Hacking Hardware Low energy use build using PC parts?

[Sono]

tl;dr: MiniPC bad, laptop broken, any tips to achieve lowest *idle* power use (and preferably lowest/zero noise as well) using standard, cheap, readily-available PC parts?

---

I've been looking since a few years (even before my fanless Celeron laptop has died) for a MiniPC of some sorts, which I could keep in my room on 24/7 with zero noise output in idle.

However, the prices on MiniPC are rising faster than my paycheck (which at the time of writing is 0), and even the more expensive ones are only coming with measily laptop-grade Celeron CPUs, so it seems like they will be out of the question for the foreseeable future.

Considering rising electricity prices, I *really* need it to be low-power. MiniPCs are so embedded, that power use should be reduced due to less components. Also with no expensive and power-hungry display to drive (along with things like keyboard controller, trackpad, and speakers to drive even while idle are missing), it should be even better in that regard than an actual laptop.
However, due to the beforementioned issues regarding the current MiniPC market, it's just simply out of the question.

The next best things are laptops, but all my currently remaining laptops are either too non-standard (Thinkpad EC fan control), tweaking fan curves breaks stuff (Apple SMC doesn't like fan speed being 0, it glitches out SATA disk access), has design defects (2011 15" GPU failure, mine uses a lot of Amps due to shorted GPU *and* VRAM), or has bad thermal design (Apple pls).
Tweaking the fan curves is also too dangerous (the only way to do it is to disable automatic mode, which means that if the CPU or the fan control crashes, you're at the mercy of emergency thermal shutdown), they are too loud even at idle, and in some cases fan control is completely broken (in case of Thinkpad, the fan only ramps up, never ramps down until a full shutdown), so laptops are also out of the question.

So, I had the brilliant idea to slightly compromise on the power use, and exchange it for the freedom of being able to use standard, cheap, moddable, and readily-available PC parts.
I have a gamer motherboard with an i5-2500 (quite decent), 16Gigs of RAM, and it supports underclocking and undervolting.

What I'm trying is to aggressively optimize for *idle* power consumption and (preferably) zero noise. If the CPU gets pegged at 100%, then I do expect cooling to come on, and I'm fine with that, but it should be idle at like 97% of the time, with spurious tasks popping up for like ~3seconds, not using more than like 3-5% CPU when it happens, so cooling shouldn't come on at all, or the very least it should stop after ~3-5mins.

Here is what I'm planning to do:
- Replace the powerful Radeon GPU with something lower-power, like an ancient VGA card with no 3D acceleration. I only need screen, no games to play.
- Uninstall almost everything from Windows, disable updates, and other useless things. The installed browser will only open local pages. Yes, sadly I need Windows :/
- I have a free worn-ish (81%) SSD, I will not be writing too much to it, so it will be fine.
- Replace the noisy fixed-speed PSU with a lower-wattage PSU with a huuuuuuge speed-controlled fan in it. It's practically silent even on max speed.
- Underclock and undervolt the CPU (i5-2500) from BIOS (too old for XTU, I think), but also cap max CPU frequency to 1.6GHz in Windows itself as well. While I want to aim for lowest power use, I still want a powerful enough CPU to handle the occasional work spikes.

Anything else I may have missed? Or any cheap mods I could do to reduce its power use and/or noise output even further?

Spoiler: Use case

I'm hitting hard limits to how much I can stretch my Raspberry Pi 3b.

I need to be able to run obscure x86 programs for Windows, using a lot of RAM and disk space, while also being able to connect a keyboard *and* mouse without browning out even the best charger + cable I can buy here.

Also all of my SDCards have started become corrupting, and considering the age of the SDCard in my Pi, and power browning out if I connect anything (including extra storage) via USB, I really can't use it anymore.

As for controlling the things I have been controlling with the Pi exclusively, I have moved some of them over to a Pico W, works great.

 

[Ryccardo]

Indeed, Mini and Quiet usually don't overlap that much - my MateStation S is for all intents and purposes silent 10 seconds after boot (and that's a 3-fan SFF class system, despite having a ridiculously small number of USB ports and no optical drive), which I can't say of the Thinkcentre 10AX Tiny it replaced and of the Dell 7010 USFF I use now...

Replace the powerful Radeon GPU with something lower-power, like an ancient VGA card with no 3D acceleration.

Your processor should have integrated graphics working just fine?
But if you really want that (in a more modern and presumably efficient design)... they do make them: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=M2_VGA , damn they're expensive!!
Might even get away with an all-RDP/VNC setup? (or even the dreaded management engine amt vpro if supported by all of cpu/chipset/firmware)

Nice passive heatsink might be a good choice, not sure if they make 95 W ones for reasonable prices though...

 

[FAST6191]

How complicated are these obscure programs? If you are lacking funds but having time and they are mostly I am guessing conversion tools for things then might be doable to play software reverse engineer.

That said there are some nice deals on old HP elitedesk things (8 gigs of RAM, SSD in there, i5 something or other. £80 + shipping) when I go looking as of typing this.

On keyboard and mouse. Normally I am not about wireless keyboards and mice but if rush while inserting is a problem have it be a problem while it boots.

Alternatively a machine like that could probably do a nice windows VM on a Linux host which solves many issues with pumping graphics over SSH (more modern non server Windows can do but nowhere near as painlessly as Linux efforts) and save having to worry about monitors for occasional debugging. Get some savestates going on there and yeah, unless it is a truly latency sensitive thing and can't wait for it to spin up (even a ping timeout on an unknown address to delay batch commands). Having a pi sit there as the interface and waking the PC up by LAN, speaking to it via whatever means you care to employ and then back to sleep mode also is a potential option in this.

On power usage. I can't say I don't enjoy a bit of optimisation but chain a UPS* to a timer and a solar panel and if wanting to avoid power from the wall/on your bill is the issue you might be able to instead grab some sunlight that would otherwise be warming your bricks (assuming you don't have some kind of even cheaper power at night) and dodge the bills that way.
*ones with bad batteries get chucked out all the time and usually only have a deep cycle battery in there you can buy off the shelf.

 

[Sono]

Indeed, Mini and Quiet usually don't overlap that much - my MateStation S is for all intents and purposes silent 10 seconds after boot (and that's a 3-fan SFF class system, despite having a ridiculously small number of USB ports and no optical drive), which I can't say of the Thinkcentre 10AX Tiny it replaced and of the Dell 7010 USFF I use now...



Your processor should have integrated graphics working just fine?
But if you really want that (in a more modern and presumably efficient design)... they do make them: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=M2_VGA , damn they're expensive!!
Might even get away with an all-RDP/VNC setup? (or even the dreaded management engine amt vpro if supported by all of cpu/chipset/firmware)

Nice passive heatsink might be a good choice, not sure if they make 95 W ones for reasonable prices though...

Integrated graphics has never worked for me (there is a VGA and HDMI connector, the HDMI one works during boot, but the VGA doesn't at all, and I don't have a HDMI monitor anyway).

I can actually use RDP, but the motherboard refuses to boot without a valid video out, so sadly I need something in there to boot.

I have completely forgot about the heatsink, nice one! Currently it has a shitty stock cooler, but I should have a heatsink like 3x the size somewhere in the house, I just need to find it... I hope it's compatible

It should *never* reach 95W, as I will be underclocking and undervolting the CPU. And pretty sure it should *definitely* not idle at 95W, this isn't a WiiU

How complicated are these obscure programs? If you are lacking funds but having time and they are mostly I am guessing conversion tools for things then might be doable to play software reverse engineer.

One of them has a 36MB executable (I've checked, it's mostly code, and a bit less of the same size data, the assets are separate), so I'd rather not RE it. It's also slightly obfuscated due to DRM, so my journey ends there.

That said there are some nice deals on old HP elitedesk things (8 gigs of RAM, SSD in there, i5 something or other. £80 + shipping) when I go looking as of typing this.

On keyboard and mouse. Normally I am not about wireless keyboards and mice but if rush while inserting is a problem have it be a problem while it boots.

I can't buy anything right now and in the foreseeable few months, so that's not an option.

I also don't need a new mouse and keyboard, as it's a power delivery issue, even my strongest charger is too weak to power the Pi with keyboard and mouse attached.
Meantime my weakest PSU can power my most powerful PC with a GT610 plugged into it.

Alternatively a machine like that could probably do a nice windows VM on a Linux host which solves many issues with pumping graphics over SSH (more modern non server Windows can do but nowhere near as painlessly as Linux efforts) and save having to worry about monitors for occasional debugging. Get some savestates going on there and yeah, unless it is a truly latency sensitive thing and can't wait for it to spin up (even a ping timeout on an unknown address to delay batch commands). Having a pi sit there as the interface and waking the PC up by LAN, speaking to it via whatever means you care to employ and then back to sleep mode also is a potential option in this.

The only latency-sensitive part of it is networking in the programs themselves (most of them *are* servers, but I also need to offload some work via client software which are not timing-sensitive), so that's fine.

The Wake on LAN part is actually quite a good idea, although I have never got it to work on this PC, even though I have desperately needed it in the past. I'll try again with a fresh Windows install.

Yeah, I might put some low-impact read-only programs back on the Pi, and let it manage Wake on LAN for the PC, that's also a pretty good idea. I could make a custom program to put the PC to sleep on inactivity and/or work finish.

I think I'll still keep Windows though, as I'm currently unable to setup Linux, let alone with KVM support.

On power usage. I can't say I don't enjoy a bit of optimisation but chain a UPS* to a timer and a solar panel and if wanting to avoid power from the wall/on your bill is the issue you might be able to instead grab some sunlight that would otherwise be warming your bricks (assuming you don't have some kind of even cheaper power at night) and dodge the bills that way.
*ones with bad batteries get chucked out all the time and usually only have a deep cycle battery in there you can buy off the shelf.

Ah, we don't have access to any alternate means of power strong enough to power a Pico W, let alone a whole Pi or a PC.

Nothing worth of value gets chucked out to the streets, everything gets "recycled" until there is nothing more left to salvage. This is why the only things you find on the street are CRT TVs, printers, and smashed (and I do mean *really* ragequit) monitors. So, no UPS for me. Besides, most of the times they are contractually obligated anyway to give back equipment, as it's much cheaper to let a different company handle servicing, replacement, and upkeep, for a huge yearly fee.

 

[Magsor]

I recommend Nvidia GT1030 it<s the quietest out there

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I recommend Nvidia GT1030 it<s the quietest out there

It's also crap, better off with an iGPU.

 

[Magsor]

It's also crap, better off with an iGPU.

Nowere near as quiet >>>^^^???

 

[Sono]

I have a GT610, it's really cold (passively cooled!) and really quiet, and still get 72FPS in quite modded Minecraft, and I think I'm still limited by the CPU and RAM speed.

Comparing the GT610 and iGPUs of the era, I think the GT610 is just barely more power efficient at high workload than the iGPU, so if you want to game "classic" games, then I recommend it.

However, I need/want zero graphics acceleration, I need the bare minimum RAMDAC to drive a framebuffer screen for me at a low resolution, so any VGA card with a low static power draw will suffice for me. I may want to disable the iGPU, as according to hardware monitors, the iGPU is drawing almost as much power as the CPU (~5W), and that sounds like at lot for doing "nothing" and just redrawing the same unmoving screen. I wish it was possible to disable hardware acceleration while also having installed iGPU drivers on Windows 10 :/

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Nowere near as quiet >>>^^^???

You need a CPU anyway. One less component in your system to make sound = less noise.
iGPU power usage is negligible, less than any PCIe GPU.