Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2 Ivy Bridge 2.5GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 45W BX80637E31265L2 Server Processor

Pros: Idles down low power nicely, runs cool, still quite fast. 4C8T ivy bridge with all features enabled makes for a killer embedded platform. Testing this for a fanless prototype. Running a 30″ monitor off such a tiny box is fun: I hide it behind, fire up some workspace programs and people ask me wheres the dev computer 🙂 Under light loads (single threaded etc) it tends to stay in higher turbo modes and for user programs you can’t tell the difference between it and a high end i7, has plenty of thermal headroom. Cons: Paying to run slower feels wrong, would rather have 1 cpu with multiple power options to choose from in BIOS. The mobile versions have this “configurable TDP” though its usually set and locked at factory to fit within cooling constraints, otherwise people might melt a 11″ laptop. Not as big a problem in a custom build. Overall Review: Hard to find many of the other low power cpus which are not sold boxed. For the ultra-compact systems ECC ddr3 so-dimms are impossible to find, full size are common and getting cheaper every day. I can test with plain cheap ram, but production will have to go with ECC.

Pros: Amazing power consumption Plenty fast Cons: Price It came with a girly man cooler Overall Review: So i got a new IT job and needed tri monitor…I tried building a desktop with parts laying around and it was just nothing but problems. I had been putting off building a new gaming rig but decided to pull the trigger. I wanted a computer that would game with the best of them but maintain a 200 Watt power consumption(building pc’s isn’t as fun without limits). I bought this lil guy, a gigabyte board, 16 gigs of ram and a radeon 270X.. This PC completely overshot my goal and at idle is around 80 watts…medium gaming is 120 measured at the outlet. By comparison, my gaming laptop 2.6GHz I7 nvidia 675 seems to idle at 120 watts… The downside is the insane price. Oddly enough, i bought the last one newegg had…they seemed to have deactivated it after processing my order and i was worried they canceled it.