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As we learned in Europe in 2022, electricity isn't some infinite resource. When it gets rationed, the price goes way up. A raspberry Pi costs up to 1€/month in

As we learned in Europe in 2022, electricity isn't some infinite resource. When it gets rationed, the price goes way up. A raspberry Pi costs up to 1€/month in electricity to keep running as a server, while any used computer will cost quite a bit more. When suggesting old hardware for server use, make sure to consider the total cost, not just the cost of the hardware itself.

rasz 4y ago
It isnt 2005 anymore. Old hardware nowadays is "Lot of 5 LENOVO THINKPAD YOGA 260 i3-6100U 4GB Ram 128GB SSD Cracked Screens" coming down to $40 a pop. 2x TDP (15W vs 7.5 of rpi4) but at the same time >2x CPU power, >10x GPU power. Not to mention you get real SATA SSD storage, real DDR4 sodimm slot, keyboard, and battery backup.
- FeistySkink 4y ago
  Not anywhere in Europe. People tend to sell used stuff for more than the new. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places.
  - minimaul 4y ago
    I find that Microsoft Authorised Refurbishers are a good place to start to find cheap old corporate machines - eg I can typically get something like an Intel i5 8500T based Lenovo/Dell/HP mini PC with RAM and SSD for less than £200. I actually bought a Lenovo M910Q with i5 6500T, 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM for ~£100 in the last year. It'll absolutely demolish a Pi 4 at CPU & GPU performance, can take much more RAM than a Pi, idles at <10W on 230V mains, you get the bonuses of easy software compatibility as it just runs any mainstream Linux distro & and it runs x86_64 code, it has real storage interfaces (SATA & NVMe), and has an Intel NIC. For home server uses, they're really nice machines.
  - rasz 4y ago
    The keyword here is "cracked screens".
- bobmaxup 4y ago
  A laptop I use for this function draws 10W on average, and that is without any additional tooling like: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq
- ilyt 4y ago
  TDP is not something you should look at. It's just the top, not how low it can go on idle. My VM server has ~35W TDP but gets 20W with SSD/dual NIC and acting as WiFi accesspoint. CPU usage is less than half of that, at those levels motherboard is often the element with highest power consumption and it is hard to get data on which motherboard is most power efficient. Probably easier with laptops as in theory you can just get run time on battery, battery size and calculate power usage off that.
joezydeco 4y ago
Right. And then go back to your gaming PC with the 250 watt GPU running inside. /s

rasz 4y ago

It isnt 2005 anymore. Old hardware nowadays is "Lot of 5 LENOVO THINKPAD YOGA 260 i3-6100U 4GB Ram 128GB SSD Cracked Screens" coming down to $40 a pop. 2x TDP (15W vs 7.5 of rpi4) but at the same time >2x CPU power, >10x GPU power. Not to mention you get real SATA SSD storage, real DDR4 sodimm slot, keyboard, and battery backup.

FeistySkink 4y ago
Not anywhere in Europe. People tend to sell used stuff for more than the new. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places.
- minimaul 4y ago
  I find that Microsoft Authorised Refurbishers are a good place to start to find cheap old corporate machines - eg I can typically get something like an Intel i5 8500T based Lenovo/Dell/HP mini PC with RAM and SSD for less than £200. I actually bought a Lenovo M910Q with i5 6500T, 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM for ~£100 in the last year. It'll absolutely demolish a Pi 4 at CPU & GPU performance, can take much more RAM than a Pi, idles at <10W on 230V mains, you get the bonuses of easy software compatibility as it just runs any mainstream Linux distro & and it runs x86_64 code, it has real storage interfaces (SATA & NVMe), and has an Intel NIC. For home server uses, they're really nice machines.
- rasz 4y ago
  The keyword here is "cracked screens".
bobmaxup 4y ago
A laptop I use for this function draws 10W on average, and that is without any additional tooling like: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq
ilyt 4y ago
TDP is not something you should look at. It's just the top, not how low it can go on idle. My VM server has ~35W TDP but gets 20W with SSD/dual NIC and acting as WiFi accesspoint. CPU usage is less than half of that, at those levels motherboard is often the element with highest power consumption and it is hard to get data on which motherboard is most power efficient. Probably easier with laptops as in theory you can just get run time on battery, battery size and calculate power usage off that.

joezydeco 4y ago

Right. And then go back to your gaming PC with the 250 watt GPU running inside. /s