I want to make a low-power (energy efficient) pc. The motherboard I've
already got is socket 478. What's the lowest power chip I can put in
there? And how low power is it.
How low power does it need be?
What will you be doing with it?
Why build on a platform known to have lower efficiency when
the board can't be worth much?
I'd imagine you could be a Pentium 4 down to around 25W if
you underclocked it, but it might depend on whether your
board has voltage reduction and/or FSB reduction options.
I'd sooner go with the Geode board combo Paul linked, not
the C3 option unless ultra-low power is the only priority
and performance really doesn't matter at all, as it's
sluggish even running WinXP GUI.
Also, I'm told the 478 celeron m doesn't fit in a desktop socket 478,
only laptop? the pin arrangement is different, I'm told... is that
true?
Right, it's a mPGA that is smaller. A mobile Celeron
wouldn't necessarily be a bad choice depending on your
needs, but with a different board.
If you can settle for upwards of 35W, you can pick among
most platforms and just underclock the CPU. Does it even
need to be a newer platform? There's plenty of old Pentium
3 systems out in the wild that produce under 25W even at
stock speed, under 15W underclocked with the Coppermines or
Tualatins but for something like a fileserver there'd be the
issues of lack of SATA support and going back far enough,
possible limitations in hard drive size supported by the
BIOS though you could always add a drive controller card if
utmost performance isn't an issue.
