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View Full Version : Have a spare working PC around?



Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:50 AM
FREENas it (http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=26)



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Triela on 2006-09-06 22:50 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Triela on 2006-09-06 22:51 ]</font>

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:51 AM
I have an old AMD pc in my room that I want to convert to a NAS or server of some sort. The only thing holding me back is electricity. How much does it cost to keep a home server up each month?

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:52 AM
There's also the heat it generates. I shut down a PC I wasn't using anymore and it's noticeably cooler (and quieter) in my office.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:52 AM
not THAT much. couldn't be more than a few bucks. I've been doing it for years, and it's just a workstation in the closet

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:53 AM
I had a friend once who had a room in his garage with three computers and two game consoles in it, and that room was beastly hot. Even the single workstation in my room that I leave on all the time makes the room noticably hotter than the rest of the house. So, if you have a problem with heat, it'd be best not to do.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:53 AM
Depends on where you are at, its not cheap though. I worked out how much having a computer on to just do p2p (edk and bt) with and it was about $20 a month. It was a compaq6400.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:54 AM
you can use a low wattage mobile cpu to cut down on the noise/heat/cost of keeping one up. like amd xp mobile chips that run at 35w (which can be underclocked and cooled passively too).

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:55 AM
in between 1 to 3 light bulbs of electricity depending on how old / inefficient. the new imacs's use less than a light bulb at full usage.

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:55 AM
Power consumption has two parts: First you need to figure out how much power the PC itself eats. If you're able to choose, I'd aim for a lower-speed AMD processor, and on-board video, since you probably won't even be connecting a monitor to it more than once.

Example: My "sandbox" computer, with two 7200rpm drives on it, burns up 87 watts at idle. During A/C season (here in houston, that's roughly January to December...), you also need to get rid of the heat it creates - which means, in very rough terms, doubling the power consumed. (Allowing the drives to spin down when inactive can cut the power and heat in half AND make the drives last longer)

Assume about 15 cents per kwh, the computer itself uses about 62kwh per month, which comes out to nine bucks and change. Call it $15 if you're also paying for A/C.

I used to keep a couple machines on 24x7 at home. Now I'm pretty serious about having everything go into standby after 40-60 min.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:55 AM
A modern PC probably consumes something on the order of 250 watts (no monitor) (keep in mind that your '550W' powersupply doesn't always pull 550 watts -- that's really it's peak rating, and usually, it's inflated). That's 6 kwh/day, or 180 kwh/month.

My last PG&E bill says they charged me a little over 11.4 cents/month. That's just over $20 month total, for 180 kwh.

It really depends on your system, how you have power management set up, and how heavily you use it. The only real way to know what you're using is to pick up a Kill A Watt meter.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/7657/

If you want to save power, space, and noise, the Mac Mini is a great option, honestly.

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:56 AM
I bet you heard of this off of Hak.5 episode 2x02. (The one that came out yesterday.)

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:56 AM
now i just need enough usb2 ports to connect all my drives....

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 12:57 AM
As of season two it is just Hak5 (no 'point')
And yeah, it beats the stripes off a zebra

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:57 AM
I bet so too. I just watched. I think I'm gonna do this to my PIII 500 that is currently my fuck around PC.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 12:58 AM
So I have the choice of using a crappy, big, ugly, loud, power hungry old PC, or buying a small, completely silent device that uses very little power like the Linksys NSLU2 for 70 bucks? Thanks, I'll go for option B. It'll pay off if quickly if you consider the electricity costs.

All these "use your old PC to do X" stories have a big flaw: new hardware is so cheap that, all things considered, most of the time it makes more sense to buy a new specialized device.

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 01:00 AM
I second that. Two months ago I used FreeNAS on an old PC and it was loud and power hungry. Its much easier to shell out less than $150 for a NAS kit and customize it

"All these "use your old PC to do X" stories have a big flaw: new hardware is so cheap that, all things considered, most of the time it makes more sense to buy a new specialized device."
Yea.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 01:00 AM
I agree, though sometimes its just kinda fun to do. also, a pc is ultimately more configurable.

though I always preferred building mine from scratch with debian.

for some people, its about the process, not the product.

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 01:01 AM
I'd actually use one of those small NAS boxes too, like the vantec nexstar lx or the galaxy metal gear nas enclousure. but the deal killer for me so far is that they dont support NTFS (in NAS enviroment) yet either and neither use gigabit networking. as soon as they do have those features tho it will be time that i get one.

Polly
Sep 7, 2006, 01:01 AM
If you can point me to one of these $70 low-power devices that support mirrored RAID (preferrably, with both drives installable into the enclosure of the device), I'll buy one right now and decomission my FreeNAS box. Until then, though, I want the mirrored drives and I've not found a Linksys/etc. that will do that.

Ether
Sep 7, 2006, 01:02 AM
The NSLU2 is a very slow device. It gets 4-5MB/sec at best. That's just not good enough for any serious file server. I don't personally use FreeNAS but I think it's a great solution. The $500-$800 NAS devices are basically PC's anyway so you're not really saving a ton of power. (and your up front hardware cost is MUCH greater)

geewj
Sep 7, 2006, 03:35 AM
Triela uses harder threads.