Low power upgrade to i5-8500

[Marcin]

Because of being high costs of electric energy nowadays I plan to upgrade my PC to very energy-efficent computer. Problem is that I have Dell S3422DWG monitor with WQHD 3440x1440 over DisplayPort with refresh rate 144 Hz which I would like to keep. Is there not expensive platform to go for ? AMD with integrated VGA ? Currently I have i5-8500/Z370-P Prime Asus board/GTX1050/M.2 disk/DDR4. No gaming, just websites browsing, emails and music over Spotify.

EDIT. OK I think about trying HP T740.

[misace]

Display Port 1.2 on T740 can do only 3840 x 2160 / 60 Hz max and I think the CPU is too slow even for basic browsing.

You should not except much electricty savings, because your computer without monitor consumes about 50W at idle or normal browsing. Have you exchanged all bulbs at home with LEDs already?

BTW, I am using 1L tiny pc Lenovo M75q Gen2, which is cheap on second market and has DP 1.4, which can do 4K@120 Hz. It has a 4 core 35W Ryzen CPU and it is sufficient for youtube and browsing.

[Wasmachineman_NL]

Could always undervolt that 8500 using ThrottleStop or something.

[Marcin]

[misace]

I checked the spec and M75q Gen2 also can do only 4k@60 https://gzhls.at/blob/ldb/b/6/a/6/4219fe317ef0f056997cc61afc8ac44461df.pdf

[CHips]

Ensuring that integrated graphics work with 144 Hz and this resolution is tricky and a bit of a gamble as you have seen in the discussion so far with many things turning out to only support 60 Hz. But do you really need your monitor or 144 Hz? It is also going to consume some energy and it also does not really make sense to have more than 60 Hz if you are not gaming unless you somehow specifically watch 120+ Hz videos, I cannot even think of an example of such non-gaming content.

For best power efficiency, you might consider switching to a laptop. Mine is consuming less than 20W screen included idling with tons of tabs open, and when watching YouTube it consumes about 30W.
If you really need something wide then you could get some matching external Usb C portable monitor with the same size as the laptop's to extend it, it should consume less than 10W.

[Marcin]

Thank you for all tips. I need 144 Hz at nominal resolution UWQHD because I see the difference at text reading/scrolling. You know if once you get used to better you won't want to go back to lower

I burned some hours yesterday at searchings and finaly bought GMKtec (NucBox) M5 Plus with AMD Ryzen 7 5825U for 200 EUR include custom tax. M.2 drives I have. 2x 8 or 16GB SO-DIMM will be purchased and that is only one investment.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007593289357.html

Here it is review with confirmation about UWQHD 144Hz support in previous (older and slower configuration) not Plus:

https://youtu.be/_cxY_AZqgxw?t=300

Will let ya know if that is enough good for smooth web browsing when I get all up and running

[Marcin]

Tiny PC has arrived. Installed 2x16GB Micron DDR4 2666 MHz + Adata Legend 800 1TB NVME and system is up and running. I'm happy from it's excellent smoothness with Ryzen 7 5825U and have 144 Hz refresh rate over DP.

IDLE before was ~ 60W. Now it is 15W.
Web browsing and watching youtube before was ~ 80-85W. Now it is 17-20W.

I'm music lover from kid times and a few years ago started experiments with hifi headphones and equipment so when I do computer job or entertaining I listen to Spotify a lot.

More energy efficent would be entertaining and music listening on 10" tablet with keyboard and BT mouse but for now I cann't change my old habits

[CPUShack]

75% less power is pretty good!

[Marcin]

[wren4777]

Glad it worked out! x