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While I agree with the premise, you're exaggerating far too much.

If an R720 pulls anywhere near $75 a month [1], you got some sort of major problem. In reality, these things pulls closet to anywhere from 120 to 180 watts on the higher end.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7r90l8/average_pow...

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He said dual CPU’s using the worst case of 27.5 cents per kWH in Hawaii. 2 * .18 * 0.275 * 24 * 30.4 (days per month) = 72$ per month + whatever the rest of the machine uses.

Though few people’s electric prices are that high, and it’s rare to sit at 100% CPU 24/7.

It's more like 25€/month for our R720 at work (with 128gb ddr3 memory and dual xeon e5-2690v1) - if you run with powersave governor in Linux and enable lower C-states in BIOS. I'm not joking the included iDrac7 reliable shows 110-130W. How course if you number crunching at 100% cpu are you more like using 300W.

> Though few people’s electric prices are that high, and it’s rare to sit at 100% CPU 24/7.

While I agree a rate similar to that isn't all that uncommon in for instance Europe, from that perspective it's a relevant calculation. On the other hand the prices of old hardware tend to very between markets as well so that would still impact the break even point.

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