The ITX standard has been specially designed for minimal space and low power consumption, performance is not rated as a crucial factor. At DriverHeaven they’ve now published an article where they walk you through the construction of a power-efficient ITX system and share their experience and opinions with such a system. The foundation is VIA’s EPIA EN 1200EG, which is a complete ITX motherboard with an integrated VIA C7 processor at 1.2GHz. The processor is extremely power efficient and doesn’t need any active cooling. They’ve completed the system through an 8GB SSD harddrive to keep the power consumption and noise at a minimum.
The result is a PC with a far from extreme performance but with a maximal power consumption peak at ridiculously low 11W (!). During regular use the system consumes no more that 7W, which is a less than a tenth of what today’s high-end processors consumes. Unfortunately it’s not just the performance that is an Achilles heel, but the price as well, where the SSD unit is the big culprit. There are several uses for these power efficient computers, but just the fact that it is possible to build a computer that consumes less than 10W is quite exciting.
