g to life, i think its worth it at 2025 still!

CasualGamer91

Explorer
I have brought my old r3 2200g to life, i think its worth it just because how power efficient it is and how the electricity cost is rising so much for the past few years...

All my test is directly measured from wall socket with wattage meter.

My main pc at 60 watts and above when idle, this is when monitor is idle/powered off. With monitor on, it eat 15-20watt more. Average browser workload and video playback sits around 90w, hovering between 80-110w. Peaks at 135watts.

Main pc specs:
B550m, 32gb 2x16gb 3200mhz@1.35v, r5 5600, rtx 3060 12gb, 1tb wd sn770 gen4 ssd, 80plus gold 850watt full modular psu. (Curve Optimizer All core -30)

Today i recieved a cheap 400 watt power supply which i have ordered a few days back, (it has no 80 plus rating, just have the basic safety features). Quickly dusted off my old a320 motherboard and old ddr4 rams.. put back the cpu on board with nice amount of thermal paste, and lastly a 256gb sata SSD which i had also laying around. Here is the overall specs of this system,

R3 2200g pc:
A320m, 16gb 2x8gb 2400mhz @1.2v, r3 2200g w/ vega8 igpu, 256gb sata siliconpower, cheap yellow red wire 400watt psu. (Offset voltage -0.1125, this mobo dont have PBO/CO)

Turned it on and boom what a surprise, the cheap psu didn't just blow up! Everything works, and the pc idles at , 35 watt with monitor off/idle, peaks at 105watts, and average workload at 60-75watt .

4k 60fps video on yt eats up 70-80watts on my main pc with dgpu,

4k 60fps video on yt eats up 40-50 watts on igpu r3 2200g...

I believe a better and efficient psu could also bring down the watts. But it is amazing what this little machine can do.

Both machine runs windows 10 iot LTSC 21H2.

Now i am thinking to put linux and do more tuning on this r3 machine and use it as home server to do simple things such as firewall, nextcloud and maybe also plex?
 

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I have brought my old r3 2200g to life, i think its worth it just because how power efficient it is and how the electricity cost is rising so much for the past few years...

All my test is directly measured from wall socket with wattage meter.

My main pc at 60 watts and above when idle, this is when monitor is idle/powered off. With monitor on, it eat 15-20watt more. Average browser workload and video playback sits around 90w, hovering between 80-110w. Peaks at 135watts.

Main pc specs:
B550m, 32gb 2x16gb 3200mhz@1.35v, r5 5600, rtx 3060 12gb, 1tb wd sn770 gen4 ssd, 80plus gold 850watt full modular psu. (Curve Optimizer All core -30)

Today i recieved a cheap 400 watt power supply which i have ordered a few days back, (it has no 80 plus rating, just have the basic safety features). Quickly dusted off my old a320 motherboard and old ddr4 rams.. put back the cpu on board with nice amount of thermal paste, and lastly a 256gb sata SSD which i had also laying around. Here is the overall specs of this system,

R3 2200g pc:
A320m, 16gb 2x8gb 2400mhz @1.2v, r3 2200g w/ vega8 igpu, 256gb sata siliconpower, cheap yellow red wire 400watt psu. (Offset voltage -0.1125, this mobo dont have PBO/CO)

Turned it on and boom what a surprise, the cheap psu didn't just blow up! Everything works, and the pc idles at , 35 watt with monitor off/idle, peaks at 105watts, and average workload at 60-75watt .

4k 60fps video on yt eats up 70-80watts on my main pc with dgpu,

4k 60fps video on yt eats up 40-50 watts on igpu r3 2200g...

I believe a better and efficient psu could also bring down the watts. But it is amazing what this little machine can do.

Both machine runs windows 10 iot LTSC 21H2.

Now i am thinking to put linux and do more tuning on this r3 machine and use it as home server to do simple things such as firewall, nextcloud and maybe also plex?
Congratulations , Turn it into a homelab of sorts or a NAS maybe . It is amazing how much we can do with old hardware even in 2025
 
Congratulations , Turn it into a homelab of sorts or a NAS maybe . It is amazing how much we can do with old hardware even in 2025
Im thinking to do it... I dont have a case rn, and im looking for a good case which has well organised few hdd, ssd slots ...

Good news, lowest I can achieve with ant esports vs400l psu, is 28 watt, and 5-10 watt goes to monitor from this. So system idles at 18-23watt without monitor, with only 1 sata SSD. Do you think linux can achieve more efficiency? I am using win10 iot ltsc..

1000053072.jpg

My main pc is eating energy like crazy with just youtube video playback.. 1080p, also downloading 60gb file in background at 20MBps. 80-90 watts.. apparently rtx 3060 is casually eating 15-20 watt at lower to no workload.. 5600 idling at 20-25watt.. and rest goes to psu efficiency which is terrible at lower loads, im using a silverstone da850 80plus gold. 850 watt psu at 20% load is around 160 watts, and below 20%, gold 80plus psu's efficiency is terrible..

1000053118.jpg



While the Old pc chew threw 4k@60fps video, background 60gb file download @ 45-55 watts
 
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