Technology

Depends.

Toss the GPU/wifi, disable audio, throttle the processor a ton, and set the OS to power saving, and old PCs can be shockingly efficient.

So I did this, using a Ryzen 3600, with some light tweaking the base system burns about 40-50W idle. The drives add a lot, 5-10W each, but they would go into any NAS system, so that's irrelevant. I had to add a GPU because the MB I had wouldn't POST without one, so that increases the power draw a little, but it's also necessary for proper Jellyfin transcoding. I recently swapped the GPU for an Intel ARC A310.

By comparison, the previous system I used for this had a low-power, fanless intel celeron, with a single drive and two SSDs it drew about 30W.

A desktop running a low usage wouldn't consume much more than a NAS, as long as you drop the video card (which wouldn't be running anyways).

Take only that extra and you probably have a few years usage before additional electricty costs overrun NAS cost. Where I live that's around 5 years for an estimated extra 10W.

I'm still running a 480 that doubles as a space heater (I'm not even joking; I increase the load based on ambient temps during winter)

If they're gonna buy a nas anyway, how many years to break even?

Assuming a capacity equivalent NAS might cost $1200

Either you already have drives and could use them in a new NAS or you would have to buy them regardless and shouldn’t include them in the NAS price.

I bought a two bay Synology for $270, and a 20TB hdd for $260. I did this for multiple reasons. The HDD was on sale so I bought it and kept buying things. Also I couldn't be buggered to learn everything necessary to set up a homemade NAS. Also also i didn't have an old PC. My current PC is a Ship of Theseus that I originally bought in 2006.

You're not wrong about an equivalent NAS to my current pc specs/capacity being more expensive. And yes i did spend $500+ on my NAS And yet I also saved several days worth of study, research, and trial and error by not building my own.

That being said, reducing e-waste by converting old PCs into Jellyfin/Plex streaming machines, NAS devices, or personal servers is a really good idea

In the UK the calculus is quite different, as it's £0.25/kWh or over double the cost.

Also, an empty Synology 4-bay NAS can be gotten for like £200 second hand. Good enough if you only need file hosting. Mine draws about 10W compared to an old Optiplex that draws around 60W.

With that math using the NAS saves you 1.25 pence per hour. Therefore the NAS pays for itself in around about 2 years.

my gaming pc runs at like 50w idle and only draws a ton of power if its being used for something. It would be more accurate to consider a PC to be 1.75x more power than a NAS but then account for the cost of buying a NAS. I'd say NAS would probably take 2-4 years to pay off depending on regional power prices.

This ignores that the heat generated by the devices is desirable in winter so the higher heat output option has additional utility.

But the heat is a negative in the summer. So local climate might tip the scales one way or the other.

... 100W? Isn't that like a rally bygone era? CPUs of the past decade can idle at next to nothing (like, there isn't much difference between an idling i7/i9 and a Pentium from the same era/family).

Or are we taking about arm? (Sry, I don't know much about them.)

I want to reduce wasteful power consumption.

But I also desire ECC for stability and data corruption avoidance, and hardware redundancy for failures (Which have actually happened!!)

Begrudgingly I'm using dell rack mount servers. For the most part they work really well, stupid easy to service, unified remote management, lotssss of room for memory, thick PCIe lane counts, stupid cheap 2nd hand RAM, and stable.

But they waste ~100 watts of power per device though... That stuff ads up, even if we have incredibly cheap power.

At idle or under normal load? Im tempted to get the killawatt out.

I've got a 12VDC Mini PC as my NAS/Jellyfin server with 6 SSD's and no monitor that idles around 30watts and runs entirely off solar. It ain't fast but it does everything I need it to do and costs zero dollars to run.

My pc did that when my almost 10 year old SSD with my OS started to die. Switched it out and haven't had an issue since.

This is my rig, I already bought 20 30TB disks, how do I proceed?

collapsed inline media

For backups it will be fine. Same for media storage. But if you want media streaming from the device (like plex) then you'll want something better.

Clean the PC and change the fans. Fans make noise when old.