Lemdro.id

6 points

9 months ago

RPis are still unbeaten in terms of power usage, but the difference to a low end thin client is small.

Not even close when it comes to tuned idle power usage.

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AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de

[ - ]

4 points

9 months ago

My pi 3 idles at 3-4W, my Futro at around 5-6W. I’d say that’s pretty close.

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[ - ]

1 point

9 months ago

You can get your 3b+ (and 3 even lower) to under 2W easily on idle. 3-4 is a lot. Check out some guides, basically disable BT, display out and WiFi.

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AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de

[ - ]

5 points

9 months ago

So, basically don’t use it.

I mean, I get the effort, but if you account for your own labor, the power savings probably will probably take years to amortise - even with high energy costs like here in Germany.

Just as a rule of thumb: 1W of constant power costs is at most 25cents (40cent/kwh, which is even high for Germany).

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[ - ]

4 points

9 months ago

Just as a rule of thumb: 1W of constant power costs is at most 25cents (40cent/kwh, which is even high for Germany).

The cost for a year is 1W24h365=8.76kWh which are at 0.4€/kWh 3.504€.

So with a difference of 3-4W you pay in a year between 10.5-14€ more than for the pi.

And i often heard the claim of thin clients idling around 5-6W, but i never got proof. Most things i saw are around 10W. Can you provide a picture? I would be really interested, honestly.

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AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de

[ - ]

1 point

9 months ago

I use a cheap watt meter and the values from above are from that meter.

10-15W is what my Dell optiplex idles at.

I guess, it also depends on your load. My measurements were made at “basic setup idle”, so smb, k3s with a handful of idling containers, pihole. Since I’m the only user of these services and don’t use them that much, the load average is often enough way below 1 (at 4 cores). It’s absolutely possible that someone with higher demands and higher loads pulls more power on average.

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[ - ]

2 points

8 months ago

Thanks for providing those numbers. Pretty much what i expected

My guess is, that those 5-6W on idle that gets thrown around in so many blog posts is probably just the CPU in idle state and not the whole board with io and other stuff.

As i said. The RPi (and other SBC) remains king for low power and low load applications like for example smart home. Especially in counties like germany with high energy prices. But honestly i am always surprised what can be run off a RPi.

And i just looked. The price for a RPi is actually not.that bad anymore, just saw a ebay listing for 3 * 3B+ for 100€.

For other low power usage where arm is not feasible those intel embedded based thin clients are an excellent choice.

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