I have an i7-2600 prebuilt for my NAS— is idle most of the time, bought it for $100 4 years ago. Have pretty cheap internet at like $0.12 per KWh, but again mostly idle so probably doesn’t cost much anyway.
"This Is The ONLY Home Server You Should Buy" Or, why older computers may be better for the environment | Hardware Haven
Submitted 6 hours ago by ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PisIPpbMkTc
Comments
crimsonpoodle@pawb.social 21 minutes ago
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 10 minutes ago
Older desktop parts can have a somewhat hefty idle power draw. According to this old review of the i7-2600k, the system idles at 74w, which at $0.12 per KWh, would cost you roughly $77 per year. Though you might want to confirm that with a Kill-a-watt meter if you can (libraries sometimes lend them out).
If that is accurate, you could potentially replace your i7-2600 with a used Dell Wyse 5070 thin client from ebay for about $40 (in the US), and that idles at 5w, which would only cost you $5 a year at the same rate, meaning it would pay for itself in a few months and safe energy (and emissions) at the same time.
Older thin clients and laptops tend to have much better idle power draws compared to desktops. For other people reading this, if you’re using a desktop for a low-power use case, it’s probably worth finding out what it’s idle power consumption is and doing the calculation, and determine if it would be worth replacing it with a more efficient used thin-client.
3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 15 minutes ago
I did lol at cheap kwh internet - sounds way better than talking energy costs
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 27 minutes ago
Yeah, this is why I reuse my old PC parts. Here’s my rough history:
- Built PC w/ old AM3 board for personal use
- Upgraded to AM4, used AM3 build for NAS (just bought drives)
- Upgraded CPU and mobo (wanted mini-ITX), and upgraded NAS to AM5 (did need some RAM)
My NAS power draw was cut in half from 2-3, and it’ll probably be cut again when I upgrade my PC again.
Old PC parts FTW!
lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
This should be a well know, but often misunderstood thing. Lots of reddit selfhosting threds urge people to buy a new mini-pc for its “low power draw” when usually its the same or 1-2watts less then a laptop from 2012. However performace to watt is much higher, so if you need massive preformance new is much better, if your system is idling most of the time anyway, theres been little improvement in the absolute minimums
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
You just can’t buy too old or the inverse happens and the performance per watt drops. I think you’re right that 2012 is about the cutoff. Maybe 2007 for certain items, like my 2007 iMac. But if you’re getting back to the Pentium 4 era you’ve gone too far and need to turn back around.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 hours ago
Oh god, P4? Yea, those were just 100 watt light bulbs.
Cort@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
No, the graphics from Intel back in 07-10 were crap. 2012-2013 would be my bare minimum, usb3 if only for loading a new OS.
Damage@feddit.it 1 hour ago
For my first server, after moving on from 2 raspberrys to a Proxmox host, I went with an embedded Asrock MB, passively cooled so you know it wasn’t drawing much power, still had multiple SATA ports and with the right sticks I could get 32GB RAM in.
Seems better to me than a minipc where you have no expandability, especially no chance for RAID.
BackYardIncendiary@lemmy.sdf.org 2 hours ago
I use a 2011 ThinkPad X120e as an FTP/Syncthing server. It was underpowered as a laptop from day one, but still works fine as a lightweight server. The best thing about ThinkPads is that TLP allows you to set min/max charging thresholds, so that you can keep an old battery in good shape for … well, I’ll let you know. This one’s 14 years old and still has a four-hour run time.
One thing I’d like to try is “Wake My Potato” for shutdown / automatic restart when a power outage occurs.
Links:
TLP - linrunner.de/tlp/index.html
Wake My Potato - github.com/pablogila/WakeMyPotato
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
I am currently building a home server, this project timeline has been extended as I had no idea hard drives would be THAT expensive at the capacities I want…
I do have an old computer that is not in use, but I don’t want to run a Bulldozer plattform…
So I am basing my new server on the AMD Ryzen 4600G, should be fine
3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 15 minutes ago
I have a 4-node heater here, but only 2 nodes are in use currently. I got it because it was exceedingly cheap (£75 here in UK and all 4 nodes have 3xE5-2620s and 48 gig ram) but in reality it overkill. Tempted to make a solar powered rpi 5 + m.2 server with battery backup just because I can, but it will be for serving websites both static and worpress