Server with very low power consumption - what to use?

[Whiffle]

I was looking at streamlining my set up a bit, as I have the following:

* PiHole, running on a RPiB+
* Home Assistant, running on a Pi3B+ (with a USB SSD)
* Odroid HC2, with a 3.5" 14TB drive - which has Openmediavault on it and is primarily used for streaming media/Live TV and recording via TVHeadend (in conjunction with a Digibit SAT-IP box).

It occurred to me that it might be better to try and combine everything in a single device, if possible.

What are my options?

Given energy prices, at the moment, I really wanted something with a very minimal power draw as it will be on 24/7.

Is an 8GB Raspberry Pi4 (if I can every get hold of one) the obvious choice for this?

I was looking at NUCs but, whilst they are much more capable, they do use quite a lot more power when idle.

 

[Rroff]

Some of the mini PCs with like J4125 and N5105, etc. CPUs can be very low power and tuned to reduce it even more - I'm using a MeLe PCG35 as a low power file server/syncing solution, without going to town on optimising power use, and it idles sub 2 watt, averages about 2 watt and peaks at only about 7 watt or so - though Windows 10/11 pulls those numbers up slightly. (EDIT: Those numbers don't include any attached storage drives, etc. though which will pull it up a bit).

EDIT: Not sure how the hardware stacks up versus your requirements though as I've not done some of that kind of stuff in awhile.

 

[Whiffle]

Thanks very much for that - had no idea that x86 architecture could offer anything that low.

Has led me to look at something like an Odroid H3/H3+ - I am hoping that the idle wattage could be just as low. Only problem is that when you start adding RAM, power supply etc. things could start getting pretty expensive.

 

[Chaos]

This list was made on a German forum showing low power setups, might be worth a look-

-Die sparsamsten Systeme (<30W Idle)-

All Idle Watt,Last Watt,C-State,CPU,Mainboard,Netzteil,GPU,Messgerät,HDD / SSD,RAM,Betriebssystem,Maus, Tastatur, Monitor,Lüfter,User 1,5,63,C8,Intel Core i5-9500T,HP 859C,HP 90W PPP012C-S,iGPU,ina219,Kingston A2000 500GB NVME,1 x 8GB F4-2666C19-8GRS DDR4,Fedora 33,Dell Maus, HP Keyboard, D...

docs.google.com