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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: TheDaddy on December 07, 2009, 10:20:49 AM
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Hi everyone,
You might know me for designing and producing the Minimig cases and the 1541U cases for the Commodore 64 (more specifically for the 1541 Ultimate board for the C64, C128, Vic 20 and Plus 4).
http://www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
As you know I have been working on a new computer case for some time, on and off for about three maybe four years, and it’s only now that I have finally managed to reach a stage where a fully working prototype can be made.
Originally this case was going to be a dedicated case for the SAM and the Natami (when it becomes available) but with time it developed into something that, hopefully, will attract more buyers since it’s going to accommodate different motherboards standards.
Specifications:
Low Profile Case
Accepts Mini ITX, Flex ATX and Micro ATX motherboards
Space for one 5.25” drive (DVD-RW/Blueray)
Space for one maybe two 3.5” hard drives
Space for one maybe two 3.5” drives (floppy disk drive or card reader)
Space for one picoPSU (at the moment I think the most powerful is the picoPSU 150W by minibox)
Accepts ONLY Low Profile cards
I would like to get some input from you guys.
Could you please let me know what you think is the most powerful system that can run on a 150W-200W picoPSU?
Not just Amiga related (SAMs, A1s etc..etc…) but also x86 based.
So if you had 150W maybe 200W of power to play with what is the most powerful system you could build?
Consider:
CPU (any)
DVD-RW/Blueray
Low Profile Graphics Card (in PCI, AGP or PCI-Express form) I am particularly interested in this!
Two to four 3.5” Drives
Up to two PCI Expansion Cards
Once I have gathered enough data I’ll see if I can have a fully working prototype made, hopefully by the end of this year maybe January 2010.
PS: If you have a C64 with a “naked” 1541 Ultimate board please consider buying a case for it as this money will go towards this new project. :-)
amigarulez@hotmail.com
Thank you!
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150W is a lot. I had Pentium Dual Core E5200 and NV 8800GS, 4GB RAM, 2 HDDs and an optical drive. Both the CPU and GPU moderately overclocked and it took about 120W at load at the power socket. That was with 80+ Seasonic PSU, so I guess with Pico PSU with high efficiency it could be around 100W.
Based on this I would say any dual core system with a single graphics card would happily work with 150W of power. There are also 45W quadcores out there, which would work too, I'm sure. Midrange CPUs are actually getting more and more power efficient. The problem could be with GPUs where the delta between idle and load is widening. But something like AMD 5770 (5650/70 or whatever's coming out...) should be ok and they have great power/performance ratio.
I don't have experience with other than x86 architectures as far as power consumption goes.
Edit: considering that you're limited to low profile graphics cards, I would say that the power consumption is not a concern at all. With a LP GPU, you can have a quadcore with numerous drives and PCI cards and still be easily under 150W.
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That is great, thank you very much for that info.
What would be the most demanding (power wise) low profile graphics card (PCI, AGP or PCI-Express) we could use in such system (with a max. of 150-200W)?
I am interested as I might have to limit the depth of the case, very long cards might not fit.
Thanks again!
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The most powerful (performance-wise) PCI-E GPU I was able to find is Radeon HD4650. It is undoubtedly the fastest, although the LP versions only use DDR2 memory. nVidia doen't have a comparably fast LP offering (the best they have is GT220). Based on the reviews the HD4650 doesn't draw more than 30W at load.
I don't know if it's the most power hungry, but I would say none of the LP graphics cards would go significantly over 30W.
AGP low profile GPUs available today (at least new) are really low end - NV 6200, Radeon HD3450 etc. I doubt any of them would draw more than the higher performing PCI-E offerings.
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@koshman
Excellent!
So basically I just need to check the length of the following:
HD 4650
GT220
NV6200
HD3450
to determine a maximum depth for the case. I really don't want to allow cards longer than 23cm or more as the case proportions would look strange! :-)
And they should all work with a fast CPU, DVD-RW, FDD, Card Reader with 150W...
Many thanks! :-)
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i have also been looking at maximum height of low profile cards, more specifically the bracket and I believe it's 79.2 mm, at least that is what it says here:
http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/conventional/conventional_pci/lowp_ecn.pdf
Page 4
can you confirm please?
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Yes, pretty much :) The new AMD mid/high range offering HD5850 is 24cm long so I don't think any of the LP cards would be 23cm or more, but you better check.
Edit: just a correction to the above performance assumtions - GT220 with DDR3 might be actually close in performance to HD4650 with DDR2, but I haven't seen a direct comparison,
As for the height - I haven't measured it myself, but I don't have a reason not to believe what's written in the PDF. Btw, Wikipedia says the same - max card height is 64,41mm and max bracket height 79,2mm for LP cards.
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Brilliant!
Thank you :-)