this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
220 points (96.6% liked)

Selfhosted

60861 readers
424 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] crimsonpoodle@pawb.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I have an i7-2600 prebuilt for my NAS— is idle most of the time, bought it for $100 4 years ago. Have pretty cheap power at like $0.12 per KWh, but again mostly idle so probably doesn’t cost much anyway.

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did lol at cheap kwh internet - sounds way better than talking energy costs

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Older desktops can have a somewhat hefty idle power draw due to the overall system consumption contributing more than expected, such as the southbridge. According to this old review of the i7-2600k, the system idles at 74w, which at $0.12 per KWh, would cost you roughly $77 per year. Though you might want to confirm that with a Kill-a-watt meter if you can (libraries sometimes lend them out), since I'm pretty sure that total system power chart includes a discrete GPU, so the real number for a GPU-less system is probably around 40 or 50w at idle.

If that is accurate, you could potentially replace your i7-2600 with a used Dell Wyse 5070 thin client from ebay for about $40 (in the US), and that idles at 5w, which would only cost you $5 a year at the same rate.

Older thin clients and laptops tend to have much better idle power draws compared to desktops. For other people reading this, if you're using a desktop for a low-power use case, it's probably worth finding out what its idle power consumption is and doing the calculation to determine if it'd be worth replacing it with a more efficient used thin-client or office mini-pc.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Germany consumer power is something like 0.4 EUR/kWh, so economics of running power-hungry hardware might be different. Solar PV might change the equation once again.

[–] randombullet@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then you'll need to factor in the solar initial cost as well!

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

DIY few kWp solar payback is about 2 years.