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On 23/02/2023 08:12, Richard Brown wrote:
You're having a laugh if you think a standard PC setup with net you less than 50-60W minimum total .. that CPU has a TDP of 65W - so don't expect to get much below 20W for that alone .. even a Gold ATX power supply won't guarantee you more than 85% efficiency, so factor that in. Most hard disks or even SSDs don't come to much below a few watts Each, and that's for 2.5" drives, not 3.5"...Hi AllI am about to commence building a home server. I am hoping to run it using low powered equipment. A while ago David Bell sent me a AMD Ryzen 5 2400G GPU and I am hoping to build using this. He suggested getting a Gigabyte B450 series motherboard. I am going to check on Ebay but before I do I just wanted to see if anyone had one lying about (!) and wanted to sell it.The other question I had around this GPU is whether it is a good option for a home server build. The build will run home automation and a plex server at the start. I am hoping that it will draw around 20w which will be relatively cheap to run.Thanks for the help.
I was intrigued however, to see watch one of the videos of "the guy with the Swedish accent" on YouTube, who was explaining 'better' options for low-power [capable] home automation systems than the ubiquitous Raspberry-Pi - the maker's favourite 'toy' - since it was becoming very scarce or expensive depending on how you 'acquire' it. He was relaying recommendations to look at small form-factor PCs, and I just couldn't resist picking up one (google Lenovo ThinkCentre USFF) and really like the size/capacity it comes with at the ~£50 price point (check ebay - lots available). Of course, there are other options from eg. Dell and others (links in the video comments - https://youtu.be/rXc_zGRYhLo ). Bear in mind this is a computer with power supply, hard disk, memory, WIFI, networking, basic graphics, lots of USB, in roughly the same size as your average textbook. Didn't take much convincing for me!
One of my Scottish friends recently deprecated his trusty HP MicroServer (typically a modest AMD CPU) because even the power consumption of that was costing him more than he desired, with electricity costs constantly rising... Oddly, if I can find one of those, I will likely still use it as a NAS box, because it has 4x 3.5" IDE slots, and I have spare spinning-rust disks available of useful capacity...
If you want a -real- server though, I bought a cheapish HP ProLiant G5 box from bargain-hardware (dot co dot uk), who I know Gordon on-list recommends. It has a dual Xeon-CPU which, although old, will rip through compiling jobs pretty nicely with 16 cores - pretty handy if you run source-distros like Gentoo like I did/do .. esp. making images for ARM boards with very low-power CPUs (think both computing and electrical low-power here).
So, definitely horses for courses. I have a few ARM/Pi-type boards scattered around the house, all on my WiFi, for putting together a mesh home-automation network (combination of WiFi for networking, Zigbee for devices...) which should be useful/interesting for data capture and hardware control. Next step would be nice to get some solar panels up .. and then I can switch my hot-water immersion from grid to solar 'power'...
Happy hacking and good luck! :D -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG FAQ: https://www.dcglug.org.uk/faq/