I love my “homelab,” which is more or less just my entire home network. But I’ve come up against a problem where my power bill is getting ridiculously out of hand ($438/month on flat bill). I’ve identified my server rack as a contributor and wondered if other people experienced about the same level of power draw for similar setups.
My server rack and components: ~300w draw minimum, constant (24/7)
- HP ProCurve 1810-24 Gigabit switch
- Netgear GS724TP PoE+ Gigabit switch
- 5x PoE cameras (2x doorbell, 3x normal cameras)
- 2x UniFi U6 Pro
- 1x UniFi AC-M-Pro
- Unraid server
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900x (stock clocks/volts)
- GTX 1080 (transcodes and such)
- EMC KTN-STL3 with 7 disks (connected to Unraid through SAS card)
- Qotom mini-PC with OPNsense installed
- Remote access PC (basically a “physical” sandbox)
- i7 6700 CPU
- 2x 4TB HDDs
- No other notable power draw components
These numbers were drawn by observing Sense’s app on my breaker panel and subtracting an initial reference value with the value obtained after flipping the rack’s breaker, and I get about a difference of 600 watts, but I should note that there’s an upright freezer on the same circuit. When I measured only that breaker in the whole house, it drew around 600 watts, and I can assume about half of that is my freezer and the other half is the server rack.
Now here’s where it kind of departs from r/homelab and moves into some other territory.
Other always-on devices include my wife and my computers, which draw around 100 watts each when idle and usually no more than 400-500 under full load, altogether.
My notable specs:
- Ryzen 7 5700X
- RTX 2080 Super
Her notable specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600X
- RTX 3070
I have other smaller constant power draw devices like lights and TVs in sleep mode and such, but unless I did my math horribly wrong or am clearly missing something, I don’t see how my power bill should be so high that it reaches anywhere past $300 even on a flat bill scheme. My next suspicion is the A/C, which if that’s the case I have some more improvements to do elsewhere. Primarily, I just want to know what everyone else’s experience with higher end homelab hardware is in relation to power cost and if this is usual or unusual.
That’s interesting. How would I go about checking my HVAC system? I assume I’d just call a qualified HVAC company and have them inspect the unit I have for charge levels and anything else that would cause it to be misbehaving? My landlord says the unit is only two years old, but it’s decaying like it’s 12 years old. Like, some of the aluminum fins are rotting off kind of decay.
I don’t know how/don’t have the tools to do it myself but if you call up an HVAC company they can come by and check the coolant levels. If it’s too low or too high your system is going to be working overtime to maintain temps. That’s what happened with mine. I set it to 68 but my cooled air output from the HVAC system was only 67. It needs to be lower or it’ll take forever to cool down the house. After the coolant levels were fixed, the HVAC air dropped to 62F