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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

Don't use a "server" server, unless you really need that. Use a desktop from a few years ago, from some oem who advertises power efficiency. Stuff it full of hdds and ram.

I've made very good experiences with Fujitsu. The power consumption figures they publish in their energy consumption white papers has been matching my measurements very well, so you can check ebay for used machines that match your performance/price expectations and then google eg "p920 energy white paper" and check the pdf. (Note, some models are available with different PSUs, ie 90+ and 85+.)

My "home server" mostly idles at 14W with one hdd running, one in standby and one ssd.

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Take a look at the Tiny Mini Micro[1] project from Serve the Home for some very enthusiastic reviews of small 1 liter-sized desktop computers from Lenovo, Dell, and HP. I use a tiny Lenovo that's been rock solid, and uses almost no power.

[1] https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic...

This is the way. You don't need high density at home (usually) so don't pay the price for it. Get a mobo with ECC ram that fits an ATX case if you want server grade stuff. If you don't use stupid tech like VMware it won't eat your resources either (not that VMware is bad in a datacenter, but it is quite resource hungry in comparison to virt-manager or Proxmox).

I mean unless databases or Java are your favorite things in the world.

Configure power saving as well, that way your CPU really doesn't consume a lot.

> mobo with ECC ram that fits an ATX case

yes, and careful choice of graphics card; GPU computing is special purpose and can be costly in an urban area

Indeed, I don't know how dense the megascalers build, it looks less dense than what I see at work compared to the few videos that are out there.

Same conclusion here. Initially I used an old notebook with USB cases for full-size HDDs, nowadays it'n an older desktop PC in a midi tower, with some extra memory and HDDs. Idle power is <20W, which is most of the time. I really wanted a proper server for the cool factor, but it's just so expensive to maintain.

Were there significant downsides to the laptop solution?

I have a similar setup with a NUC mounting storage from a small ARM-powered NAS, but I was thinking of changing this to an old ThinkPad X230 with just internal storage and offsite backup.

It was a really old beater, and the problems, I think, stemmed from there - think of electrical problems, because of old USB ports and such. Otherwise it was chugging along like a champ. What I like in my current setup more, is that I could upgrade it as my needs increased - in the desktop, I could fit 5 HDDs and 20G RAM, impossible with my old laptop.

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