Thanks to this community I’ve learned and I’m feeling inspired. I’ve loved having an NAS for the last few years, but it’s woefully under powered for what I’m using it for these days.

So I’ve ordered some basic PC parts, gonna build a basic setup using an old CPU I got lying about and try the NAS OS I saw talked about on here recently.

TrueNAS looks like a good option with only slight fears it’ll go down the well known path to the dark side like so many free options before.

In any event, I’m looking forward to adding Nextcloud and Jellyfin, to trying out Docker and generally having more control over things.

Thanks again to you all for informing and inspiring.

I’ll be back if I get questions!

  • essell@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    17 hours ago

    I hadn’t considered that! Thank you.

    I’m hoping the OS, as it’s designed for this, is going to be helpful in getting the right balance with power usage.

    • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      11 minutes ago

      To put this into perspective for you, if your NAS sits at idle for 90% of the time (probably true) and an older CPU is 50w (kinda high, but maybe) and a newer CPU is 15w, over an entire year it will save you around 305.76 kWh. Average price per kWh in the USA is 12.89¢. So over a year a new CPU can reasonably save you around $39.41. So it’s not nothing, but it’s nothing crazy, but lower idle wattage = lower temp = components last longer, which is the real savings.

      If an older CPU is only gonna last you 5 years, when a new might last 10, you’re going to save almost $400 in energy and generally a CPU today is going to be cheaper than a CPU in 10 years (probably^tm).

    • Kuinox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      You can calculate it !
      Take your power usage and compute the cost over a year.
      I will soon add a SSD because i finally moved from a RAID 1 to RAID 5 (so more HDDs), it consume more electricity.
      I can measure how much power it draw because the server is on a smart plug. I calculated an additional 20-30€ a year of electricity, adding a SSD for read/write cache would allow the HDDs to stop spinning, make things faster and will be cost effective over a few years.

    • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 hours ago

      This is why I’m using a refurbished mini PC as my home server. Lower wattage for constant uptime at home. Also very quiet.

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Bingo! I’ve got 4 mini-PCs (does a 2014 Mac mini count?), and one SFF. The average power draw of this cluster is barely ~90W.

        Screenshot from my HASS dashboard: