I’ve been using my old Laptop from my university days as a home server for some time now. It runs the latest Ubuntu LTS with Jellyfin and Home Assistant both in docker containers.

When it’s idle it pulls about 10 Watts, which is Not great, but not terrible either.

So I was wondering what I could do to reduce that number. I’m looking for low hanging fruit rather than complex hacks like CPU under clocking or what have you.

Thanks in advance!

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Wifi is often a module in older laptops, and you could unplug that.

    Otherwise, 10W is quite good for older hardware, I doubt you will get much below that.

  • SkeletonsDontFart@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    You could try disabling the monitor and running it headless if you’re not already, or maybe Wake On Lan to turn it off until you actually want to use a service

  • Brewchin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    10W? That’s incredibly low - under 10mA wherever in the world you live. About the same as an LED bulb, or a tenth of an average incandescent lightbulb.

    For comparison: my NAS and NUC (mix of HDD and M.2 drives; both hosting services) draw 75W combined at idle, measured via Home Assistant and a smart plug, and that’s generally considered low-power self-hosting.

    I’d be pleasantly amazed if you could get a laptop to use less, so I look forward to other replies.

  • Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.showEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    One of the best ways to reduce power consumption on older laptops is to change the HDD to an SDD.

    But don’t expect to get below 10W on an old laptop.