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A good number of the mini PC's idle under 12W. My i5-6500t does. Yeah they ramp up under load to 30W, but a before rpi5 to start to ramp up like that would've b
by jauntywundrkind 2y ago
A good number of the mini PC's idle under 12W. My i5-6500t does. Yeah they ramp up under load to 30W, but a before rpi5 to start to ramp up like that would've been way more compute than an RPi could offer.
Also notably there are some low power options too. My first kube cluster was on these nice 2014 Acer Chromebox cxi's; they idled at 6w! Crazy slow 2957u Celeron processor, but I used it a node as my desktop for ~2 years (with 16GB ram). But it had gobs of USB bandwidth, mpcie wifi, sata, gigabit, and if i'd sprung for i3 models it probably would have been downright pleasant to use versus the 1.6GHz no turbo dual core I was getting.
Personally I've avoided the atom cores generally, but there's been a variety of decent low power offerings of big cores for a while. Heck, my Ultrabook tablet is ~6W when running, with screen on, with a i5-7200u. 15W TDP core with some additional TDP up available.
Point is, there's been a range of pretty low power x86 offerings. Just, not always super obvious.
- Asmod4n 2y agothe n100 mini pc i got here runs at around 3.5 watts while running homeassistant with a unifi network server while having around two dozen devices connected. under debian 12 minimal.
- craftkiller 2y agoHow are you measuring that? I've been scouring the web for low-idle-power builds and 3.5 watts is far below the best builds I've found (assuming that 3.5 watts is measured at-the-wall).
- Semaphor 2y agoThe futro S740, popular with selfhosters in Germany, gets similar wattage for people [0]. On a slightly older CPU (J4105). I can't measure values below 10W myself, but with 2 SSDs and 8GB RAM it never goes above that value, even under full load. [0] https://github.com/R3NE07/Futro-S740/blob/main/power_consumption.md https://github.com/R3NE07/Futro-S740/blob/main/power_consump...
- weweweoo 2y agoI've measured about 5w from the wall with Pentium J5005 based Dell thin client which has a tiny fan, one SSD, two RAM modules. No idea how N100 compares to J5005.
- geerlingguy 2y agoN100 runs slightly hotter, I've seen it more like 6-8W
- Asmod4n 2y agoJust a cheap measurement adapter you plug between the wall and cable. The nice thing about n100 Is its ability to disable the iGPU in the bios, saving you a little bit of power. But you have to reset the bios on the board to regain any output if you might need it later.
- GTP 2y agoSounds interesting, could you please share brand and model? Also, do you know how many SSDs/HDDs you can put inside? Could be a good replacement to have a low power NAS.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoUnless I'm running on battery, that's a pretty abstract win to me in the US. My i5-6500t's 10W for all 8760 hours of the year is 87kWh; less would be nice but my power bill is already under $10/year at that rate. It is great that something on par is so affordable & even lower power though! And what I bought was a value because it was used, where-as now you can buy new. It's felt like the atom lineup was kind of slow rolling things & there hasnt been much availability for cheap AMD systems. These low price low power e-cores systems have really changed the game, have expanded the value proposition a lot versus the used-x86 mini PC or io limited ARM market's long stalemate.
- hollerith 2y agoApple claims that the latest Mac minis draw 7 W at idle: https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253 https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253 E.g., Apple M2 Pro chip, 32GB unified memory, 8TB SSD.
- geerlingguy 2y agoApple's still the only company that matches other Arm boards/servers on efficiency (perf/W) + idle power draw. AMD has been doing a little better, Intel slightly more so.
- wpm 2y agoI am keeping an eye out for a cheap M1 Mac Mini on my local Craigslist because once you yank it out of its huge metal case, which is like half PSU, the board itself is quite small. Apparently, the PSU only outputs 12W across the entire power connector, so easily powered by a barrel jack. I quite like the idea of playing around with macOS as a SBC OS, but even just designing a smaller case with sufficient cooling would be fun too.
- GTP 2y ago> Apparently, the PSU only outputs 12W across the entire power connector What is your source? Because, according to the link shared by op, they can consume up to 50W or 100W depending on the model.
- wpm 2y agoWhoops, meant 12V not 12W. Meaning it can be powered off of a big enough battery bank or a simple barrel plug power brick.
- GTP 2y agoInteresting, but they can jump up to 50W or 100W depending on the model. Which such a big swing, you really need to consider your specific use case to see what will be the actual power consumption.