this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
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Selfhosters what is the power draw of your entire setup? And have you done anything special to manage it you'd like to share?

Including all network equipment I use around 110kWh of good ol' 120V 60Hz USA juice per month. Averaging about 215 watts of power draw for my systems. Nothing amazing, but I like to think that it's a conservative setup for everything I accomplish with it. I'm paying around $25 a month for my setup. None of that includes my work PC or personal PC, just hosting infrastructure.

Other than trying to make sure all power states are available on my server I haven't done a lot of power conservation.

I'm curious what you all have.

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[–] Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

On average it's about 4kwh per day. I'm effectively off grid most of the time so the cost of electricity is irrelevant unless I go way overboard during a week of rain or something and I have to draw from the grid.

I am about to move from an 18ru rack to 45.. So.. Might be some expansion in the future.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wow, off grid and you pull that much.

Impressive.

[–] Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 days ago

That's only about 170w continuous over 24h. This time of year, on a good day I'll generate 90kwh from solar and use about 60kwh total.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

If I fire up everything in the rack it's several kilowatts. Probably more than a 230 V wall socket can handle.

Usually it's way less, though right now it's just a switch and the router/firewall, mere 57 W.

I make most of my own net power with solar PV, soon 4 kWp in total.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I'd say no more than 15W.
1x Jetson Nano
1x SSD
3x 2.5" HDDs
1x RPi 3B wih Pihole

[–] neidu4@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Around 700W on low load, almost idle. Haven't had the chance to test it at full load yet.

It sits in my basement, so the waste heat is actually useful this time of year. Even more so when my basement would otherwise be freezing.

I plan on implementing scheduling where the two most power hungry servers are powered down and up as needed. The other two take almost nothing.

Also, the UPS supports a green mode that is a lot more efficient but with a downside of output side dropping out a few ms during switchover. This removes any conversion loss. I haven't tested whether my hardware can tolerate it yet, so for now I'm living with the conversion loss.

My house is powered by cheap hydroelectric supply, generated in a mountain roughly 5km from my house, so I'm not worried.

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

My microwave, I think?

[–] bier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

My servers (3U) in the DC pull ~400w but my provider doesn't do power/traffic billing just a flat fee ~230€ For my homelab if I power up my backup server pull a backup and then write it to tape and my gf is gaming it's 900w Idle is like 150w

[–] tychosmoose@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

90w here, so 65kwh/mo. Tinyminimicro server. Three pi (5, 4, 3B), fiber gateway, Mikrotik router, switch and two APs. Plus power gear (managed PDU and UPS).

[–] antsu@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago

Around 400W, including switches and access points.

[–] dieTasse@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My nas takes about 40 Wh. And my network machine (proxmox + openwrt) about 20 Wh. When I upgraded my nas a year ago it was actually drawing twice as much, I have since then switched to more efficient processor (amd from normal to E) and I took out graphic card that I didn't use. I could have in theory merge those two, but I wanted to separate networking from nas+apps. I don't know how much my smart devices take but I don't have many so it can be up to 50 Wh total maybe. But that is more smart home than self hosting 😀

[–] snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Is this daily, monthly? Cause otherwise you'd be drawing 144kw from just a nas which is.... beyond silly

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Currently, 2 servers and 2 3d printers, I'm running just over 200w at idle. Depending on what my printers and servers are doing at any given moment, it could go up to 2000w, total, but I haven't seen that high a power draw since I stopped contributing to Boinc projects about a year ago. I remember finding it mildly amusing that my graphics cards had a higher power draw then my printers.

[–] nibbs@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

Usually around 205 W from the wall to UPS and 155 W used by devices connected to the UPS.

[–] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

When nothing (no a/c, washer, work PCs off, etc) is running my house power draw is about 500-800w. So my battery keeps things going until the next day.

Edit: just checked and whole house is 350W this evening.

[–] bolapara@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

~500W continuous, ~625W peak. To reduce this further I'd really need to start consolidating hardware. I do have one system that could be replaced with something more modern and would probably drop 20-30W. And my fileserver is a bit overkill as well so there could be improvements there.

[–] Sammirr@aussie.zone 3 points 3 days ago

About 230w at idle with 3 servers, 2 routers, switch with PoE for umpteen devices, 16 spinning hdds.

[–] a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 3 points 3 days ago

Around 150W for UPS, Mikrotik router, Pi 4, Proxmox/TrueNAS server with 8x SAS drives. Without the SAS drives I'd be closer to 50W, but how else am I going to heat up my cupboard? I got the SAS drives at a bargain price thankfully... I estimate about AUD300/year in electricity.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

i3-4160 running Proxmox (OPNSense VM and a couple of containers) with 3 spinny drives and no GPU, TP-Link 8x GbE switch, ASUS AX1800 as a Wifi AP, ISP's own manky cable modem, plus a UPS eats about 66-72 watts at the wall socket. If I install a passively cooled GT-710 for transcoding, it adds 10-15 watts at idle.

[–] Alexica@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Around 300wh.

  • router
  • sw with 4 poe cams
  • 2 minipcs as servers
  • pc used as nas with truenas
[–] dmtalon@infosec.pub 3 points 3 days ago

NAS running ~15 docker (frigate, nextcloud, immich, plex etc), two windows VMs one is managing my NAS backups to cloud.

Couple RPIs one does Home assistant, one does pihole and weewx.

All my Network gear, and poe for APs and a few of my cameras,

2 x 12 channel whole house amps fed by 11 Chromecast audios (that's going to be a disaster one day)

That "idles" just under 300w but can obviously jump all over.

Rest of my security cameras are poe from another location (since I couldn't get the network drops back to the server room for the majority of the cameras, uses another 65w , but that's a bit misleading as it is picking up other things since it's not as isolated.

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

3 Lenovo Tiny's, one HP Mini, 3 external drives, a switch and 2 modems runs just under 100W.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I can trip the measly 15 amp breaker by drawing 1.5kW on two servers + turning on an amplifier that is somehow on the same circuit despite being in a different room quite far from where my servers are lol.

On average though I only draw like 350W. The huge spike only happens if I run a miner/llm on both of my servers or the during the startup spike.

The 1kW chunk comes from some RTX Quadro 6000s which each eat 250W each when maxxed out.

EDIT: Want to mention that most machines report their power draw (from mobo) without IPMI, so you can use your favorite stats collector use it to form a rough estimate of kWh total in case you don't have a proper meter that records usage.

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm in the same boat and i rent the place. Both bedrooms are on the same breaker and I'm upgrading my GPU (215W to 415W) and might get a Mi50 as a second card in my desktop for local LLMs.

At full power on both machines i'm already close to tripping the breaker. Witj these new card(s) i don't think it'll fly. My server uses around 700W at max, 450W idle if it's nice and cool in the spare room. Mostly due to loooots of spinning rust. I'm a datahoarder and have a full 18 disk 3.5" JBOD, and 24/25 drives in my 2.5" JBOD.

I'll figure something out I guess...

[–] trk@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I worked good out a whole ago, so here's a copy and paste:

I have a power monitoring plug on this setup, so I can tell you exactly how much!

CPU: 2 x Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v4 @ 2.40GHz
RAM: 512 GiB DDR4 Multi-bit ECC

My disk layout is like so:

This draws a fairly consistent 650W, including a POE router (15.6kwh per day). My current electricity price is 39.38c/kwh... HOWEVER I have a cheap rate of 8c/kwh between midnight and 6:00am, and free power between 11:00am and 2:00pm. I also have solar which tends to cover ~10:00am to ~2:00pm, but its dependant on sunlight so I'll ignore it for now.

So:
12:00am-06:00am = ($0.0800/kwh * 0.65kw) * 06 = $0.312
06:00am-11:00am = ($0.3938/kwh * 0.65kw) * 05 = $1.279
11:00am-02:00pm = ($0.0000/kwh * 0.65kw) * 03 = $0.000
02:00pm-12:00am = ($0.3938/kwh * 0.65kw) * 10 = $2.559

Total = $4.15AUD per 24 hours, or $1,514.75AUD per year

My Merross plug is showing that I'm currently averaging a daily consumpion of 15.021kwh, and I'm not accounting for the hours of solar offset so the actual dollar value will be a little lower. But still. Fair few bucks.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

1,514.75AUD per year

What apps are you running?

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[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

Something like 25W at idle for the single server I operate. I'm not counting networking because I'm using the equipment that I already have and need just to distribute internet at home.

[–] michaelharley@infosec.pub 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

About 113 kWh (155w) for me. I have 2 Intel NUC type devices, with two drive enclosures. Plus my networking equipment which include POE cameras.

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
AP WiFi Access Point
ISP Internet Service Provider
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV)
Plex Brand of media server package
PoE Power over Ethernet
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SBC Single-Board Computer
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
Zigbee Wireless mesh network for low-power devices
nginx Popular HTTP server

[Thread #128 for this comm, first seen 13th Oct 2026, 23:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 2 points 3 days ago

Server PC has a mean draw of ~46W

[–] sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago

Just checked my UPS. It sits at 105W for:

  • HP Mini PC
  • Synology 4 Bay NAS
  • DrayTek Router
  • Mikrotik 16 Port Switch
  • PoE Switch
  • 3 AP's
  • 1 Raspberry Pi 3B
  • 2 NanoKVM
[–] yaroto98@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Just checked my ups. Looks like I'm currently drawing 125W. That's a NAS, 3 laptops, router, modem, AP, bookshelf pc, and switch.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

last I checked it was at 2.5kwh so now it's probably around 3.5kwh

[–] aurion@piefed.aurionblack.com 1 points 3 days ago

Normally my power sensor connected to my server rack hovers around 150 watts.

I’ve got mini hp pc, 2 HDD bay UGREEN NAS, ubiquity cloud Max router, home assistant green, 2 switches with Poe (2 WiFi AP, raspberry pi, and a mesh radio), and a dell r340.

I also have a dell t310 I’m using as a proxmox backup server that powers on every day around 2am to do backups. The power shoots up to 360 watts when that happens 😅

[–] achsonaja@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

About 100w on average for a nuc, 4 bay nas (only 3 in use), 4 poe cameras, AP, 2 switches, IP kvm, and the ups. Pretty happy with how little that seems to be for the amount there.

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