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Comment by cjdell | Hacker News Reader

I also have mixed feelings. I stopped home labing because of the energy costs. I now have everything I need (HomeAssistant / NAS / Router) running on an old Dell Precision laptop. Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in!

I'm tempted by the new Alder Lake N100 mini PCs that are available on Chinese websites. But I need to wait until the laptop dies before I can justify it. It's not just about power consumption but the (hidden) cost of manufacturing. Make use of the stuff you already have before buying new stuff.

At least he had a big solar array...

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> Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in

> Make use of the stuff you already have before buying new stuff.

this is the way!

I would have disagreed on heat, but would love to hear what laptops that isn't an issue on.

What do you mean?

Many laptops have bad thermals in general under load and often even worse with case closed.

true but mostly irrelevant as there rarely is any load to speak of.

if you need a heavy duty machine, use it, but most of the time you don't, that's the point.

(for comparison; skylake laptop uses about 20W under max load, my 12-gen desktop uses 40W while idle)

Maybe you could consider an old framework motherboards? I personally don't own one, but is tempting if you own a framework laptop or are planning on buy one, it seems to be one of the most sustainable options out there.

My main problem with labbing is the noise (I live in an apartment). His servers are mostly small PCs, so I think the most power draw is from the disk drives. If you need the storage, say for the cameras and whatnot, I'm not sure that running a laptop instead would save that much power.

I am a big fan of thin clients as servers. It is true you lose the "built-in console and UPS", but they usually come in very nice and compact form factor, many are fanless and consume 10~15W tops while being acceptably capable (in general much more than a RPi but with much better memory and storage specs)

Laptops are great servers? Hmm I beg to differ. They are very compressed, so they heat up a lot.

You need low power server? Go for Atom like CPU with good case. My home server running D2550 and 2x 1TB HDD is less than 40W. PSU is cold.

typical laptop goes below 10W while serving a gbps of samba

I run a server at home. It's a PINE64... uses 10w or something. My NAS uses more but I only turn that one when I need to backup stuff.

Run the same load you do on your Atom on a laptop and it'll be cold as Thatcher gaze.

Well it depends what you're doing with it. In my case my CPU is averaging about 1% with the odd burst here and there. As a precaution I propped it up to allow increased airflow underneath.

You do have a point in that certain devices can suffer from overcharging and bulging batteries. This issue is largely addressed in newer devices. I can see that the BMS in my laptop server is holding at 90% charge. Definitely worth checking if you plan to use an old phone/laptop/tablet as a 24/7 device.

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