My server box is also a 2012 era machine, it's a 3770k build. It's perfectly fine for what I use it for. Yeah it takes a bit more power than a modern intel chip, but it sure beats the alternative of throwing it in a landfill to save a few watts at idle.
But comparing spending 40 bucks on craigslist or ebay for an old pentium/core 2 duo, vs getting an rpi... You're probably better off with the Pi (assuming you can source it, which is not a given atm).
I don't even buy most of mine used, I just get hand-me-downs from friends/family because they want to get rid of the machine and ask me to wipe the drive in exchange for the hardware, but even at an upfront cost of free, a machine using 100 watts over a year is 80 bucks in my region, and my power is right around the US average.
Plus power in my region is tiered, so the first 650kwh per month are cheap, the next 350 are avg, and the rest are expensive. So adding machines at this point is actually closer to ~$130 a year at 100 watts idle (paying for t3 rates).
Personally, it's just not worth it to me to take a freebie that runs me $100+ in costs a year. Not even accounting for the knock-on costs, like the extra AC needed because 100 watts is a small heater.
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So sure - lots of older machines do just fine (the end of the core 2 duo line is quite reasonable, and most laptops are actually fine) but it's really probably worth measuring the power draw.
The five year cost of operating that rpi is ~$30, the five year cost of operating a 100 watt machine are ~$450. And I can run a LOT more low power machines and stay in my t1/t2 pricing for power.
Do you have any pointers what sort of equipment to use to measure the power draw? Are you simply measuring it from a UPS?
Some figures from around my house.
Lenovo Tkinkpad T400 - 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Laptop idles at about 10 Watts and peaks at just over 30 watts.
Lenovo Thinkpad T420 - 2nd Gen i5 is about the same.
Lenovo Mini 10 - 1.66Ghz Atom doesn't seem to know how to idle its power regardless of OS. Runs at a constant 10.5 Watts - 15 watts if using a Hard Drive installed instead of SSD.
Core 2 Duo Mac Mini - 8 watts idle - 24 watts peak.
Sony Bluray player - 0.5 Watts idle. 5 Watts during Bluray. 3 Watts during DVD.
Desktop PC - 2nd Gen i7 + Geforce 1650. Idle 61 Watts - Peak in game 95-101 Watts.
Sony AM/FM Radio - 0.5 Watts. That one was actually really neat to know just how lower power it takes to run.
Also why would you just keep running extra machines all the time? I understand a personal machine and a server but more than that.. for what?
Add an old house on top and throw in working from home, and usage can creep up on you very quickly. We average around 1000kwh a month, but summer months where it's 95+ and near 100% humidity means the AC reasonably needs to be on.
Jun/Jul are the worst, we hit 2200kwh over those months last year.
As for the machines - like I mentioned, they run a k8s cluster I host numerous services on. I run seafile/bookstack/jellyfin/keycloak/homeassistant/email/dns/mealie/snipeit/etc on them. Most idle around 5watts and aren't a big deal. I recycle the machines that would end up costing me real money in power usage.
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I'll add - my next personal project is going to be moving the entire cluster over to a dedicated solar system. As long as I don't do any grid-tie, I can do it without permits. Just waiting to find a decent deal on inverters at this point. Since I already have a pallet of used panels.
I have an i7 3770 and it's still ok for gaming even.
Usually I just leave the new machine as the only thing idling on the sockets without battery backup and compare the two.
I also have one of these (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LD53F3P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...) floating around, but you have to be careful with it since it's not a surge protector. That said, it's cheap and will monitor each socket individually.
However, I agree with with the OP comment that computer should not be replaced simply because newer, more energy efficient alternatives exist: at least not for anything made after 2010.
When comparing whether it is worse it or not to extend the life of a device that still does the job its intended to do, it's almost always worth it to extend the device's life.
As an exemple, if we go by Apple's data: a 2016 13' Intel MacBook Pro create a yearly impact of 18 kg of CO2eq through usage (electricity).
The 2021 13' MacBook M1 is a better machine environmentally by all account: manufacturing it polluted less than the 2016 machine (168kg CO2 vs 386kg), and it is more energy efficient (13 kg / CO2 per year).
Still, you would need a whooping 33.6 years for the use of the more energy efficient laptop to cover the CO2 from manufacturing it. And that's using global carbon data, if you live in a low carbon grid country, it could take a century to recover the greenhouse gas emitted during manufacturing of the new laptop.
(Not saying I would not still buy a M1 over keeping the slow Mac Intel but please don't claim your are helping the environment when doing so).
Source: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13i... https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13-...
You do need storage, but you need it for all of them anyways. I certainly won't trust the original spinning disk HDD that comes with hand me down machines with anything more than an OS image. Everything else goes on the NAS.
> However, I agree with with the OP comment that computer should not be replaced simply because newer, more energy efficient alternatives exist: at least not for anything made after 2010.
This - this is where the answer is to measure it. Sometimes the result will surprise you quite a bit. Most machines made after 2010 will be fine, but trust me, it's really worth plugging it into a watt meter and making sure.
Turns out all sorts of things adjust power draw, and one of the least maintained parts of old machines is the PSU - usually it's filled with dust/dirt, and as long as the machine still runs no one has paid it any mind in the last 10 years.
> Not saying I would not still buy a M1 over keeping the slow Mac Intel but please don't claim your are helping the environment when doing so
Who the fuck is talking about replacing an intel macbook with an m1? I'm talking about getting old tower machines from office/school closeouts or as hand-me-downs and repurposing them. An intel mac (even a 2010-2013 era one) is still worth WAY more than an RPI (~$200 vs $40), and laptops in general use a very different power curve (batteries matter - who knew...?).
Not to mention you can't even run a decent OS on the modern intel macs after 2016... (although at least Asahi is making progress these days) so trust me - I'm hardly suggesting a macbook update (I would strongly suggest purchasing from a different company, though - but that's a different conversation related to a different set of morals).
> It still makes sense to use a decade-old computer. >> I don't really think it does, at least not some of them.
I totally agree with you regarding the homelab topic (although personally, I started using low-powered refurbished x64 thin-clients (using about 10W) in place of a RPI cluster, mainly to get real sata ports on them.)
My point is that, environmentally, continuing to use a 10y computer rather than buying a new one is generally a sound advice (assuming it does still what you want it to do).
Since I didn't have data for a 10y old computer, I used what I could find: the 2016 vs the 2021 Macbooks Lifecycle assessments from Apple. The same point would probably stand between a 2010 computer and a 2023 computer. Even if the old one is less energy efficient, the 150 to 300kg+ of CO2 you save not building a new device goes a long way.
And instead of consumer devices or RPi, if you are talking about datacenter-class servers, then you save even more CO2 by prolonging your device life since a new server's manufacturing footprint is more like 1500 - 3000 kg CO2eq.
I don't really think it does, at least not some of them.
A lot of those older machines are just running really, really high idle power draw. Ex: Pentium 4/5, Core 2 Duo, Athlon64, etc. Running from 40 to 100 watts idle.
For comparison, a new RPI will go as low as ~1-3 watt idle, tops out at ~5-7 watts under full load, and will generally have better performance characteristics.
I run a lot of old machines in my basement because it can make sense (I throw them in a k8s farm), but I also generally have them spend a week on an electricity meter first (honestly, just a function of the UPS I run down there) and anything drawing more than 20 watts idle gets sent to the recycling instead.
The bad ones tend to run high + hot + loud, and they absolutely aren't worth it.