Should I salvage my old PC as a server, or would it be very energy inefficient? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Muizaz88 · 2023-12-18 02:33 Upgraded my gaming PC. Currently, running all my applications on Docker (55 containers) on Synology 923+ with 32GB RAM. Old PC Specs: Intel i7 7700K, Nvidia GTX 1080ti, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, ATX motherboard. Was thinking of buying a smaller case (parts are in a Corsair Carbide Air 540, which is huge!) and repurposing them as a server of some sort (probably for ProxMox with Home Assistant and Plex, since the 923+ doesn't do transcoding as well due to its AMD CPU). My question really is this: Is it worth salvaging the parts to make a server, or should I be looking to possibly selling them and buying something like a Beelink which probably has better power consumption efficiency? Thank you in advance! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-12-18 02:56 How much do you care about power efficiency? Because I certainly don't. Power is, by far, the cheapest aspect of any of my hardware — even considering Australian electricity prices. My homeserver is built from desktop components and I feel completely happy with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Olaren · 2023-12-18 03:04 tbh 7th gen intel cpus don’t use very much power at idle (most home servers spend 99% of their tome at idle). You could probably remove the nvidia gpu to help with power consumption and use the igpu for transcoding (it can actually handle multiple transcodes at the same time and also do 4k hdr). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Formaldehead · 2023-12-18 03:04 I guess that all depends on what new case and power supply you buy? I would definitely sell the video card since the internal CPU will be more than enough for transcoding and whatnot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Formaldehead · 2023-12-18 03:09 Sell the video card for sure since you won’t need it for transcoding. Your power supply will only pull what it needs and not having a video card will be a big help on power draw. Otherwise it should be an excellent server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- p_235615 · 2023-12-18 04:46 well, depends on the PSU he have, maybe changing it to a $60 350W gold/platinum rated one can in the long run save some bucks. Some 800W power supplies, especially without or with low efficiency ratings, especially in the low end of like 30-50W can have efficiency of 50-70%, so replacing it with a good quality low power one helps massively. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- natermer · 2023-12-18 04:56 If you buy a watt meter you can figure out the math on it. The classic is kill-a-watt, but if you are using Home Assistant you can buy plugs that report back energy usage. I have some cheap Zigbee ones that do that. The quality of the PSU makes a huge difference. Also the video card is going to be inefficient no matter what you do. So just figure out the hourly power usage, compare it to the electric bill and then figure out how much money you could spend and still save money. Personally I don't think you'll see much savings unless you convert to a little ARM system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- My_New_Main · 2023-12-18 05:15 Did you upgrade your 923+ with Synology branded ram or buy 3rd party? The synology stuff is just so expensive, but mine only came with 4GB. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Muizaz88 · 2023-12-18 05:21 I went with this: https://www.amazon.sg/dp/B0BYKHFT2X Zero issues, no nag popup, just plug and play ---------------------------------------------------------------------- io-x · 2023-12-18 05:21 Ditch the GPU Get a small and efficient PSU Implement proxmox power savings for CPU ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chibiace · 2023-12-18 07:52 same, and my server is similar to ops.except im still using the 1070 in my main desktop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThrottlePeen · 2023-12-18 13:10 It really depends on two things: - your local energy prices - realistic use case for the server I have a Beelink with an Intel N100. Frankly, it's overkill for me lol. I run about 40 docker containers at any given time, host Plex (often with 3+ concurrent streams) and all the *arrs, Home Assistant + Homebridge, piHole, TVheadend + Antennas, file backup stuff, as well as a bunch of various apps that constantly ping destinations and do API/web request calls. My CPU util sits at under 10% almost all of the time, spiking only when it's doing 4K transcoding on Plex but still managing perfectly fine with 2-3 transcodes at once. With a 7700k, depending on your PSU/motherboard/attached drives etc., you're looking at 50W+ when just idling, and then 100W+ when doing any CPU loads (just based on the energy testing here https://www.guru3d.com/review/core-i7-7700k-processor-review-desktop- kaby-lake/page-8/) My Beelink spikes to a maximum of 20W under heavy load, idles at around 8W for me, and spends most time between 9-12W. Daily use is like ~0.4kWh or even ~0.3kWh for my Beelink. Meanwhile you're looking at anywhere between 1.2 - 3 kWh for a server ruinning your old PC specs. In the UK, that translates roughly to £3/month for my Beelink. Your PC would cost me somewhere between £10-£30/month. My Beelink cost me like £160. So the cost of that would've paid itself off in under a year in energy savings. The bonus is that it is TINY, make zero noise even under the occasional full load and I have it stashed away out of sight. If your use case would be covered, I highly recommend just getting a tiny PC. You'd probably get enough to buy one by just selling the 1080Ti. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon-RedditAccount · 2023-12-18 17:37 Actually, OP's CPU can idle at around 10-20W (with Linux; Windows usually eats more power). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tenten8401 · 2023-12-18 18:12 Don't forget to run powertop on boot as well, using a Zephyrus G14 as my home server and cut the idle wall power usage in half just from running powertop auto optimization. To be fair there is something wrong with my G14 mobo so I don't know how it'll work for you but it takes like 2 minutes to set up (apt install powertop && systemctl enable --now powertop) and made a pretty good difference for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neozahikel · 2023-12-18 20:25 You might want to change the motherboard for squeezing the watts down (depending on what you have). That's one of the thing that introduce the most variance (with the PSU you used). Intel CPUs are idling very well as other people mentioned. Although it's worth noting that you could build for less than 150 euro a more efficient X86 server with iGPU hardware transcoding with a J5040. An i7-7700K motherboard + CPU and that GPU should be able to reach 150 euro on the second hand market (if not more) and would allow you to buy one of those low powered J5040 or J5005 used.