this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
66 points (94.6% liked)

Selfhosted

39939 readers
404 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The price seems pretty good. I don't really know much about mini PCs. Do you think there is a better alternative?

Update: ok, not price efficient. Noted πŸ‘

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] stuner 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I would disagree with idle power not being important for a home server. Most of the time, your system will be doing very little and wait for something to happen. I also don't think a typical server has a display attached. Wolfang explains this quite well: https://youtu.be/Ppo6C_JhDHM?t=94&si=zyjEKNX8yA51uNSf

[–] just_another_person 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm not saying idle power is unimportant. I'm saying the M-Class chips can't ever go idle with a minimal set of features NOT being engaged, because they're going to be more engaged in general vs other chips that can run truly headless. macOS doesn't allow for that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yup. My old 1st gen Ryzen desktop system isn't particularly power efficient, but it idles <50W (I think closer to 25W, but I haven't measured for a while). And that's a desktop class chip from 7 years ago with two HDDs and a discrete GPU and PCIe wifi card, so it's not winning any awards for efficiency. Even at that, it's barely a blip on my power bill.

An AMD or Intel laptop-class chip should be able to get to 10W or so idle, and not spike too much with basic tasks. And those can be had for $200-300, less if you're okay with older chips. Run Linux headless and it'll likely stay below 15W at the wall most of the time.

[–] just_another_person 4 points 3 days ago

Pretty much exact. Lots of reviews to back that up without me spouting about it.

[–] stuner 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I don't have one (and I don't want one), but Anandtech measured the M1 version at 4.2W in idle. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested I think you can also get that from other Mini PCs (e.g. NUCs).

[–] just_another_person 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Cool, so the version from many years ago related to OP's question...how?

[–] stuner 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's an Apple Silicon Mac Mini. Do you have a particular reason to think the new one is less efficient?

[–] just_another_person 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, because each one has been. Just because it's "Apple" and you think it's better every iteration is a mistake on your part.