My new PC is Cool, quiet, and efficient but there was a lot to consider before building it.PC Gaming is growing rapidly in popularity. Unfortunately for some, it’s not the expensive components but rather the energy cost for running your gaming PC every single day that can really be a deal breaker. Even if you’ve chosen a super cheap gaming PC, the cost of running for a few years could even exceed the cost of building it. Here in the US the average cost of a Kilowatt hour is 12.64 cents but ranges from a low of 9.22 cents to a high of more than triple the cost at 30.54 cents in Hawaii.
For those in more expensive countries, the price for a Kilowatt hour averages above even Hawaii’s cost. This means, that depending on your hardware, you could potentially spend several hundred dollars a year simply running that beast of a gaming PC.
With all that in mind, I think most would agree that performance is still important. I set out to build a mini ITX form factor gaming PC that uses parts that perform admirably, but which don’t use a lot of energy.
I did this for a few reasons;
The form factor was kept small as I’ll be putting this in my entertainment center and only have a small space for the PC. Since I’ll be running it pretty much all day long as a media, backup, gaming, and Plex device, energy efficiency is important. Another reason I went energy efficient was to keep the PC itself cool.
The less energy it uses, the less heat it dissipates and with an enclosed area, parts can overheat quickly. For this reason, having an efficient power supply is also important. The final reason is that I wanted a PC replacement for the Xbox One and PS4 as I wanted to be able to use a controller but avoid the premium associated with many AAA games.
Let’s take a look at the build.
Update for 2017
This build is now a couple of years old. However, much of the information within it still remains relevant to those of you wanting to build a quiet or energy efficient gaming PC. So, I’ve decided to update it with what I’d choose today. With the Kaby Lake release, go with whatever board and CPU combination provides you the most value. Skylake remains very similar in performance and may be the better overall buy at first. If you go with an i3 in 2017, I don’t recommend you go beyond an RX 470 in performance. This CPU has a bit of a bottleneck with that GPU.
3 Budget $400-$800 Green and Energy Efficient Mini-ITX Gaming PC Build 2017
| Build | $400 to $450 Gaming PC | $500 to $550 Green PC | $800 Green Gaming PC |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Pentium G4560 54W TDP   See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | i3 7100T 35W TDP or i3-7100 51W  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | i5-7500T 35W or i5-7500 65W TDP  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Motherboard | MSI B250 Pro Mini-ITX  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | MSI B250 Pro Mini-ITX See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | MSI B250 Pro Mini-ITX See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Ram | Crucial 8GB DDR42133 2x4GB  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Crucial 8GB DDR42133 2x4GB See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Crucial 8GB DDR42133 2x4GB See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| SSD | SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Samsung 960 Evo 250GB M.2  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GTX 1050  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | GTX 1050Ti 8W Idle 70W Max 28.8db when active   See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | GTX 1060 6GB 9W Idle 119W Max 31.4 dB(A) idle   See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Case | Cooler Master Elite 130  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Cooler Master Elite 130 See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Cooler Master Elite 130 See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Power Supply | EVGA 430W 80 Plus PSU  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Seasonic 360W 80+ Gold  See Amazon Price See Newegg Price | Seasonic 360W 80+ Gold See Amazon Price See Newegg Price |
| Max Power | 174W | 155W | 200W |
Here’s a look at some of the parts I used for my personal build a couple of years ago. Going with the EVGA 970 SSC here was an opportunity to perform some overclocking tests rather than personal preference. If you’re wondering why the budget range of this computer is so large, it’s because I’ll be giving you multiple options for the build. For some in the $400 category, this build is as cheap as and competes with the graphics you’ll get on consoles. Throw in an Xbox 360 controller and you’ll have a small form factor gaming PC that does what a console can do, but with cheaper games that you can keep forever.
Low Power Processor Options:
For the processor, we’re looking for something with a reasonably low TDP or thermal design power.
What is TDP?
While TDP is a measure of heat, it is directly related to energy consumption. Higher power consumption leads to more wasted heat which ultimately leads to a higher TDP.
Not every budget choice we’ve showed will be the energy efficient option. Our $400 build, for example, includes the Pentium G4560, a 54-watt TDP processor. While Intel does make lower wattage “T” processors, most of them aren’t available in the $50 to $60 range.
The energy efficient i3 option would be the Skylake 7100T @3.4GHz which has a TDP of just 35 Watts. It’s definitely the way to go, in terms of energy efficiency, if you can find it at a reasonable price. Availability for me was limited. Alternatively, you could go with the better performing and slightly cheaper i3 7100 with a higher 51-watt TDP. Either one of these processors I’d consider fairly low wattage compared to processors you’d find in past years.
For those wanting to avoid the CPU bottleneck that can sometimes occur, an i5 will get you where you want to go. The choice here is similar to the i3 but a bit more extreme. You can go with the low 35W TDP of an i5-7500T, or the i5-7600 which has a TDP of 65w. If you have an enclosed space like I do, I recommend the lower TDP option.
Cable management took quite a bit more time than a typical PC build. I used the optical drive area to store cables and routed some excess cabling underneath the motherboard. Graphics Cards:
In 2017, I like the GTX 1050 Ti in terms of its low power consumption and heat. You can read more about its power consumption in this Tom’s article. At idle it uses 8 watts while at full power consumption it uses around 70 watts.
The other graphics card in the $140 to $175 range is the RX 470. The RX 470 uses 16 watts at idle and around 144 watts when maxed. That’s about double what you’ll get with the GTX 1050Ti. As you can imagine, the lower wattage here leads to less heat for the case overall. The 1050Ti itself is also a cooler GPU in general.
For noise, the GTX 1050 Ti wins as well with 28.8 dB(A) under stress while the RX 470 is around 37.1 dB(A). While this certainly varies by card, it’s important to point out the the GTX 1050Ti is much quieter overall.
In terms of performance, the RX 470 does win out by as much as 30%. That being said, having tested an RX 470 and i3, I can tell you that the i3 does bottleneck the RX 470. So, unless you’re going with an i5, you might be better off with the 1050Ti.
The final thing to think about is price here. With the RX 470 coming in as low as $170 and the GTX 1050Ti as low as $120 these cards are considerably different in price. When they were released, this was a very different story. So, the next to closes competitor, in terms of performance, for the RX 470 is likely the GTX 1060 3GB and the RX 480 or 580 4GB.
Storage Options
For storage, I recommend you go with one of Western Digital’s Caviar green hard drives. They’re cheap, up to 40% more efficient than other drives, and run cooler than other hard drives. This leads to increased longevity of the drive itself.
If you don’t need a lot of space a better option would be to go with an inexpensive solid state drive or both. Solid state drives use 1/3 less power than hard drives at peak loads.
Power Supply
When it comes to power supplies you should buy something that’s well made, efficient, and will last you a long time. With every other component, we were talking about the efficiency of the unit itself. With the power supply, we’re talking about a component that has an impact on all other components and therefore, makes a huge difference. In my post on the best power supplies for the money, I discuss power supply efficiency and quality in detail.
For this build, you’ll want something that’s cheap and at least 80 PLUS certified on the low end or on the high-end something that fits the budget. I was able to find a 500W EVGA 80 PLUS certified PSU for as low as $25 for those of you sticking to the $400 budget. For higher budgets, I like EVGA’s 220-GS-0550-V1 80 Plus Gold 550W power supply for around $55 after rebate this month. For my personal build, I used a CS 550M I purchased for around $45 last holiday season.
Motherboard Compatibility and Chipsets
There’s a wide variety of motherboards which you could choose for this build. If you go with a Haswell refresh processor, be sure to go with an H97 or Z97 motherboard so you don’t have to worry about updating the Bios. I personally chose the H97M-ITX/ac because it had WiFi, Bluetooth, was compatible with Haswell refresh processors, has USB 3.0 headers, and came in at $69 after rebate. If you plan on overclocking your PC, go with a similar Z97 chipset board.
Those of you sticking to the $400 budget may want to use something a bit cheaper like MSI’s H81M-P33 for $40. Keep in mind that this is a Micro ATX rather than Mini ITX case so you’ll need to plan accordingly.
The Rest of the Parts
Everything else in this build won’t matter as much when it comes to energy efficiency. We’re using the Cooler Master Elite 130 as our case. This is because it was a cheap USB 3.0 ITX option. In addition it has a couple of included fans, and can house a full-sized graphics card. For case, just be sure to check GPU length and our case compatibility list. For Ram, just go with a cheap 2x4GB option.
Gaming Benchmarks for My Old Build (i3 with GTX 970):
Keep in mind that these benchmarks are for the i3-4160. It’s my opinion that these would be slightly higher with a comparable Kaby Lake i3 paired with the GTX 970 due to other tests I’ve made with higher powered processors.
Ultimately, I decided to go with the higher TDP and performance i3 with a GTX 970. Compared to other benchmarks using an i5, these results will be slightly lower; however, as you can see they’re good enough for the 60 frames I wanted to use with my TV.
Usage while playing Battlefield 4.Energy Usage and Performance
As you can see in the pictures below this PC averages from 46 to 53 watts. When under a typical load playing Battlefield 1 it’s more like 100 watts. In one day’s use I ended up having around 1.06 kWh which for me is only around 12.72 cents. Assuming you run this computer in a similar fashion of around 12 hours a day for the entire year you’d end up paying about $46.43 in my area. Overall, this is a higher estimate as I don’t typically run my computer on weekends. Still, it’s very affordable when you compare it to other gaming computers.
What CPU cooler are you using? Anything else that is missing?
You can just use the stock one for these builds.
Great article.
Looking to do your updated $400 build. Would you advise against using the smaller 110 sized case? I’d definitely prefer something that small and the component sizes seem to fit.
Thanks!
That case fits up to 8.3″ GPUs so just check your GPU length and I think you’ll be good.
Nice, although I probably would have tossed in the i-5 4460 and cut the cost down with the HDD, and just stuck with the 1TB since 1 TB is more than plenty of storage for most gamers. The extra performance will be needed for AAA games otherwise the CPU will be a potential bottleneck way before the 970 is. I know this might have broken the $800 mark slightly, but it would be well worth spending the little extra.
The i3 does bottleneck a little; however, I was looking for a lower TDP solution and didn’t want to pay for the T version of the i5