elliott678

If you go through and read the reviews where they actually check the power usage at the wall, you will see that 40-50 watts is fairly typical for the atom. I think the lowest I actually read was 36 Watts. Usually most of the estimates (9.5watts) is ONLY for the cpu and not for the rest of the system. That is why testing at the wall is more accurate.

Maybe I should read more about how PowerTOP comes up with these numbers, but I know if I turn off wifi, it drops to 6.8 watts. If I take it to nearly an unusable state, no wifi, screen dimmed all the way, disabled USB ports and everything, I can get it down to 5 watts.

As I wrote, my project is to make a low power computer dedicated to web surfing with Firefox being the only installed application along with the JWM window manager. It will run in memory with no hard drive, cd rom, or floppy. After several hours searching Google and Ebay:

I became aware that some, maybe most, older boards don't have onboard video or ethernet. Adding these with PCI cards would most likely increase power consumption. I ended up purchasing an Intel D815BN socket 370 board with a Celeron 566 CPU, both video and ethernet on board. Max memory is 512Mb which is more than adequate to run TinyCore in memory with my requirements.

From the Intel Manual:

This board, with 667 Mhz Pentium III, 128 Mb Ram, 3.5" floppy, 1.6 GB HD, CD Rom, running Windows 98 would consume power ...APM full on - 48.8 watts to a low - ACPI Off - 2.5 Watts. This with a 200Watt power supply.

Granted, I would have more (512Mb), ram, but no hard drive, floppy or cdrom. Can't boot from USB with this board, but after booting from CD, it can be removed and the drive switched off. Plus the Celeron will consume less power than the Pentium III. Other than $36 for the board and cpu, I have all the rest of the stuff. I hope I'm right, but I think it'll fly.

Thanks again to all who responded.

You can also get a pata to flash drive adapter for pretty cheap. It has been a while but I think they were in the sub $30 range. As far as the bios/os is concerned it looks just like any other pata drive(obviously slower).

The PIII was a good design, which is why they went back to it after the P4s.

Hi,

Good choice!

Heat sink! Heat sink! Your heat sink choice will be important since you will be running or attempting low power. If memory serves me that particular board depends on even flow within the case to cool with a minimum HSF. This is a mATX board so the chipset will require good cooling. You could place a chipset cooler or just a heat sink on the chip (another power consideration).

The 'D815BN socket 370' board supports only 512MB memory. The board does support USB. So you could add flash to have more storage or even your OS. You should make sure that you get the cables for the on-board USB to allow the additional 2 USB ports.

Your use of 'USB' would facilitate a low power system.

Another consideration will be the PSU. Sure the power requirements for the board can be met generally but the quality of the PSU will be important. A low grade PSU will waste more power.

Look at some of the mini-ATX desktops for their PSU usage.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Haven't seen the board yet, but the manual does point to three heat sensitive areas, the CPU, the voltage regulation area, and two chips. There is a large heat sink on the processor, but no fan. Apparently this low wattage Celeron was used by Gateway and HP with no CPU fans. The board will go into a mid tower case, no ribbon cables for HD and floppy so there will be good airflow from the fans. I've run Tiny Core with only Firefox installed on an old P2 with 320Mb ram that I scrounged from a KMart pharmacy, so I won't even need the full 512Mb. Tiny Core will boot from CD and run entirely in memory, so after booting the CD drive can be switched off further reducing power requirement. I have two decent power supplies, 300 & 450 watts, but I'll be looking for a good 200W supply. It looks like the only use for USB will be to run a laser printer, so the two onboard ports should be sufficient.

I agree, an Atom+ION board is currently the best choice for a very low power, low cost PC. The graphics performance of the ION is useful not just for HD playback but it also provides much better general 2D and 3D performance for desktop use.
Here is a complete overview of available ION systems + mobos:
http://www.linuxtech.net/features/nv..._overview.html

Hi,
That board is a good choice as I said before. There is no reason not to include additional fan(s) to remove the heat or stabilize the environment. The static heat sink for the cpu will be fine as long as you vacate properly. To add a hsf to the chipset won't hurt or even just a heat sink.

The 200W will be more than enough but you should spec your load requirements to allow you to size things. Your load requirements for the cdrom when idle won't be that high. Since you have no hdd, video board or other external devices then you should be safe to leave the cdrom alone. I don't have access to the Intel specs on the 815 since it's been discontinued.

Good Luck!