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So SBCs are shit now? Anything I can do with my collection of Pis and old routers? (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I dunno when it happened but I swear SBCs were the new best thing in the universe for a while and everyone was building cool little servers with their RockPis and OrangePis.

Now it's all gone x86 and Proxmox with everyone shitting on Arm. What happened? What gives?

Is my small army of xPis pointless? What about my 2 Edge routers?

I've got about 6 xPis scattered round my flat - is there anything worth doing with them or should I just bin them?

All thoughts, feelings and information welcome. Thank you.

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[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago

How bad is it?

My current file server, an old gaming rig, consumes 100w at idle.

I'm considering a TrueNAS box running either 2.5" ssd's or NVME sticks (My storage target is under 8TB, and that's including 3 years projected growth).

[-] stevehobbes@lemy.lol 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Go tweak your power and fan settings. 100w at idle is way too much unless it’s 15 years old.

Fans, especially small ones are very sneaky energy hogs. Turn them waaay down.

[-] nezbyte@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Depends on what your server is running. Multiple GPUs, HDDs, and other fun items start to add up to well over 100W. I justify it by using it to keep my 3d printer filament dry.

[-] stevehobbes@lemy.lol 4 points 9 months ago

If you have multiple GPUs in your home server you’re probably doing it wrong. But even then, at idle, with no displays connected, the draw will be surprisingly low.

Most systems with some ssd/NVMe, 2-4 DIMMs and maybe a drive or two should idle closer to 50w-60w.

[-] nezbyte@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Agreed, don’t do what I do if you value your power bill. To be fair, my network switch pulls more power than my cobbled together server anyhow.

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 months ago

If you’re getting two gaming PCs out of one hypervisor, you might be doing it right.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Newer CPU’s tend to use a good chunk more power under low loads than some older ones. Going from 1st Gen. Ryzen to 2nd Gen. got me about 20 watts higher total system power draw with my use case. And 3rd Gen. is even worse.

Intel is MUCH worse at it than AMD, but every Gen. AMD keeps cranking up those boost clocks and power draw and it really can make a difference at low to mid range loads.

My Ryzen 3000 based system uses about 90 watts at “idle” with all my stuff running and the hard drives on.

[-] stevehobbes@lemy.lol 2 points 9 months ago

It’s probably more about aggressive default bios speeds. Tweak your c states / bios overclocking / pcie power management / windows power management features. Idle power has gone down on most chips.

The Ryzen 3000 should truly idle closer to 20-30w.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

That is after tweaking bios settings. Originally I was at around 100 watts, now I'm closer to 80.

Keep in mind that's with a bunch of hard drives, and it's not a 100% idle, more of a 90% idle which is where modern "race to idle" CPUs struggle the most.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Nothing to be done. It's old. Only fan to adjust is cpu, and I can tell when the cooler is getting dirty because the fan stays at higher speeds.

Otherwise there's one large, slow rpm fan in the case, always on low speed.

[-] krash@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Holy crap! I have a n100 SFF that consumes 5-6 w idle (with WiFi on) and I have an old i5 (gen 6 I think) that consumes 30 at idle. Your rig is defiantly not meant to act as a server (unless you want to mine bitcoons or run boinc...)

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Lol, yea, it's old, was built for performance, and hasn't run right in a while.

I'm looking to setup a NAS and turn that thing off

this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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