Hello,

I want to use a desktop PC as a NAS-like device in a home environment. It will be used as a file-server and backup target for other computers in the household, and it will need to run a cloud backup application (I’m considering Backblaze). I will not be using it to run any VMs or dockers so it does not need to be a powerful device. What I really want is for it use as little power as possible, yet sufficient for the tasks mentioned above.

I know if I use a mini PC I can achieve very low idle power draws of around 5W (when no external storage drives are attached). But I do want to include two or three 3.5" spinning storage drives, ideally attached via SATA instead of USB, so I guess it will have to be a tower PC. However, in my experience tower PCs idle at around 20-30W even before spinning storage drives have been attached (although I’ve only ever owned a couple of tower PCs, and these were more than 5 years old so I don’t know if this is particularly representative).

Are there tower PCs which achieve the same/similar low power consumption as mini PCs (with the only real reason for the larger form factor being to provide more space for expansion)? If so, do you have any suggestions for specific models? Ideally I want to buy something prebuilt with a Windows license. I’m not keen to invest time into a self-build and I’m keen to use Backblaze for the cloud backup, which requires Windows or Mac. Happy to buy used but would like it to be new enough to be officially supported for Windows 11.

However, happy to consider other suggestions which would still enable me to do cloud backup of around 5TB of data for similar price to Backblaze (around $100/year).

Thanks

  • CrystalFeelerBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’ve got a nice little project sitting waiting to be done. The aim is a low power backup box.

    It’s an HP Elite 6300 SFF, got space for 2 x 3.5" 8tb and SSD for OS (3sata ports on the board).

    comes stock with:

    i5-3470 (4c/4t 3.2GHz base, 77w) 240w psu

    And I have a dual port 2.5gb low-profile Intel-based NIC and 32Gb DDR3. Might put an HBA in for raid on the 2 3.5" drives if I get any good recommendations.

    I actually have a few of them after an office upgrade and happen to have a couple of CPUs from some retired gen 8 microservers:

    E3-1265L v2 (4c/8t 2.5GHz base 45W) E3-1220L v2 (2c/4t 2.3GHz base 17W)

    So I’m going to experiment with those (not 100% sure if the machines will run these 2) but given that it’s just for my others to back up to it doesn’t need to be a powerhouse.

    Ideal setup for me would be 2 x 8Tb, OS on SSD, 2.5GbE NIC, 8/16Gb RAM and the 1220l v2.

    Thats the plan anyway - if anyone has any info or experience with those cpus on that board, please do let me know how you got on 👍

    If they do run the E3-1265L v2, I’ll also be building a proxmox box with 32Gb RAM and another 2.5GbE NIC 🤞

    • ozaz1OPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      i5-3470 (4c/4t 3.2GHz base, 77w) 240w psu

      Would you mind expanding on the power consumption figures you’ve mentioned please? I’m primarily interested in idle power consumption as most of the time my machine will be idling or doing very little. I’m assuming the power consumption figures you mention aren’t idle power consumption, but I’m not sure what they represent and if there’s a way to approximate/predict an idle power consumption from them.

      I won’t necessarily be looking into the processors you mentioned, but understanding this might help me extract more useful info when I look at online CPU and PC specs.

      Thanks