4 ms·

difference might be that a Raspberry Pi consumes < 10W. An old PC draws easily 5-10 times more energy. Depending on your location, the yearly cost of running

difference might be that a Raspberry Pi consumes < 10W. An old PC draws easily 5-10 times more energy. Depending on your location, the yearly cost of running a Pi is around ~10$. The big machine then 50-100$. So energy wise, a small power efficient machine might be more expensive but the running cost could be lower.

throwaway984393 2y ago
Not only excess power draw, but excess heat, which then needs more power for the AC to cool the home
- switchbak 2y ago
  I have a little Intel i5 behind me all year long, and I don't notice any effect on the temperature of this (small) room. 12 watts is not a lot of heat to be dumping. This is really small fry compared to other HVAC efficiency concerns, and definitely not an issue outside of summertime temps in most locales. My Threadripper on the other hand - I had to move that into the crawlspace as it was: a) loud as hell, and b) basically a space heater that also does useful compute. 160w idle, ~280w full tilt - that thing is very noticable.
  - brewtide 2y ago
    >12 watts is not a lot of heat to be dumping. Just as a reference point, straight up "electric heat" is basically 250 watts A Foot.
- declan_roberts 2y ago
  This is exactly why I upgrade my old 2012 server. I was able to cut the power usage (and heat generation) by over 90%. It makes a big difference in the summer, but I miss it during the winter.
cdaringe 2y ago
Agreed. Related, disappointingly, the new pi5s don’t have much in the way of running in a lower power state. I gather it’s mainly the cpu, but my new pi5 runs hot doing a whole lot of nothing. Cooling solution is pretty much required. I am very content with perf, but it actually brings too much juice to the table for the tiny apps im running. Sure, another soc would be a better fit power wise, but the ecosystem keeps me locked in!
- dkasper 2y ago
  I agree, might buy another pi 4 for my next project. The new chips are interesting though.
  - bloomingeek 2y ago
    You might consider a pi 5. I'm using it after I installed the NVMe top mount hat. (Where I loaded Raspberry OS.) It really speeds everything up! BTW, I'm using a M.2 2280 drive, even though the hat is designed for shorter drives. (I just tied mine down.) I installed it over the CPU fan and it works great.
    - dkasper 2y ago
      depends on the project and whether it needs the speed vs the cost & power savings, same as buying an old pc
SparkyMcUnicorn 2y ago
As noted in my other comment, my SFF computers with i7 CPUs idle around 12W. Roughly $20/year with my usage in a home server setup.
auspiv 2y ago
mini PCs are < 10W also. I have a full on Dell Optiplex 3070 (i5-9500, 1x16GB memory, 512GB NVMe) running windows 10 that idles at 8W. I have a lenovo m92p tiny (i5-3570s, released 2012) that idles at 6W.
xhrpost 2y ago
It's a fair point but as others have noted, these mini PCs can be very power efficient. I still need to hook up a meter to mine to see what the wattage is but I'm sure it's far below a typical desktop PC.
vel0city 2y ago
My mini PC I use as a router with an N3710 CPU uses like 5W idle with a SATA SSD. It's a 6W TDP. Running full tilt is like 10W.
vladvasiliu 2y ago
As others have said, this needs to be qualified. My HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF qualifies as "old" I think, yet it draws 14-15W at idle, measured at the outlet. It has an i5-6500, 32 GB RAM, 2 SATA SSDs and a 4-port i350 NIC (all ports up). Idle means OpnSense and HomeAssistant running inside KVM on top of whatever kernel version was current in Arch at the time, but with no traffic. Does the raspberry pi draw 1-3W only? It should be noted that old pcs like these can be had extremely cheap, so the difference in price should take this into account. Moreover, if you need extensions of any kind (NICs, drives), getting them running at all on a PI is somewhat more involved than on a standard PC.
- j45 2y ago
  I have owned gen 5/6/7/7 devices, Gen 8 delivers the idle power much more honestly and it can be measured quite easily. In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    > Gen 8 delivers the idle power much more honestly What do you mean by this? > In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time. Doesn't it depend on the actual CPU used? I have an HP Elitedesk Mini (which is basically a small laptop without a screen — the equivalent of the ThinkCentres mentioned in this thread) and the CPU is an i5-8500 IIRC. I don't think this particular configuration would draw much less power than a "regular" desktop / SFF, aside maybe from the RAM (it uses SO-DIMM). I've never bothered to measure its idle power draw, and don't have any comparable "full desktop" to compare. I don't know if HP or Lenovo have models with laptop-class CPUs in this form factor, but I image that would be an actual improvement on the power draw. I did see however Chinese brands on Amazon sell models with those kinds of CPUs.
    - j45 2y ago
      Typo in my first sentence about the Gen 8. it should be "Gen 8 cpu's in a USFF appear to deliver lower idle power usage and lower high end power usage than Gen 6/7." You're correct that some of these machines have desktop CPUs, what I discovered was they also have different classes of desktop CPUs. The m920q/m920s appear to have differnet power usages an possibly different cpus, or at least they're configured different. If I compare the two: - m920q (USFF) can go as high as 135w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M920_Tiny/ThinkCentre_M920_Tiny_Spec.PDF https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe... - m920s SFF can go as high as 260w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M920_SFF/ThinkCentre_M920_SFF_Spec.PDF https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe... Additionally, if you look up the Gen 6/7/8 power usage for the cpu itself, you can see the idle and total is different as well. The trick is Lenovo is far from the best priced USFF in this category for the same thing. When I bought Lenovo, I wanted to try out Proxmox, had no interest in fighting with installation or drivers, an just picked something that had flawless installation... that has since improved with other manufacturers. The tool from OP here is really cool - I'd probably add some from the spreadsheet I had built out but I haven't had to buy many more of these once I figured it out. Load them up with ram, a few ssds, a UPS and they're pretty solid.
weweweoo 2y ago
Here's examples of idle power consumption of second hand mini-pc's i've tested, running Ubuntu, measured from the wall: Dell Wyse 5070 with Pentium Silver J5005 ~ 5W Fujitsu Futro S940 with J5005 as well ~ 7W Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro with i5-10500t ~ 12W with two SSD's In comparison, my Ryzen 7 server build consumes about 22W idle (before I added GPU), has 4x SSD and 4x RAM sticks. I like raspberry pi, but for most purposes an used mini-pc is a better choice.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  The RPi Zero 2 W consumes ~ 0.6W when idling, and costs $15 new, or in the $25-30 range with a case and USB power adapter.
  - BoredPositron 2y ago
    Talking about building a server with a Zero 2 W is a bit of a stretch. I have some running as airplay and Spotify connect clients + some environmental sensors but much more would be pushing it...
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      No where in the thread was the "building a server" use case defined - the subject was always-on costs. That said, an RPi Zero works perfectly fine as a pihole (DHCP + DNS server), WireGuard node, a git mirror (running Forgejo), and many more use cases that are not CPU-bound. Obviously, Raspberry Pis, SFF boxes, workstations and rack mounted servers all occupy different niches (with some overlap). Anyone confidently stating that one could fully replace anther with no context of the workloads is wrong.
      - BoredPositron 2y ago
        The OP of the comment you answered was pretty much talking about how he uses his mini PC as a server and doing projects on it... and ofc a zero can do everything but at what speed? IOPS is disturbingly slow. I like the Zero for what it is but it's just not a good server fit.
notpublic 2y ago
Have a used HP Prodesk 600 G3 with 16GB RAM running idle around ~12W. Bought it last year and its been running solid so far.

throwaway984393 2y ago

Not only excess power draw, but excess heat, which then needs more power for the AC to cool the home

switchbak 2y ago
I have a little Intel i5 behind me all year long, and I don't notice any effect on the temperature of this (small) room. 12 watts is not a lot of heat to be dumping. This is really small fry compared to other HVAC efficiency concerns, and definitely not an issue outside of summertime temps in most locales. My Threadripper on the other hand - I had to move that into the crawlspace as it was: a) loud as hell, and b) basically a space heater that also does useful compute. 160w idle, ~280w full tilt - that thing is very noticable.
- brewtide 2y ago
  >12 watts is not a lot of heat to be dumping. Just as a reference point, straight up "electric heat" is basically 250 watts A Foot.
declan_roberts 2y ago
This is exactly why I upgrade my old 2012 server. I was able to cut the power usage (and heat generation) by over 90%. It makes a big difference in the summer, but I miss it during the winter.

cdaringe 2y ago

Agreed. Related, disappointingly, the new pi5s don’t have much in the way of running in a lower power state. I gather it’s mainly the cpu, but my new pi5 runs hot doing a whole lot of nothing. Cooling solution is pretty much required. I am very content with perf, but it actually brings too much juice to the table for the tiny apps im running. Sure, another soc would be a better fit power wise, but the ecosystem keeps me locked in!

dkasper 2y ago
I agree, might buy another pi 4 for my next project. The new chips are interesting though.
- bloomingeek 2y ago
  You might consider a pi 5. I'm using it after I installed the NVMe top mount hat. (Where I loaded Raspberry OS.) It really speeds everything up! BTW, I'm using a M.2 2280 drive, even though the hat is designed for shorter drives. (I just tied mine down.) I installed it over the CPU fan and it works great.
  - dkasper 2y ago
    depends on the project and whether it needs the speed vs the cost & power savings, same as buying an old pc

SparkyMcUnicorn 2y ago

As noted in my other comment, my SFF computers with i7 CPUs idle around 12W. Roughly $20/year with my usage in a home server setup.

auspiv 2y ago

mini PCs are < 10W also. I have a full on Dell Optiplex 3070 (i5-9500, 1x16GB memory, 512GB NVMe) running windows 10 that idles at 8W. I have a lenovo m92p tiny (i5-3570s, released 2012) that idles at 6W.

xhrpost 2y ago

It's a fair point but as others have noted, these mini PCs can be very power efficient. I still need to hook up a meter to mine to see what the wattage is but I'm sure it's far below a typical desktop PC.

vel0city 2y ago

My mini PC I use as a router with an N3710 CPU uses like 5W idle with a SATA SSD. It's a 6W TDP. Running full tilt is like 10W.

vladvasiliu 2y ago

As others have said, this needs to be qualified. My HP Elitedesk 800 G2 SFF qualifies as "old" I think, yet it draws 14-15W at idle, measured at the outlet. It has an i5-6500, 32 GB RAM, 2 SATA SSDs and a 4-port i350 NIC (all ports up). Idle means OpnSense and HomeAssistant running inside KVM on top of whatever kernel version was current in Arch at the time, but with no traffic. Does the raspberry pi draw 1-3W only? It should be noted that old pcs like these can be had extremely cheap, so the difference in price should take this into account. Moreover, if you need extensions of any kind (NICs, drives), getting them running at all on a PI is somewhat more involved than on a standard PC.

j45 2y ago
I have owned gen 5/6/7/7 devices, Gen 8 delivers the idle power much more honestly and it can be measured quite easily. In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  > Gen 8 delivers the idle power much more honestly What do you mean by this? > In either case, USFF is an order of magnitude less energy than desktop so it's still a win most of the time. Doesn't it depend on the actual CPU used? I have an HP Elitedesk Mini (which is basically a small laptop without a screen — the equivalent of the ThinkCentres mentioned in this thread) and the CPU is an i5-8500 IIRC. I don't think this particular configuration would draw much less power than a "regular" desktop / SFF, aside maybe from the RAM (it uses SO-DIMM). I've never bothered to measure its idle power draw, and don't have any comparable "full desktop" to compare. I don't know if HP or Lenovo have models with laptop-class CPUs in this form factor, but I image that would be an actual improvement on the power draw. I did see however Chinese brands on Amazon sell models with those kinds of CPUs.
  - j45 2y ago
    Typo in my first sentence about the Gen 8. it should be "Gen 8 cpu's in a USFF appear to deliver lower idle power usage and lower high end power usage than Gen 6/7." You're correct that some of these machines have desktop CPUs, what I discovered was they also have different classes of desktop CPUs. The m920q/m920s appear to have differnet power usages an possibly different cpus, or at least they're configured different. If I compare the two: - m920q (USFF) can go as high as 135w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M920_Tiny/ThinkCentre_M920_Tiny_Spec.PDF https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe... - m920s SFF can go as high as 260w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M920_SFF/ThinkCentre_M920_SFF_Spec.PDF https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe... Additionally, if you look up the Gen 6/7/8 power usage for the cpu itself, you can see the idle and total is different as well. The trick is Lenovo is far from the best priced USFF in this category for the same thing. When I bought Lenovo, I wanted to try out Proxmox, had no interest in fighting with installation or drivers, an just picked something that had flawless installation... that has since improved with other manufacturers. The tool from OP here is really cool - I'd probably add some from the spreadsheet I had built out but I haven't had to buy many more of these once I figured it out. Load them up with ram, a few ssds, a UPS and they're pretty solid.

weweweoo 2y ago

Here's examples of idle power consumption of second hand mini-pc's i've tested, running Ubuntu, measured from the wall: Dell Wyse 5070 with Pentium Silver J5005 ~ 5W Fujitsu Futro S940 with J5005 as well ~ 7W Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro with i5-10500t ~ 12W with two SSD's In comparison, my Ryzen 7 server build consumes about 22W idle (before I added GPU), has 4x SSD and 4x RAM sticks. I like raspberry pi, but for most purposes an used mini-pc is a better choice.

sangnoir 2y ago
The RPi Zero 2 W consumes ~ 0.6W when idling, and costs $15 new, or in the $25-30 range with a case and USB power adapter.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  Talking about building a server with a Zero 2 W is a bit of a stretch. I have some running as airplay and Spotify connect clients + some environmental sensors but much more would be pushing it...
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    No where in the thread was the "building a server" use case defined - the subject was always-on costs. That said, an RPi Zero works perfectly fine as a pihole (DHCP + DNS server), WireGuard node, a git mirror (running Forgejo), and many more use cases that are not CPU-bound. Obviously, Raspberry Pis, SFF boxes, workstations and rack mounted servers all occupy different niches (with some overlap). Anyone confidently stating that one could fully replace anther with no context of the workloads is wrong.
    - BoredPositron 2y ago
      The OP of the comment you answered was pretty much talking about how he uses his mini PC as a server and doing projects on it... and ofc a zero can do everything but at what speed? IOPS is disturbingly slow. I like the Zero for what it is but it's just not a good server fit.

notpublic 2y ago

Have a used HP Prodesk 600 G3 with 16GB RAM running idle around ~12W. Bought it last year and its been running solid so far.