I have been using an old PC as NAS and running docker containers (Immich, Nextcloud, paperless-ngx etc.). I got 5 3.5" HDD disks and a Nvme. Even on idle, I am consuming 50-60w. A friend of mine is selling a Qnap NAS which is a dedicated machine and probably consumes less power, although I don’t know if it’s worth it.

  • JASN_DE@feddit.orgEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    A big portion of that is caused by the drives, so you’d have to compare the empty QNAP vs your empty machine. Also, depending on which NAS appliance, check that the CPU is actually powerful enough to run all your services.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      Drives only consume power on reads and writes, if your NAS spins them down as it should (and apparently QNAP *doesn’t, which I didn’t know).

      As per my other comment - 8 drives or 1 drive, same idle power for desktop hardware. My actual NAS uses about 1/8 the power at idle for 5 drives.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Drives only consume power on reads and writes, if your NAS spins them down as it should (and apparently QNAP *doesn’t, which I didn’t know).

        not really. not all drives spin down by themselves, by default. and even if they do, it’ll happen relatively long after reads and writes, a the while it’ll consume power.