Those are good points Mark. I home office. No partners and my wife
does not mess with my computers.
Lots of pros and cons.
Thanks!!
On 2021-07-23 11:50, Mark Phillips via PLUG-discuss wrote:
Keith,
All things being equal, I would use the laptop. You can disable the
screen and even close the lid, although I leave mine up about 30% for
cooling.
There will come a time long after you install the OS that something
will happen and the computer won't boot. You then need to (1) find
that old monitor; (2) find the right cable; (3) find the right mouse;
(3) pull out the computer from whatever corner it has been relegated
to since you haven't touched it in, maybe years?; (4) hook up the
monitor, mouse, etc. and diagnose the problem. With the laptop, just
fold up the screen, reboot, hit f-something to get into safe boot, and
diagnose the problem. The fun part is when your partner donates that
old monitor to Goodwill in an effort to "clean up the clutter"....if
ssh doesn't work, now you are shopping at Goodwill for an old monitor.
This story is based on real life experiences. Only the names were
changed to protect the innocent.
Mark
On Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 10:09 AM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
<plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Thanks David!!
On 2021-07-21 19:26, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
If this is just for learning, do you want or need it to run
24/7/365?
If not, you can shut it off when you don’t need it if you’re
concerned about power.
The goal is for it to run 24/7 serving up one of my domains.
Note that a lot of old PCs have power supplies where the fans run
all
the time. They can end up consuming quite a bit of power.
You might consider a 2012-vintage Mac Mini. It already has Unix
built-in and everything you need to run as a server.
They’re between $150 and $250 on eBay and sometimes as low as
$100.
FWIW, thru most of the 90’s I had a little box I ran as a
dedicated
server at a co-lo facility in town.
It was a mini-ITX with a 600 MHz x86 clone chip, 256 MB of RAM, a
20GB
HDD, and 10MB ethernet. I ran Debian on it. After the third HDD
died,
I moved to a reseller-type WHM/cPanel hosting account that was a
LOT
cheaper per month. (My current one is less than $20/mo.)
(The co-lo facility’s biggest monthly expense was their A/C
bill.)
I have too much old hardware. I was going to use an old Dell i3...
however I am thinking of using one of my old laptops.
Both have their merits.
The laptop has a build in monitor... however I do not need the
monitor
once the O/S is installed. I then use SSH.
I'm thinking the Dell mini tower has a faster bus and memory. And it
has
8GB of RAM vs 4GB of RAM on the Laptop. I'm guessing the faster bus
and
RAM will make a difference.
They both have 2 cores and 4 threads.
Both CPUs benchmark the same and they have the exact same SSD.
I'm thinking the mini tower is better. I do not think I will ever
use
8GB of RAM on a home web server.
Given what everyone is saying, the amount of power used is somewhat
dependent on demand. Low demand = low power usage.
The Raspberry Pi Zero W costs $10, and has these features:
• 1GHz, single-core CPU
• 512MB RAM
• 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN
• Bluetooth 4.1
• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
• Mini HDMI and USB On-The-Go ports
• Micro USB power
• HAT-compatible 40-pin header
• Composite video and reset headers
• CSI camera connector
It consumes 120-170 mA (but can source over 1A to USB), so can run
off
of a USB battery pack if needed.
This puppy has more power and features than that mini-ITX machine
I
had!
It comes with a ready-to-run Linux on an SD card and fits into a
box
about the size of a pack of cigarettes. No fan is needed AFAIK.
You can plug nearly any size storage you want into the USB port,
although the SD card can be used for additional storage.
I would like to try a Raspberry Pi ... maybe a future project.
-David Schwartz
On Jul 21, 2021, at 6:50 PM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
<plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Hi Eric,
I assume you live in the valley? And you use a master cool
evaporative cooler... Off topic question - Does your master cool,
cool your house reasonably in the summer and more so during the
monsoons?
On 2021-07-21 15:50, Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss wrote:
Back when I ran a home server on my Athlon X2 with 1500 W supply,
the
machine never drew that much. Even with several disks spinning, 8
VMWare instances going and a few other goodies, that machine
never
drew more than 600w at maximum. I kept it live 24/7 for a few
years
and it added less than $120 yearly to the electrical bill. These
days,
that machine is out of service and is only good for parts. My Mac
mini, which draws at most 100 W under full load is on 24/7 and I
don’t
even see it add that much to the electrical bill here. There are
really only 3 high draw appliances in this house now:
1. The refrigerator
2. The stove/oven
3. The master cool evaporative cooler. Everything else either
runs
on
wall warts or only gets used occasionally. In fact, we spend less
than
$150 a month here for electric. Now, if I put that Athlon X2 back
into
service, we might see $10 a month in extra use. I am still
contemplating putting it back up and using it as my go to linux
development machine.
-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Utilities Dept.
On Jul 21, 2021, at 7:33 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
<plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Hi,
I just read this quote about the electrical costs to run a web
server from home:
Cost: While it may sound cheaper to use that computer lying
around
doing nothing when creating your web server, when you factor in
the
cost of powering an old computer 24 hours a day, it can get very
expensive. A 250W desktop computer running 24 hours per day at 12
cents per KW/h is a whopping $262.00 per year!
---
I think their math is wrong.
The average residential electricity rate in Chandler is
10.85¢/kWh.
I'm thinking a low traffic PHP web server running on an old Dell
with a 400 watt power supply is not using but maybe 100 watts on
average. I've read that the computer should use no more than
half
the power supply capacity. Is this correct?
If my home web server is using 100 watts an hour that mean 100
watts
* 30 days * 24 hours or 72K watts.
I'm thinking 72 * .1085 = $7.81 a month.
Any thoughts are much appreciated.
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