Forget PSU-Calculators. They might be suitable to find a PSU, but not to calculate power-consumption. The values are always to high (using not-so-common-hardware I easily achieved results twice to thrice the acutal measured consumption).
Regarding the questions:
- even the I3-2100T should easily master even a P4 670, not to speak of lower clocked P4s, even in strict single-thread-applications. Personally, I switched from a slightly overclocked P4 3,4 EE (@3,54 GHz), which is one the fastest at all, to a Pentium Dual-Core E5300 and got a juge performance plus - and the E5300 was a medium range CPU 3 years ago.
- there are some resonable powered P4s (it would really help, if you gave the full name), but a decrease of consumption by 40 W seems resonable, especially idle.
Additional thoughts:
- the "T" editions of core-CPUs have only a sligthly reduced power-consumption at low loads. The main difference to the standard edition is their lower maximum clock. In my opinion, one pays extra for less possibilities.
- depending of type of P4 and of ongoing developments, Intels upcoming Atom-Update might deliver the same power you have now at a much lower power consumption and price then a Core i System.
- AMDs upcoming Llano-middle-class should at least achieve the "cheaper" part and provide power on Core i3/i5 level.
- encryption of a system permanently installed at home an accessed only via network (meaning: via a software knowing the decryption codes) seems a senseless waste of processing-power to me.
- considering current HDD and CPU/mainboard-Prices, I even would even think about switching from RAID 5 to multiple RAID1s (or non-RAID an regular backup, if avaluability isn't a prime concern, as in most home-applications) for the optimum system. (don't know, how much processing power the virtualisation host requieres, but I would expect an Atom to be easily capable of handling RAID1s and having lot of power left)
- the english-speaking PCGH-Forum can be found
here. I admit, that it kinda lacks active users, however after several cases of people starting to post insults or illegal contents in languages, the moderation won't even understand, the rules of this forum were extended by a specific german-only rule. Prolonged acitivity in english thous would be a problem. Sorry.
- also not speaking german should cause problems with understandig the general rules and the subdivision of the forum.
For example this topic clearly does not deal with advanced technologies, but belongs into the "CPU" area...
*moving*
.
