recommend me a low power cpu for x8sil -f

[TheRonin]

Could someone recommend me the the most power efficient cpu for a supermicro x8sil-f motherboard. Performance isnt an issue purely power efficiency. This system will be running pfsense only. The l3426 and l3406 are out of my price range, unless anyone knows a good deal. How does the celeron g1101 compare to the pentium g6950 for power efficiency? What about the i3 and xeon 3400?

 

[TheRonin]

just thought id update this a little. I ended up using a supermicro X9SCM-F with a Intel Core i3 3220T, after a quick test the system idles at around 36 watts with a dual port ethernet pci-e card and a 2.5" 500gb wd black drive. this was tested using an old corsair power supply i had lying around. Im currently waiting for a supermicro 510T-503B chassis which has a more efficient power supply so am hoping for a bit more power saving. Might even use a pico power supply to save a little more. I know its totally overkill for a PfSense box but i think the power saving more than makes up for the additional expense.

 

[w0mbl3]

Could someone recommend me the the most power efficient cpu for a supermicro x8sil-f motherboard. Performance isnt an issue purely power efficiency. This system will be running pfsense only. The l3426 and l3406 are out of my price range, unless anyone knows a good deal. How does the celeron g1101 compare to the pentium g6950 for power efficiency? What about the i3 and xeon 3400?

I've been wondering the same question, so I bought some bits to test. I realise the OP went with an 1155 solution, but I thought as I've got some concrete numbers, I'd post them in this thread as it showed up on a google search I was doing.

I already had one set of 1156 parts, and figured that the 0.6V idle state would make them competitive for idle power, so I picked up an extra Xeon and i5-650 to compare. (the i5-650 is an interesting cpu - it supports ECC, VT-d, and AES, is 32nm, and has hyper-threading.. once I've got my Xen environment set up, I'll be comparing performance of the i5-650 versus the Xeon x3450.

Power consumption figures are taken using a cheap AC-draw power meter from a local store called Aldi.

Setup Config:
Supermicro X8SIL rev 1.02,
Intel stock 1156 0.2Amp cooler,
1 LAN port active,
X25-M 160 SSD,
Antec VP350 PSU (local supply is 248V, 50Hz),
1x 120mm Antec tri-cool case fan on slow (run off molex),
Microsoft PS/2 keyboard,
MS usb optical mouse,
4x4G Kingston 1.333 unbuffered ECC (16G total)

States measured:
Idle - boot Centos 6.4 off USB and measured once at desktop
Bios - Lowest watts observed whilst in first bios screen

i5-650: Idle: 29.2W, Bios: 51.8W
i5-750: Idle: 31.7W, Bios: 65.5W
Xeon x3450: Idle: 30.5W, Bios: 64.0W

Note that I used the X8SIL and not the X8SIL-F which has IPMI. The -F variant apparently uses about 4W more, although I don't have one here to test.

I also tested the i5-650 on an Intel DQ57-TM and works with the i5-650's on-die GPU); it came out around 1.5W higher idle than on the X8SIL using all the same other bits except the keyboard (no PS/2 slot on the DQ57-TM, so I used a generic Dell usb keyboard). The DQ57 doesn't appear to support ECC tho, despite a page on intels site saying it does support ECC .