My rack lives in an expensive energy market, and pulls just under 500W. Almost 40% of that is a Dell R430, which by itself costs about $50/mo to run.
Next time I have the energy (hah) for this flavor of home maintenance, the idea is to split the work it does off to a few fanless systems, I'm pretty sure I can knock at least 100W off that. Main challenge there is storage - I have a SAS shelf and need a low-wattage machine that speaks SF-8088.
Experimented some with a couple Raspberry Pis for some things, but they just don't seem built to run 24/7. One lasted about 4 months, the other died at about 12. (They PXEbooted, no local storage, it wasn't that.)
Next time I have the energy (hah) for this flavor of home maintenance, the idea is to split the work it does off to a few fanless systems, I'm pretty sure I can knock at least 100W off that. Main challenge there is storage - I have a SAS shelf and need a low-wattage machine that speaks SF-8088.
Experimented some with a couple Raspberry Pis for some things, but they just don't seem built to run 24/7. One lasted about 4 months, the other died at about 12. (They PXEbooted, no local storage, it wasn't that.)