Hello,
What would be the lowest TDP consumer grade CPU that I could get off the shelf? I’ve read that recent Intel “i” series are quite efficient, but I’m wondering which3/5/7/9 series (and maybe a model?) is “the best”.
I’m looking to self-host only a small amount of containers. 4k video output (or transcoding) would also be a great feat, even if nowadays I’m not using Plex that much.
Thank you
There are some ARM chips that go down to microamps in low power mode and draw only 1 Watt at full power but might drive you nuts trying to run Linux on them.
Another poster sent you an exhaustive list, but to answer your question a bit, AMD has been dominating in the performance/watt category for a while now, I’d consider a Ryzen processor. Anything made in the last few years will be more than robust for what you’re describing. Hell, if you’re willing to wait for delivery I bet a Raspberry Pi 5 could suffice
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In general efficiency is a difficult metric for CPUs because there are many different definitions and factors that are involved.
If you want a low electricity bill:
There are boards with an intel N100 (TDP 6W).It’s worth mentioning Zen2/Zen3 AMD CPUs can be run in Linux* with kernel parameter: amd_pstate=active
This allows for the CPU to run in an extreme low-power state and scale up if needed.
- Kernel 6.5+ required
If you’re not doing much computing, then the idle power consumption is much more important than the tdp, in which case the motherboard and other hardware are more important than the CPU. For your use case, something like a tinyminimicro 1L PC or a Celeron mini PC would be good. I’ve personally played around with
- a dell optiples 3050 micro with an i5-7500t that idles about 6 watts
- an AliExpress n5105 mini PC that idles about 8 watts
- an AliExpress n100 3inch mini PC that idles about 5 watts
- an Asus Chromebox 3 with an i7-8550u that idles about 4 watts Any of these have plenty of juice to run some docker containers and a media server assuming you don’t need to transcode multiple 4k streams simultaneously. I’m currently using the Chromebox as my proxmox server with 3-4 vms and maybe 20 docker containers/lxcs and it uses about 8-9 watts on average.
I’m a big fan of SuperMicro’s Xeon D- series 1U short servers. Not really consumer grade, but not overly expensive either (about $1k on ebay for everything but the disk), and power consumption was not much higher than Atoms at the time I bought them.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/87041/intel-xeon-d-processor.html
I have a D-1541, 8 core (16 thread), 2100MHz @ 45W TDP, and two D-1518s, 4 core (8 thread), 2200MHz @ 35W TDP. They’ll both run proxmox with a handful of containers, and another selling point was 10GbE, which is great if you’re looking to upgrade your LAN.
is 35W to much ?
On idle? Yes. Usage, no.
