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