I thought this video was rather interesting, because at 12:27, the presenter crunches the numbers to find out how many years it would take for a new computer purchase to be more environmentally friendly (in regards to total CO2 expended) compared to using a less efficient used model.

Depending on the specific use case, it could take as little as 3 years to breakeven in terms of CO2 if both systems were at max power draw forever, and as long as 30 if the systems are mostly at idle.

  • zod000@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I’ve had great luck using Intel NUCs as home servers and HTPC boxes. Since those are now gone, I have found that Beelink is the most cost effective replacement when I needed to revamp the setup. My biggest complaint on them is that the cooling fans on them are not super reliable and it is not easy to find compatible replacements. I had to order them direct from China and there are a few wiring incompatible variants. I ended up with one of them being the wrong type and I had to resolder the leads to match the existing broken fan.

  • BackYardIncendiary@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I use a 2011 ThinkPad X120e as an FTP/Syncthing server. It was underpowered as a laptop from day one, but still works fine as a lightweight server. The best thing about ThinkPads is that TLP allows you to set min/max charging thresholds, so that you can keep an old battery in good shape for … well, I’ll let you know. This one’s 14 years old and still has a four-hour run time.

    One thing I’d like to try is “Wake My Potato” for shutdown / automatic restart when a power outage occurs.

    Links:

    TLP - https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html

    Wake My Potato - https://github.com/pablogila/WakeMyPotato

  • czardestructo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I love this community, I used to rant about efficiency all the the time on reddits self hosting community and everyone thought I was insane. If the damn thing is going to run 24/7 for 5+ years then put a little thought into its power usage!

    I personally love old Dell optiplex micros on eBay. Cheap, plentiful laptop hardware in a cute little box which allows modest upgrades. My primary server in a full sized case is just a laptop CPU, Ryzen 5600g. It brings me joy that my network has four servers and still is under 75w idle for everything including networking gear.