Power savings and home PC / server

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GraySenshi

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Apr 15, 2016
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Basically I am building a PC that will be on 24/7. It's usage will be uploaded pre rendered videos, holding all of my storage drives and archiving. I may look up stuff online but I have my main one is sleep mode so it's unlikely. I was looking at using a i3 skylake for this build and it looks like it will run on 27-40 watts depends on load of course.

First question is how to figure out how much the PC will cost 24/7 usage and how much can power savings help.

Second is what os should I use for doing these tasks.
 
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Eximo
I got it to sort of work. But I had all kinds of permissions issues myself. Bad timing on my part, they released a new version without documentation, so I was using the previous version's manual. Probably had something to do with it. I went through their whole support forum and found nothing relevant, I can't recall if I posted there or not. This was maybe two years ago.

Tried every unix command I could think of to get my Windows systems to access it. Created accounts on their page with identical credentials, the works. From the start I could always see the shared drive, just wouldn't let me create new files.

Aside from that it was pretty slick in terms of setup time and the interface.

I think they recommend ECC because they really...
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boosted1g

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Jun 12, 2013
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How many hard drives the machine has, how efficient the PSU is, what other hardware you have are all factors.
To accurately calculate power draw you would need to build it, then use kill-a-watt metter to measure power draw.

For OS you could really use anything. If you don't need a windows specific program then you could easily run Linux on it.
You can certainly setup network shares, run sabnzb, utorrent, couchpotato, etc from a Linux PC.
If you start expanding into several HDD then you can even look at doing ZFS type file system to give you some parity on your drives.
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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Most calculators will estimate the maximum potential load.

I leave my i3-4130T on all the time and don't really notice it on my bill. I haven't bothered to measure it, but at idle I can't see it using more then a light bulbs worth of juice. CPU clocks down to 800Mhz and runs at a few watts according to CoreTemp. GPU sits idle at very low clock speeds, I think I saw 40Mhz once. When not running my TV it is hosting a 3TB RAID 1, but both are green drives and are normally off unless there is a need. With an SSD for the main drive and to spin a few fans. (Intake, CPU, PSU, and GPU are it)

I just use Windows for simplicity, it gets along with my other Windows systems.

I tried FreeNAS once on an older system and that worked okay. If you want to use it as a light computer then a Linux distro is probably okay.
 
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13thmonkey

13thmonkey

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Jan 10, 2006
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my WHS machine with 5 HDD's 1-2TB each used about 60W at idle maybe 90W at load (at the wall figures), it had a 35W CPU.

So to do the sums:
60*24*365 = 525,600 Wh per year
Divide this by 1000, and you get to KWh = 525KWh/year = 525 units of electricity per year.
My electricity costs around £0.13/unit, so that £68/year.
That's assuming it is idling all of the time, but you get the idea and can work the sums through now with your estimated wattage figure in there.
 
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13thmonkey

13thmonkey

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^^ i've been investigating freenas recently, and have even set up a small VM, it's easy to use, it creates shares that should be findable from any other OS, easy to expand. BUT, i'm concerned over the need for ECC ram, my understanding is that any error in the ram can corrupt everything as it uses the ram to hold the state of the disks and their contents, which concerns me with regards to a power outage, might not even be using it at the time, but will it shutdown gracefully.

There are people that use it without ECC, but there are many who say it is a bad idea. Also the hardware that it will properly support is limited. I loved the idea of it, but everything i read is scaring me away.
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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I got it to sort of work. But I had all kinds of permissions issues myself. Bad timing on my part, they released a new version without documentation, so I was using the previous version's manual. Probably had something to do with it. I went through their whole support forum and found nothing relevant, I can't recall if I posted there or not. This was maybe two years ago.

Tried every unix command I could think of to get my Windows systems to access it. Created accounts on their page with identical credentials, the works. From the start I could always see the shared drive, just wouldn't let me create new files.

Aside from that it was pretty slick in terms of setup time and the interface.

I think they recommend ECC because they really intend it to be a cheap alternative to an enterprise class storage system. With the right array of drives I imagine it is just as good as anything else.

Given their standard config though, not sure I would rely on the longevity of a USB flash drive like they suggest. Those things get really warm. Easy enough to get a small SSD and use that instead I suppose.

But basically I had that i3 system for my TV already running Windows so I just crammed the two drives in that Mini-ITX case (made some brackets out of old expansion slot covers, only had one 3.5" bay) And that was very easy to setup. A little dangerous in that I also use that system for streaming and browsing, but the data is basically media only. Nothing that couldn't be replaced.
 
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GraySenshi

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I was planing on getting 2*8tb and setting that in a raid plus backup drives so for a zfs with 16gb ram be good and I was really looking into freenas but the ecc thing I wasn't to sure about also didn't think it could upload and such
 
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