power

Power consumption

Running something 24/7 means even a few extra watts add up noticeably on the electricity bill over a year. Low power draw has therefore been one of the main hardware selection criteria from the start — see the Hardware page for more.

How I measure and reduce power draw

• Wattmeter / metering smart plug — the simplest way to find out real-world consumption at idle and under load, rather than relying on ballpark figures from the PSU datasheet.
• Passively cooled CPU wherever performance allows — it cuts noise as well as a few extra watts spent on a fan.
• SSD cache (bcache) reduces how often all drives need to spin for every data access, which can slightly lower the array's average draw.
• Scheduled shutdown — my NAS automatically shuts down in software overnight. It powers back on automatically only once a week for a sync run, or I can start it on demand from my phone or from a computer at home via Wake-on-LAN, see Remote Start.
• 80PLUS-rated PSU — higher supply efficiency means less energy lost as heat, especially at low load, where cheap generic PSUs tend to be least efficient.