If you're not after top-notch performance, you've probably noticed AMD's EE series Athlons by now. Introduced last year, these power efficient, and more importantly, dirt cheap CPUs are an excellent choice for undemanding consumers, office machines, HTPCs and basic computing needs.

With the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ EE SFF, AMD has raised the power efficiency bar even higher, or should we say lower. This is the only 35W desktop dual-core CPU on the market, it's a two-year old design, but it became available in retail only recently. Up until now it was reserved for OEMs. It's a 90nm CPU clocked at 2.0GHz, but considering the €33 price tag and ridiculously low TDP, this looks like quite a deal, especially if coupled with a cheap and energy efficient 780G mATX board.

Energy efficiency is one of the few battlegrounds in which AMD can rightfully claim victory over Intel. The blue team's only 35W CPUs are the 4x0 series single-core Celerons, clocked at 1.6 to 2.0GHz. Intel's slowest dual-core CPUs have a 65W TDP, almost twice that of the new Athlon.

Too bad AMD can't do better when it comes to performance CPUs, as most people just don't give a damn about power efficiency or silent computing.

You can get the 35W Athlon here.