- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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OK. Science time. Somewhat arbitrary values used, the point is there is a amortization calculation, you’ll need to calculate your own with accurate input values.
A PC drawing 100W 24/7 uses 877 kWh@0.15 $131.49 per year.
A NAS drawing 25W 24/7 uses 219 kWh@0.15 $32.87 per year
So, in this hypothetical case you “save” about $100/year on power costs running the NAS.
Assuming a capacity equivalent NAS might cost $1200 then you’re better off using the PC you have rather than buying a NAS for 12 years.
This ignores that the heat generated by the devices is desirable in winter so the higher heat output option has additional utility.
Highly doubt it’s worth it in the long run due to electricity costs alone
Depends.
Toss the GPU/wifi, disable audio, throttle the processor a ton, and set the OS to power saving, and old PCs can be shockingly efficient.
You can slow the RAM down too. You don’t need XMP enabled if you’re just using the PC as a NAS. It can be quite power hungry.
Eh, older RAM doesn’t use much. If it runs close to stock voltage, maybe just set it at stock voltage and bump the speed down a notch, then you get a nice task energy gain from the performance boost.
A desktop running a low usage wouldn’t consume much more than a NAS, as long as you drop the video card (which wouldn’t be running anyways).
Take only that extra and you probably have a few years usage before additional electricty costs overrun NAS cost. Where I live that’s around 5 years for an estimated extra 10W.
as long as you drop the video card
As I wrote below, some motherboards won’t POST without a GPU.
Take only that extra and you probably have a few years usage before additional electricty costs overrun NAS cost. Where I live that’s around 5 years for an estimated extra 10W.
Yeah, and what’s more, if one of those appliance-like NASes breaks down, how do you fix it? With a normal PC you just swap out the defective part.
So I did this, using a Ryzen 3600, with some light tweaking the base system burns about 40-50W idle. The drives add a lot, 5-10W each, but they would go into any NAS system, so that’s irrelevant. I had to add a GPU because the MB I had wouldn’t POST without one, so that increases the power draw a little, but it’s also necessary for proper Jellyfin transcoding. I recently swapped the GPU for an Intel ARC A310.
By comparison, the previous system I used for this had a low-power, fanless intel celeron, with a single drive and two SSDs it drew about 30W.
If they’re gonna buy a nas anyway, how many years to break even?
I’m still running a 480 that doubles as a space heater (I’m not even joking; I increase the load based on ambient temps during winter)
I am assuming that’s a GTX 480 and not an RX 480; if so - kudos for not having that thing melt the solder off the heatsink by now! 😅
I see what you mean, and I have that (old PC with a bunch of 2.5" HDDs formatted as ZFS).
For me power consumption is more important than performance, so I’m looking for a lower power solution for photo sharing, music collection and backups.
My NAS draws about 25w (without drives). Show me an old PC with 6 3.5” drive bays that draws 25w.
I started my media server in 2020 with an e-wasted i7 3770 dell tower I snagged out of the ewaste pile. Ran jellyfin, audiobookbay, navidrome, calibre-web and an arr stack with about a dozen users like a champ. Old hardware rules if you don’t use windows
How about a Raspberry Pi? I’ve got one (Raspberry Pi 400) running my Home Automation setup with a couple USB 3.0 ports. Was thinking there’s gotta be some add-ons for Home Assistant to put some external storage to good use.
Don’t need anything too fancy. Just looking for some on-site backup and maybe some media storage
You can use it as a smb server and mount it with your other devices. They have an official addon for it with samba in the name.
My old PC locks up every 4 to 48 hours. It would make a terrible NAS.
My pc did that when my almost 10 year old SSD with my OS started to die. Switched it out and haven’t had an issue since.
My old PC and laptop are too loud to use for anything really. It‘s unfortunate but the noise is too much.
Clean the PC and change the fans. Fans make noise when old.
And repaste it if you’re going this far
I mean… my old PC burns through 50-100W, even at idle and even without a bunch of spinning hard drives. My actual NAS barely breaks that under load with all bays full.
I could scrounge up enough SATA inputs on it to make for a decent NAS if I didn’t care about that, and I could still run a few other services with the spare cycles, but… maybe not the best use of power.
I am genuinely considering turning it into a backup box I turn on under automation to run a backup and then turn off after completion. That’s feasible and would do quite well, as opposed to paying for a dedicated backup unit.
Better to build it from scratch, your desktop PC does not have server-grade hardware. No ECC, no IPMI, not enough SATA ports, etc.
I think the self-hosting community needs to be more honest with itself about separating self hosting from building server hardware at home as separate hobbies.
You absolutely don’t need sever-grade hardware for a home/family server, but I do see building a proper server as a separate activity, kinda like building a ship in a bottle.
That calculation changes a bit if you’re trying to host some publicly available service at home, but even that is a bit of a separate thing unless you’re running a hosting business, at which point it’s not a really a home server anyways, even if it happens to sit inside your house.
None of that really matters for a home media server. Even the limited SATA ports, worst case you have to grab a cheap expansion card.
Power consumption is a much bigger concern, a purpose built NAS is much more efficient than a random old PC.
Even the most expensive Synology only has space for 8 drives with only one 10Gbit ethernet port.
You can build something yourself for less with much better performance.
