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
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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
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.
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
is 35W to much ?
On idle? Yes. Usage, no.
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.