PC Peripherals Multiple queries : Wireless Networking / reducing power consumption

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<s>Yes he should ditch the peasantry 6950 and use the mighty iGpu 4000 HD or whatever that comes with the i5 for gaming </s>
Are there any AM2+, AM3 boards which allow for shared graphics so for desktop work only onboard will be used and the main GPU kicks in only for games?
 
Even at idle his gpu take around 150w it seems. If he has to buy a new mobo with onboard graphics, he still has to attach the gpu to it. No reduction in power savings for him in that case. The only way to save power is switch off his current comp and get a low power rig like atom looking at his media needs. He can get power savings by spending just around 6-7k for kvm switch plus atom board plus extra ram for atom. Even if he manages to save 300 a month on electric bills his payback would be in 2+ years in this case. Not worth it imo.

@TS what kind of bills do you get and how much power do you want to save?
 
Power bills are around Rs.400/month. In my room where I have a desktop other devices are a fan and tube-light, a router and a HP laptop always running on AC power without battery.

Edit: For two months, November and December I was at home for all days as college had holidays, my bills had went up to Rs.470. Following is graph of my power consumption pattern, from MSEB, when I am in Mumbai, have holidays and using the rig and when I am not in town. This graph plots units consumed in bill month. Like for consumption of May, bill is generated in June. If observed the graph, in the month of May and June consumption have reduced by ~45 units. During same period I was not in town due to my summer internship. Similarly for bill month March, i.e. usage of February change is of ~30 units as I was occupied in exams and could not use PC much.

Electricity Usage.png


Also one more point, till now I was using HP laptop for downloading however it will not be available with me after July as my brother will be taking it along with him to US, hence this 'download facility' will be no more :(

Yesterday I met @vivek.krishnan and have got Gigabyte GA1037UN from him for checking out how it performs.

If this Gigabyte thing is working great, I am considering to sell off my current rig except RAM, HDD/SSD and cabinet - may be (I m having that itch of making some custom case like @rakesh_sharma23 ). For gaming I was thinking to get a used PS3 and subscribe to PSN.

It is still lots of ifs and buts :p
 
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Update:
After checking out performance of GA1037UN, I am pretty satisfied with it.

This is what I am thinking right now, from my current system selling off Processor, Cooler, Motherboard, SMPS and Graphic Card. This I would generate cash north to 20k. :greedy:. I would then need to spend 5k on this board and approx 2k for pico PSU. So I am left with approx 13k from which I am thinking to get PS3 12GB version and put my 500GB HDD in PS3, which I have pulled out of my HP laptop in order to put SSD in to it and currently using as 2.5" external with a casing.

My next queries will be on PS3, heading gaming consoles section.

Apart from that as suggested by @vivek.krishnan If I do not change current system and mine bit-coins in background to utilize power consumption properly. Views on it are most welcome.
 
Full credits to you buddy. Now let see when and how soon, I can sell off my Graphic Card, Proccy + Mobo and SMPS. May be in mean time I will do a mini-review sort of.

Itch of building a custom case is increasing now :P
 
Try under-volting / under-clocking your processor. You can also try to under-clock your GPU if it does not do that automatically, or force it to run under-clocked (for light loads like movie, 2D games etc ...) using MSI Afterburner or RivaTuner or AMD Overdrive.
 
Update:

Now there is change in scenario which have resulted in postponing this whole thing. There will be no one to use PC after August as me and both my brother are travelling out of home, I will be returning only in next month of it.
 
As far as I know all components have various power states which are used as per the task carried out by the system. The processor must be having low power states. You can even adjust them in power and management option if you are using windows 7. If the your GFX card idles out at 190 watts then its a problem, get a low power gfx card ... I think a 8400gs will do your job. Also I think your mobo has got various power saving features like epu and fanxpert ...you can use them first before going for any new peripherial and check you result.
 
Crazy_Eddy said:
Well the only low powered device capable of doing all the above would be a laptop. Or you could just downgrade your components - low power Intel dual core, low TDP GPU - and save power on the Desktop itself.

The only way to measure power consumption reliably is connecting a kill-a-watt. Some APC UPSs with PC interfaces can display the rough power consumption too. Your GPU might show realtime power consumption via apps like GPU-z.
Click to expand...

The point regarding "Some APC UPSs with PC interfaces can display the rough power consumption too." sounds interesting to me. Can you shed some light or suggest similar APC UPSS models to choose from as I'm buying one so may go for one of these.
 
^ APC Smart UPS. The powerchute software displays power consumption.
Some of the lower end Back-UPS models too have a USB interface and support powerchute. The BE700 appears to be the cheapest model with a USB interface.
 
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For this purpose I have a separate PC.
Gigabyte E350N-Win8(AMD APU Dual Core 1.6 GHz), 4 GB RAM and 1 TB HDD with a iBall Nettop Cabinet.The entire cost for this rig was around 12 K.I have a old Intel D425KT which is around 2 years old and I upgraded to E350N to play HD content on my tv as this PC double as a download rig/HTPC.The Intel Mobo stuttered with Youtube HD content but the AMD APU plays HD content without a hiccup.
Max power usage should be around 60 W and 42 W idle.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2680&page=12
 
Bumping this old thread, I am in completely different situation today then when I started this thread few months back. As of now my SSD and PSU have been damaged. Warranty claim for PSU is not looking promising. Hence if bought new SSD and PSU I will incur cost of 12K approx. However now again, I am evaluating option of getting a screen damaged laptop along with a PS3; after selling my CPU, Mobo, RAM, GPU and cabinet.

In the hunt, I have found out a Macbook Air 2011 model. It has cracked display which is no problem for me as I will connect it to my Dell ST2220L. I won't be detaching display of MBA; instead would keep my monitor little higher with support of some base to raise it's height. It has specs as next; i5-2557M 1.7GHz (2.8GHz Turbo), 4GB RAM and 120GB SSD. Used for a year and half approx with battery count 231 (mostly should not matter) and at 91% it says 5 hours 50 mins remaining. As earlier, I was using this PC for browsing internet via Chrome, iTunes/Windows Media Player for songs, VLC for movies and little bit of MS office type work. I need inputs over how much should I pay for this one ?

I will need to buy couple of cables such as Display port to HDMI/DVI. Also since this will not be having a LAN port which I will need for my one of the connection; I m thinking of getting a USB to LAN adapter or a cheap router like my current one - TP-Link 741. (USB ports are very important - quantit-wise on MBAs). I would also need a good casing for my current WD 2TB Red.

Do provides your comments over this alternative with aspects such as how viable/workable this is, challenges I may face.
 
Looks like you've had quite a bit of bad luck. It's still hard to believe that Seasonic is not replacing your PSU. I was also planning to go for a Seasonic PSU but it seems that the department responsible for their RMA just doesn't care about the customers so hell with Seasonic.

Coming back to your question, you can compare the price being offered for a similarly priced brand new PC/Laptop. The MBA you are getting has a used SSD and a somewhat weak processor so choose accordingly (compare the benches of MBA's config with similarly priced new lappy/pc on CPUBOSS/CPUWORLD to get an idea of the performance). Also, laptops age a lot as compared with PCs and you will even need to check if it was manhandled or not.

Getting a WiFi router seems like a better idea WR-841N should be the best deal available currently.

External hard disk cases have gone out of fashion and getting a dependable HDD case will be even more difficult. You can get a hard drive dock from Vantec or Transcend Storejet 35U3 (this is a really really old model so please check if it supports 2TB devices) or Seagate GoFlex Desktop Adapter USB 3.0. All of these will cost you >2K.

Wait for reply from others to get an idea about MacBookAir (MBA) and it's life span.
 
Thanks @aman.pitbull for a quick reply. I have inspected MBA once last week. Visually it did not have any issues on body. Also have found that person selling it is a good and well educated. Also I used to own a Macbook Air 2009 model from August 2012 till June 2014. They work really great. I sold it off for ₹22,000 as was not finding it of use anymore.

I need to buy MBA by Monday i.e. Tommo. Do provide inputs.

Coming to router, I am thinking of getting a most basic one with USB port. Right now I have a TP-Link 741N which I need to send for RMA as it can not be reset-ed. I am open to a router with two WAN ports if there is one in ₹2.5-3k range.
 
vyral_143 said:
Coming to router, I am thinking of getting a most basic one with USB port. Right now I have a TP-Link 741N which I need to send for RMA as it can not be reset-ed. I am open to a router with two WAN ports if there is one in ₹2.5-3k range.
Click to expand...

The cheapest dual WAN port router I know of is from TP Link - SOHO series. You should be able to get it for about 4-5K.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
The cheapest dual WAN port router I know of is from TP Link - SOHO series. You should be able to get it for about 4-5K.
Click to expand...

It will blow up my budget. It looks that should get one normal one with a USB port - if USB 3.0 possible, better. I can spend another 1.5-2k max for such router.
 
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