6 ms·

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay ma

We don't all live in countries where electricity is near-free. In the UK, it would cost more in electricity than the $200 Zimaboard to run one of those eBay machines for a single year. e.g. 90W 24/7 for a year is ~£212 (~$258 US), 60W 24/7: ~£142 ($173 US) In this price range, power-consumption is a _major_ decision factor.

Mistletoe 3y ago
The HP Prodesk is 12W idle though. I think the Zimaboard is 8w idle. I agree that power consumption is a big cost that people don’t think about though.
zekica 3y ago
90W is peak power consumption for these. They idle at about 8-9W measured at the wall socket or $22-25/year.
- alias_neo 3y ago
  That's why I included a 60W cost too. What's the point running hardware 24/7/365 is it's idle?
  - MisterTea 3y ago
    So you can connect on demand? My server is mostly idle too as it only serves me.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
    Instant availability of the services provided without waiting on bootup, wakeup, or anything else.
  - firecall 3y ago
    Because home servers tend to be bursty on demand workloads. If you doing something that is hammering a CPU at 100% 24/7, then you’d get a faster CPI to get the workload completed faster and you’d be back to having idle CPU cycles… Now RAM on the other hand! Free RAM is wasted RAM!
    - radlad 3y ago
      > Free RAM is wasted RAM! ZFS will take care of that for you.
    - alias_neo 3y ago
      > Because home servers tend to be bursty on demand workloads. Not all workloads can be "completed" by throwing hardware at them. The sort of thing this kind of hardware is ideal for is things like home automation. I run Home Assistant on an Xeon ITX PC with a micro-PSU for example, it's at ~40-60% CPU and ~80% RAM (of 16GB) running inference on my camera streams, handling Zigbee and Z-Wave devices etc, running automations, handling all of the sensors for the doors, lights etc in my home. This isn't a bursty problem you can simply get a more powerful CPU for, the goal here is to keep power down and performance up because it's a constant load. A smaller, lower power micro-PC would save me a bit in energy costs if I wanted to. For real work, people like me (us?) use real servers like you say; I run a Ryzen 9 12c/24t, AsRock Rack, 2 M.2 NVMe, HBA, 8 SAS bays, 128GB RAM, 6 GbE NICs, with dozens of VMs and containers on, a few Kubernetes clusters, and a bunch of services (git, Harbor, Argo, etc) it uses about 100-150W with my CPU downspecced to 65W TDP. Now that's a system that has bursty workloads, but it's in a different class to these low power machines that "normal" home users are looking for. > Now RAM on the other hand! > Free RAM is wasted RAM! Can't argue with that.
  - tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
    This just flat-out isn’t representative of what I’d expect a home server workload to be.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    60W might be right for an ancient desktop, but it isn't correct for at least the above microserver (2nd item). From rough memory, mine were under 40W (38W?) when the drives were spun up and active. And likely isn't correct for the minipc (1st item) either, though I've not got one of those (yet) to measure it.
    - stavros 3y ago
      My Silver Lake NUC runs at around 8 W (IIRC) idle (running a few services, but not actively serving requests). It's 30 W or so at peak load. Even my i3 NUC isn't that much heavier, consuming 15ish W (IIRC again) idle.
_cenw 3y ago
More reason to buy the kind of passively cooled mini PC people get as pfSense routers from AliExpress & co. You get Jasper Lake (2021) or even Alder Lake (2023) instead of the much older Apollo Lake from 2016. The only thing you really miss out on is the form factor and the PCIe slot.
- alias_neo 3y ago
  Can't disagree with you there. And I'm not a huge fan of the form-factor either, it gets messy once you've got your SATA connectors, power and ethernet. Not suggesting Zima is the right solution, but ebaying dated hardware often isn't either for many of us. Don't get me wrong, it's great there are people who can use this stuff and not pay disproportionate prices for electricity to run it; but much of the world isn't in that situation; maybe one day.
- dominick-cc 3y ago
  I recently got one of those passive boxes with an N5105 for opnsense. But I found it ran pretty hot. I was able to replace the thermal paste and shim the cooler a bit to get it closer to the CPU (there was originally a huge gap they bridged with a glob of paste), and it lowered the temps a bit, but it still hung out around 60-65c afterward. I think that could be OK, but it still just felt too warm too the touch. I ended up placing a USB 5V fan on the outside of the case and now it sits around 40-45c which I'm more happy with. But now I have a fan running 24/7 running on my passive device. At the end of this ordeal, I bought another machine (MSI Cubi-N with an N200) for cheaper than the Topton Aliexpress job, which includes an internal fan. The fan is super quiet and the build quality is way better. And it comes from a reputable manufacturer which I trust more to not load any weird stuff into the bootloader. If I could do it again, I'd probably try to make my Opnsense router out of an MSI Cubi N with an N100 or N200, in both cases it would have been cheaper, more powerful, and use less electricity than the Aliexpress passive one. The only possible hiccup would be non-Intel nics that the Cubi comes with. Just some perspective from someone who recently bought a couple of these devices.
- aborsy 3y ago
  And 2X SATA ports, although they may not have enough power to drive 2X 3.5” hard drives. You could do 2X 4TB SSD ZFS RAID1.
orangeisthe 3y ago
90W f24/7? Let me stop you right there
Zetobal 3y ago
It's not the 00s anymore hardware can idle and handle light workloads without sucking the full tdp out of the socket.
justinclift 3y ago
These idle at a small fraction of what you feel is the expected power consumption, so your pricing calculation per year is way off. Far too high. The cpu in the microserver (2nd item) is socketed, so you can swap it out for something lower power if you really wanted to. For me, I've actually upgraded the cpus in my microservers (several of them) as I tend to use them hard at times. :)
dominick-cc 3y ago
If you want low power, check out the N100 systems that are out now. They use like 3W. I bought the N200 from this deal recently and it's a great little machine that can handle a lot of Plex transcodes https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-intel-n100-or-n200-mini-pc-nuc-newegg-119-99 https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-in... It's interesting that these N100 systems can cost less than some of the Zima products. So for me, I don't see much of an upside of going with them.
- doubled112 3y ago
  As I read through the article I came to exactly the same conclusion. I have an N95 mini PC that was $195 CAD, which came with 16GB RAM and a 500GB NVMe. It will also hold one SATA drive. All in a single box, although it is slightly larger and has a fan. The NVMe slot on the Orange Pi 5 I use also keeps that mess down to a minimum. Power + network and that's a finished setup. Edit: There are a TON of options in this space now. The value of 10 year old eBay gear is questionable at best.
- mmcgaha 3y ago
  N100 and N200 systems are perfect price/performance for small servers. I am running a 7-year-old N3710 fanless laptop right now and it performs well enough for a few tiny sites and a postgresql database. I am pretty sure we reached this point ten years ago but I was too numb to notice it but low power devices have become powerful enough to replace the dedicated servers that we were spending tons of money on twenty years ago.
  - kjs3 3y ago
    Once you get objective about what you're using that home server for, this is so true. Ignoring things like crypotomining or $FOO-At-Home gamified compute grinding, the vast majority of home needs are met by the lowest end processors. The J4105-based mini-pc I have running VMware isn't annoyingly slower (tho to be fair is definitely not faster) than the 10 year old server it replaced, but uses a fraction of the power and makes no noise.
- squarefoot 3y ago
cramjabsyn 3y ago
They run laptop components so try more like 5-15W normally
vanishingzero 3y ago
[dead]
SantiagoElf 3y ago
EU/UK slowly going back to the Dark Ages. 'Eletricity is too expensive'. What is next - I shower once per week to preserve energy :D
jnsaff2 3y ago
As others have said 60 or 90W is just not true. Have a look at systems people have built or tested [0]. The cutoff for this table is 30W max. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzsNnjp10VI-odvwZpQZKv_NCI/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzs...

Mistletoe 3y ago

The HP Prodesk is 12W idle though. I think the Zimaboard is 8w idle. I agree that power consumption is a big cost that people don’t think about though.

zekica 3y ago

90W is peak power consumption for these. They idle at about 8-9W measured at the wall socket or $22-25/year.

alias_neo 3y ago
That's why I included a 60W cost too. What's the point running hardware 24/7/365 is it's idle?
- MisterTea 3y ago
  So you can connect on demand? My server is mostly idle too as it only serves me.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
  Instant availability of the services provided without waiting on bootup, wakeup, or anything else.
- firecall 3y ago
  Because home servers tend to be bursty on demand workloads. If you doing something that is hammering a CPU at 100% 24/7, then you’d get a faster CPI to get the workload completed faster and you’d be back to having idle CPU cycles… Now RAM on the other hand! Free RAM is wasted RAM!
  - radlad 3y ago
    > Free RAM is wasted RAM! ZFS will take care of that for you.
  - alias_neo 3y ago
    > Because home servers tend to be bursty on demand workloads. Not all workloads can be "completed" by throwing hardware at them. The sort of thing this kind of hardware is ideal for is things like home automation. I run Home Assistant on an Xeon ITX PC with a micro-PSU for example, it's at ~40-60% CPU and ~80% RAM (of 16GB) running inference on my camera streams, handling Zigbee and Z-Wave devices etc, running automations, handling all of the sensors for the doors, lights etc in my home. This isn't a bursty problem you can simply get a more powerful CPU for, the goal here is to keep power down and performance up because it's a constant load. A smaller, lower power micro-PC would save me a bit in energy costs if I wanted to. For real work, people like me (us?) use real servers like you say; I run a Ryzen 9 12c/24t, AsRock Rack, 2 M.2 NVMe, HBA, 8 SAS bays, 128GB RAM, 6 GbE NICs, with dozens of VMs and containers on, a few Kubernetes clusters, and a bunch of services (git, Harbor, Argo, etc) it uses about 100-150W with my CPU downspecced to 65W TDP. Now that's a system that has bursty workloads, but it's in a different class to these low power machines that "normal" home users are looking for. > Now RAM on the other hand! > Free RAM is wasted RAM! Can't argue with that.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  This just flat-out isn’t representative of what I’d expect a home server workload to be.
- justinclift 3y ago
  60W might be right for an ancient desktop, but it isn't correct for at least the above microserver (2nd item). From rough memory, mine were under 40W (38W?) when the drives were spun up and active. And likely isn't correct for the minipc (1st item) either, though I've not got one of those (yet) to measure it.
  - stavros 3y ago
    My Silver Lake NUC runs at around 8 W (IIRC) idle (running a few services, but not actively serving requests). It's 30 W or so at peak load. Even my i3 NUC isn't that much heavier, consuming 15ish W (IIRC again) idle.

_cenw 3y ago

More reason to buy the kind of passively cooled mini PC people get as pfSense routers from AliExpress & co. You get Jasper Lake (2021) or even Alder Lake (2023) instead of the much older Apollo Lake from 2016. The only thing you really miss out on is the form factor and the PCIe slot.

alias_neo 3y ago
Can't disagree with you there. And I'm not a huge fan of the form-factor either, it gets messy once you've got your SATA connectors, power and ethernet. Not suggesting Zima is the right solution, but ebaying dated hardware often isn't either for many of us. Don't get me wrong, it's great there are people who can use this stuff and not pay disproportionate prices for electricity to run it; but much of the world isn't in that situation; maybe one day.
dominick-cc 3y ago
I recently got one of those passive boxes with an N5105 for opnsense. But I found it ran pretty hot. I was able to replace the thermal paste and shim the cooler a bit to get it closer to the CPU (there was originally a huge gap they bridged with a glob of paste), and it lowered the temps a bit, but it still hung out around 60-65c afterward. I think that could be OK, but it still just felt too warm too the touch. I ended up placing a USB 5V fan on the outside of the case and now it sits around 40-45c which I'm more happy with. But now I have a fan running 24/7 running on my passive device. At the end of this ordeal, I bought another machine (MSI Cubi-N with an N200) for cheaper than the Topton Aliexpress job, which includes an internal fan. The fan is super quiet and the build quality is way better. And it comes from a reputable manufacturer which I trust more to not load any weird stuff into the bootloader. If I could do it again, I'd probably try to make my Opnsense router out of an MSI Cubi N with an N100 or N200, in both cases it would have been cheaper, more powerful, and use less electricity than the Aliexpress passive one. The only possible hiccup would be non-Intel nics that the Cubi comes with. Just some perspective from someone who recently bought a couple of these devices.
aborsy 3y ago
And 2X SATA ports, although they may not have enough power to drive 2X 3.5” hard drives. You could do 2X 4TB SSD ZFS RAID1.

orangeisthe 3y ago

90W f24/7? Let me stop you right there

Zetobal 3y ago

It's not the 00s anymore hardware can idle and handle light workloads without sucking the full tdp out of the socket.

justinclift 3y ago

These idle at a small fraction of what you feel is the expected power consumption, so your pricing calculation per year is way off. Far too high. The cpu in the microserver (2nd item) is socketed, so you can swap it out for something lower power if you really wanted to. For me, I've actually upgraded the cpus in my microservers (several of them) as I tend to use them hard at times. :)

dominick-cc 3y ago

If you want low power, check out the N100 systems that are out now. They use like 3W. I bought the N200 from this deal recently and it's a great little machine that can handle a lot of Plex transcodes https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-intel-n100-or-n200-mini-pc-nuc-newegg-119-99 https://slickdeals.net/f/16934029-msi-cubi-n-adl-dual-nic-in... It's interesting that these N100 systems can cost less than some of the Zima products. So for me, I don't see much of an upside of going with them.

doubled112 3y ago
As I read through the article I came to exactly the same conclusion. I have an N95 mini PC that was $195 CAD, which came with 16GB RAM and a 500GB NVMe. It will also hold one SATA drive. All in a single box, although it is slightly larger and has a fan. The NVMe slot on the Orange Pi 5 I use also keeps that mess down to a minimum. Power + network and that's a finished setup. Edit: There are a TON of options in this space now. The value of 10 year old eBay gear is questionable at best.
mmcgaha 3y ago
N100 and N200 systems are perfect price/performance for small servers. I am running a 7-year-old N3710 fanless laptop right now and it performs well enough for a few tiny sites and a postgresql database. I am pretty sure we reached this point ten years ago but I was too numb to notice it but low power devices have become powerful enough to replace the dedicated servers that we were spending tons of money on twenty years ago.
- kjs3 3y ago
  Once you get objective about what you're using that home server for, this is so true. Ignoring things like crypotomining or $FOO-At-Home gamified compute grinding, the vast majority of home needs are met by the lowest end processors. The J4105-based mini-pc I have running VMware isn't annoyingly slower (tho to be fair is definitely not faster) than the 10 year old server it replaced, but uses a fraction of the power and makes no noise.
squarefoot 3y ago

cramjabsyn 3y ago

They run laptop components so try more like 5-15W normally

vanishingzero 3y ago

[dead]

SantiagoElf 3y ago

EU/UK slowly going back to the Dark Ages. 'Eletricity is too expensive'. What is next - I shower once per week to preserve energy :D

jnsaff2 3y ago

As others have said 60 or 90W is just not true. Have a look at systems people have built or tested [0]. The cutoff for this table is 30W max. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzsNnjp10VI-odvwZpQZKv_NCI/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzs...