i3 vs i5 vs i7? - Page 4

Originally Posted by Puwaha

I don't want to belittle people's concern for electricity use... if it's done in the name of conservation. But the difference between a CPU that uses 65 watts TDP versus one that uses 95 watts TDP is miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

Say your electricity cost is $0.09 per KWh

i3-21xx at 65W TDP for a years worth of electricity is $51.25

i5-2xxxK at 95W TDP for a years worth of electricity is $74.90

A difference of $23.65 per year! That would require 3.3 years of constant use from your i3 to make up the power/cost difference... and this is all at maximum wattage ratings for the CPUs. The CPUs are not maxed out 24hours a day 365 days a week.

I only pay $0.06 per KWh in my area which makes the electricity cost/difference even less... $15.77 a year. That's 5 years!

Originally Posted by Mfusick

Your crazy.

SSD is the best thing that ever happened to PC's.

And- almost any good brand has between 15-25% extra in it so that it can remain at given capacity if some of the memory chips go bad. A good SSD just turns them off and works around them.

SSD can run 24/7 for 5 years + no problem reliably.

I saw somewhere some crazy stats like 10 years+

They are used all over in the enterprise world where reliability is paramount without issue.

I have had zero issues with the 3 SSD's I have owned, and I just bought another today.

I won't operate a PC based on HDD's. It's really not worth my time.

Originally Posted by Mfusick

real PC's are not some desktop case with a basic low end CPU and slow HDD in a crappy motherboard with locked multipliers and slow RAM.

Those are the $400 HP/DELL/Gateway/LENOVO's most corporations purchase.

You can buy those a year old used on ebay for $100.

I bought two for my office last month. Both core 2 duo's. One was $60 without a hard drive. The other came with windows, and LCD monitor for $99..


But they most certainly are not a "real" PC.

Originally Posted by packetlosss

Not all of us are lucky to pay that little for electricity. In my area we pay $0.19 per KWh. I calculated the savings over my old servers compared to using a G530 and I will be saving over $100 a year per machine.

If you *need* the extra processing power, then go for it. If you don't, you are just heating your house.

Originally Posted by packetlosss

Just because you had no problems (yet) makes me crazy?

I had 2 drives go on me and I got tired of rebuilding. To save a minute on reboots which I rarely do is hardly worth it.

I'm not the only one that experienced failures. Look at some of the reviews up on newegg.

Originally Posted by packetlosss

Now we know who is crazy. A real PC isn't an i7 with a $500+ video card and 16GB of Memory in it. That is a monster for pretty much anyone.

A core 2 duo with 4Gb of memory will more than adequately handle 99% of the tasks that most people would expect from a PC. The elite few want a $500 video card or to run SLI/crossfire setup. But hey, if you want your office to be 15 degrees warmer than the rest of your house, knock yourself out.

Originally Posted by Mfusick

Where are you paying .19 per KwH ?

That seems very high. I pay .069. You really pay 19 cents per KwH?

Originally Posted by Mfusick

Sorry you had bad luck with SSD.

But to post what you did above and pretend that is normal is not accurate. Someone who reads that might decide not to go with an SSD when in reality they probably should.

Your situation is not typical. SSD's have also increased in quality and performance- like any electronic device does.

Today SSD's are affordable, Reliable, and offer very significant performance increases. That is a fact.

I can point to more HDD's failures on NewEgg reviews, and personally I have had way more HDD's fail on me than SSD's. In Fact SSD's have never failed on me.

And,

Lastly- you save way more than just a minute on reboots with SSD. Every second you use your PC you save precious personal time. The difference to me is very extreme- even ordinary users would notice it easily.

Originally Posted by packetlosss

Yeah. I live in Long Island, NY. LIPA is the only power provider and they charge whatever they want.

Originally Posted by Mfusick

First- Apology for the "crazy" as I did not really mean to call you that. I was just disagreeing.

Second. No not a $500 video card. That is for gamers only. You mistake my message. No one needs that.

My point,

The speed of a slower Core2 2ghz-3ghz with slow as dirt DDR667 machine running a slow HDD, with no graphics card, and 2GB of ram is just plain unacceptable to me for daily PC use as an enthusiast.

It is fine for websurfing or typing a word document.

It will never be acceptable for movie playback, games, or any serious program or task like encoding, video or picture editing etc...

So to me it is not a "real" PC.

I own about 5 of these exact machines and they work fine for word docs and emails- but that is it. They cost only $100-$500 and are excellent values for someone's needs who only require that.

But to think it's a "real" PC is silly to me because it's limited in what it can do, and also how well it can do things.

Take any $600 SSD based Sandy bridge system running 8GB DDR3 and you can see the difference like night and day. This could be with Intel3000 integrated graphics- or a simple $49 video card like a 5000/6000 series Radeon. This type of system can be had for under $600 and is a "real" PC because it can do most PC functions adequately.

Originally Posted by packetlosss

Yeah. I live in Long Island, NY. LIPA is the only power provider and they charge whatever they want.

Originally Posted by winterescape

there is no benefit choosing a t suffix part.

Originally Posted by Mfusick

WOW. That sucks.

Isn't NY a deregulated state?

Can't you elect an alternative supplier ?

Originally Posted by assassin

The benefit is in the low profile CPU cooler if you need it. Its a very decent cooler for basically only $10 more.

Originally Posted by winterescape

true, and good point, I just resent paying more for less...