Fluffy 2 : World’s Most Efficient High-End Computer

Computers have become an integral part of our daily life. It’s not just limited to our personal computer, but the computers at our offices, at departmental stores or wherever we go for that matter. But all these computers have something in common; they are over-dimensioned for their use. What that means is that none of those computers are working at full power all the time rather they are sitting idle a lot of their time. In that idle time, the computer still uses power, but it is often impossible to turn it off to save on the power. It turns out that, on an average, the total power used while the computer is idle, is often more than the total power used while the computer is actually doing useful work!

Just for an example, our CPU-usage is even less than 5% when we read a document or prepare one. Can we turn our computer off ? Of course not, we are doing something!

So what we want for our computer is to use as little power as possible while it is sitting idle. This is the problem many engineers have been concentrating on for the last few years, and it seems that Dutch Hardware Hacker, “Emile Nijssen” (nickname Mux), have got some answers for them all.

‘Mux’ claims that he has built the world’s most efficient high-end desktop computer. An Intel Core i5-3570K with 16GB of RAM, 64GB SSD, and other assorted bits, which consumes just 5.9 watts in idle time and 74.5 watts at full load. In comparison, our PC draws around 30 watts while idle and 150 watts at full load.

He has a bit of a history when it comes to building efficient computers. He built a 50-watt computer in 2008 (called Dennis), a 20-watt computer in 2010 (Dennis2), a 9.5-watt NAS last year (Floppy2), and now the 5.9-watt Fluffy2. Fluffy2 is currently just a headless motherboard, but it will eventually be built into an IPS LCD display to create a passively-cooled all-in-one PC that draws less than 20 watts, the most efficient high-end PC in the world. It’s worth noting that none of these figures include a discrete graphics card, but Mux points out that the i5-3570K finally has an integrated GPU (the Intel HD 4000) that can play most games — at a low resolution, of course.

Fluffy2 is based on Intel’s DQ77KB mini-ITX motherboard and the Core i5-3570K CPU, which he then pairs with 2x8GB of DDR3-1333 Crucial RAM, 64GB SSD, Intel Ultimate-N WiFi card, and a Logitech wireless receiver. As-is, mostly thanks to Intel’s 22nm Ivy Bridge Architecture, Mux says this is one of the most efficient PC setups possible, drawing just 11.6 watts when idle. To go from 11.6 to 5.9 watts (almost exactly half the power consumption), is rather impressive, though.

One of the probable things that other engineers might not have thought about is modeling the motherboard to be more efficient, where as Mux analyzed the DQ77KB motherboard to discern the flow of power around the board, and the relationship between each of the components, yielding this diagram:

After having got the above power flow diagram, he worked out how much power each component on the motherboard uses, including the all important conversion losses, the amount of electricity wasted as heat energy when power has to be stepped down from 12V to 5V, 3.3V, and around 1V for the CPU. He used this data to get a Sankey diagram:

With all this data in hand, Mux went to work on the motherboard, adding a CPU voltmod other various voltmods and then de-soldering the PCIe slot, fan header, SATA ports, and an LED, to further reduce power consumption and well, the results were not at all surprising for him. It might seem to a normal guy that the end-product seems to be a bit messy, but of course we can’t argue with 50% reduction in power consumption. While the reduction in idle power consumption is the most important (most home/office PCs are idle 90%+ of the time), the 25% reduction in max load consumption (99.6W down to 74.5W) is also very significant.

Conclusion : It makes us wonder just how much power we could save if every computer was as efficient as Mux’s. It’s not like his modifications were particularly complex; Intel and other smart makers could easily replicate Fluffy2 and bring such motherboards to the mass market as each of this big players already developing their own, highly-efficient hardware. When it comes to mobile PCs, reducing power consumption is even more necessary and is also one of the industry’s prime focuses. So, such technologies are really futuristic and it won't be much of a surprise if we see present PCs being replaced by devices like Fluffy 2 in near future.

I will be providing more information about Fluffy 2 as soon as it gets available. However, you can have a look at the Fluffy 2 implementation in the video below :

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