Comment on NAS Power Consumption

• tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I switched from an I3-530, nominal TDP 73W, to an N-100, nominal TDP 7W, and power from the wall didn’t change at all. Even the i3 ran around 0.1 CPU load, except when transcoding, and I’m left with the impression that most of the power goes into HDDs, RAM, maybe fans, and PS losses. My sense is that the best way to decrease homelab power use is to minimize the number of devices. Start with your seyrver at 60W, add a WAP at 10-15W, maybe a switch at 10-15W… Not because of the CPUs, necessarily, but because every CPU every CPU comes with systems to keep the CPU going, keep the power regulated, etc.

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Power isn’t from drives, if your OS spins them down (as any NAS solution should).

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    • tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You can only spin drives down if they’re idle. If you have a service that touches it - say, homeassistant logging data, tvheadend updating EPG - then they’re going to keep spinning.

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      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I would hope one would use an SSD for something like HomeAssistant. HDDs really shine as bulk media storage (music, pictures, video) not as storage for what would be the equivalent of running an OS on it.

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  • atk007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Thank you, this is what I needed to know. I thought n100 (similar to what dedicated nas has 6-10w) would bring power down considerably, and thanks to you, I now know it’s not the case.

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