Tips on lowering power on X58/i7 920?

[Ilander]

So, I've got an x58 system with a core i7 920, which I use as a media PC. The GPU is a Radeon HD 5450, I'm running a 1st Gen Sandforce Adata SSD as the boot disk, and a couple of laptop drives for more low-power storage.

I've just upgraded my main system (P67 i7 2600K) to a GTX 580, and have a spare HD 5750 now, and was wanting to put it into the Media PC, but I don't want to increase my power usage much if I can help it, so I'm thinking of tweaking the system for lowest power possible.

So, THW readers, any suggestions I'm missing for keeping power low?

Here's what I've got so far:

I'm running Win8 CP to use the newest available power savings features/keep my overhead low (OS was Vista, before)

I'm running 1.5 V RAM, so I could undervolt my CPU as low as 1.0 V (tested previously to be stable)

I could disable ports I don't use

I can turn off Turbo Boost

All that gets my idles below 100W with the 5450 (tested at wall), and this system really doesn't hit full bore ever.

Anything else I'm missing?

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

The biggest power hog on your system is the video card. I don't know the HD 5450 but you may be able to clock that down a bit.

Drop out of triple channel mode by having only 2 or 4GB of memory in 2 sticks. Might drop the power down some more.

While I haven't tried to do it you might also be able to clock the processor down a bit. Running at 2.8GHz if you were to cut off turbo and clock it down to 2.4GHz or something like that you might end up dropping the TDP down a bit.


Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[Ilander]

Well, this issue was that I was trying to make room with that PSU for running a better GPU (HD 5750). I actually stumbled upon a 500W power supply at the back of my closet, so while all of these, combined, will save me a handful of Watts, I actually found more 100 more in my build. So, thanks for the suggestions, I will use them next time I am tweaking for power. Didn't think about dual vs triple channel, but that's a great idea!

 

[Ilander]

Best answer selected by Ilander.