The Clarkdale Experiment
I’ve been waiting for Intel’s 32nm CPUs to arrive on the scene, because I’ve been wanting to build a small, but relatively potent, gaming system. Now, Anand wasn’t all that impressed with the price/performance ratio of the Intel Core i5 661, suggesting that Intel had priced the CPU too high relative to the competition.
Interestingly, Anand also found the power consumption to be a little iffy, noting that his system idled at around 110W (though he did suggest it was high partly due to the particular Asus motherboard he used in the CPU review.)
I saw an opportunity with Clarkdale to do a little experimenting. I wanted to build a small gaming system with low idle power, but capable of running high end games at high frame rates. The $205 Core i5 661 looked to be just the CPU for that – two cores, two more virtual cores seemed like a good fit for even modern game titles. All you need is a better GPU… and maybe a few other things.
For example, I’d need a good discrete graphics card. Storage was relatively important, but I could get by without dropping in a terabyte drive. This system wasn’t intended to be a repository for digital video. Even though modern PC games take up a lot of space, there even a 250 or 320GB drive is ample enough to hold quite a number of games. For example, I probably have a dozen current generation games installed using Steam, and my Steam folder is just 131GB.
So in my mind, Clarkdale can enable a different class of system. Right now, I’ve got a system running a different Asus motherboard (the P7H55D-M EVO). It’s also got a discrete graphics card in it. After I build a system, I always run 3DMark Vantage as a kind of sanity check to see if it's all working properly. This little monster generates a 3DMark Vantage score of 12,738.
Did I mention that it idles at just under 70W?
Let’s see exactly how I built this thing.
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mindless1 - Saturday, January 30, 2010 - link
The problem I have with it is it isn't really low power, it's only low idle power. Except when it comes time to pay the power bill idle power isn't a concern to many of us, even in this day and age where it's convenient to feel green.One other comment is I'll bet that CPU heatsink's fan will not last the life of the system, perhaps not half the life of the system. Given the cramped quarters to work in the case I hope there is enough clearance and mounting ability for a better replacement fan down the road, as it would be a real pain to have to pull the whole thing apart to get the heatsink off if it can't take a different fan (or else who wants to replace a bad fan with the same/equivalent thing again).
pjladyfox - Thursday, January 28, 2010 - link
That makes sense so you basically traded off space/flexability and cooling for portability. Not a trade I would have made but when put into that perspective it does make sense.aguilpa1 - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
..., cause we still don't know if it was really worth it or not??aguilpa1 - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
also, a couple of weeks ago I bought a 256GB Corsair P256 SSD for $625 from Newegg, 220/200 Read/Write with TRIM for my Alienware laptop, you could have saved a few bucks and some spaceLunyone - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
Reminds me of paper launches of products, but without any performance specs. I appreciate the details noted during the installation process, but not to have any performance numbers to see where this lines up with the rest is sorta saddening. :(muro - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
interesting build, I would also like to see benchmarks.I also wanted to do something similar, but went a different route:
* MSI X58M - mATX, Crossfire support (I don't plan to use it) and has 6 RAM slots (got 12GB of RAM)
* i7 920 - higher power use perhaps, but 4cores, 8threads. I paid almost the same price, about 220
* 5870 instead of 5850 - maybe I should have gone with SSD instead, but I have a 30'' screen
* Antec p180 mini - this case is big, big, big. The biggest case I ever had and it's micro ATX only. The "mini" part is a joke.
the whole cost was about 1500 (CHF, which is about 1:1 with USD). I might still upgrade to a SSD, but not for the prices they ask now (funny, it's actually the same price as the 5870, which I didn't mind that much paying for)
Robear - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
A few suggestions if I may....1) Needs benchmarks. ANY benchmarks. This is about as useful as someone bragging on the boards about their new rig with some do's and don'ts about specific hardware. The most interesting thing about this rig was that ~40% of the cost was in the SSD. Was it worth it? How did it perform? What controller does the drive use? Is it on a 6Gb/s interface or are you bottlenecked at the interface? That would be my main concern with the drive.
2) It looks like it was done in word and then exported to HTML ;) Maybe a little cleanup to fit nicely on the site.
3) Did I mention benchmarks? They don't need to be fancy with comparisons to 3290472347845 other similar products. Just give us what it scored.
4) What about overclocking? Temps would be the big question here in the small case.
Anyway the article was lean so I can't come up with anything more than criticism. Sorry :(
teejaded - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
I remember reading Loyd Case's articles in CGW when I was in junior high 15 years ago. Maybe then, this would have been acceptable, but IMO Loyd's writing on this site seems like such a joke compared to the amazing technical information we usually get.Unrelated, but in the article where he flattened and reinstalled Vista to fix a slowness problem really annoyed me. He didn't even try to fix it! Seriously, procexp kernrate procmon windbg driver verifier perfmon autoruns maybe... just do something for science sake. Anyone with half a brain can reinstall Windows and we don't need to read about it, especially on a site like this.
loydcase - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
As I noted in the article, I'll be writing a follow-up with benchmarks and usage experiences.I doubt, however, I'll try much in the way of overclocking. I could maybe get a speed grade out of this system, but the constraints of the case means airflow isn't all that robust, and I'm trying to keep noise levels down.
marc1000 - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - link
I liked the article because I have interest in SFF building - the pure bench numbers can be seen well spread in a dozen sites, just google it!Loyd, you did not put enough pictures of the case itself, googling it I saw some images and would suggest two things to test if it can help in overclocking:
1. add another intake fan at the front
2. reverse the PSU to suck air out of the CPU area, if possible
as the case is so small, you could need to use some plastic to create a path for the cold air to go to the CPU and GPU.
BTW, nice build!!