old laptop or old pc as server vs raspberry Pi

[80211ac]

hi All,

My first post so be gentle.

I am after opinions here as I am looking forward to setting up a home server generally as personal cloud accessible from outside of home network, run a few programs like calibre etc, and have all my music and movies available to my TVs, Playstation, laptop etc.

I have an old laptop HP pavillion 1.8ghz single core AMD Turion 64bit with 1gb ram and hard disk and have a similar spec old PC sitting around.

Do you guys suggest that I run a server on a laptop, PC or raspberry pi to avoid operational cost.

Please let me know,

thanks,

80211ac

 

[justanotherboy]

If the primary function is NAS I would avoid the current Raspberry Pi. The network performance is pretty bad, sometimes in the 1.5MB/s range. If you are going to connect the HD to the USB port in the Pi be aware the NIC share the USB bus too.

And if you are going to have the music files locally I would recommend to install mpd as the server side for the music.

 

[Shivansps]

If you want a server just avoid R-PI, no gblan and no satas just does not make a good server.

You may want to use this instead, it cost nearly the same as a R-PI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135322

At least it has GBlan and satas.

 

[sm625]

Speaking from personal experience, the problem with using an old laptop is that the fan eventually starts to crap out and becomes really noisy. Now the cpu load may not be very high so some machines might run just fine for that type of workload even with the fan disabled, but I doubt that one would.

 

[NTMBK]

I would go with the desktop PC, and look around for a CPU upgrade for it. What are its specs?

 

[sdifox]

desktop pc probably will fare best

 

[janeuner]

Home servers cost power. A typical PC idles at ~70 watts, and typical laptop idles at maybe ~20 watts. On my last bill, I payed $0.101/kWh. So the marginal cost of operation for an old PC vs a old laptop may be:
PC cost: (0.07 kW) * (24 hr/d * 365 d/yr) * ($0.101 / kWh) = $62/yr
Laptop cost: (0.02 kW) * (24 hr/d * 365 d/yr) * ($0.101 / kWh) = $17/yr

Of course those are winter rates. So the question is, how serious are you about your server, what do you need it to do, and how long do you want it to last before an upgrade? If you don't know the answers to these questions, use the laptop until you find out.

Anecdote: My home server was a Pentium 166Mhz machine for 4 years before I did this math. Then I bought a first-generation Atom and made up the cost in less than two years. 5 years later, I switched to a Athlon 5350 because of need.

 

[Stuka87]

If the new quad core Pi supports sata, it may be a valid option. Its significantly faster than the old one, runs windows 10 (arm), and still has WAY less power usage than a PC.

 

[NEDM64]

If the primary function is NAS I would avoid the current Raspberry Pi. The network performance is pretty bad, sometimes in the 1.5MB/s range. If you are going to connect the HD to the USB port in the Pi be aware the NIC share the USB bus too.

And if you are going to have the music files locally I would recommend to install mpd as the server side for the music.

Not in my case.

It depends on what you use for transport.

RPI is too slow for the encryption if you use SFTP.

But on FTP, i can get stable around 10 MB/s (100 megabit).

On the new RPI, this is no more an issue. But still doesn't have USB 3.0, and worse, no gigabit ethernet, so you're capped like me, to 10MB/s.

 

[80211ac]

Thanks All,
Much appreciate your replies. To be honest with you, its my first server ever and i am not sure how much use i will get out of it etc. Energy cost (UK energy rates are expensive) is my primary concern plus an average performance which rules the PI out. I am leaning towards laptop, it has already got usb3.0 interface and probably will stick a gigabit lan card to give it a go.

I will be back for more info.

80211ac

 

[NTMBK]

Have you considered getting an off-the-shelf microserver? One of these would serve you nicely: http://www.ebuyer.com/517760-hp-proliant-gen8-g1610t-microserver-712317-421 Lots of internal drive bays, much newer and faster processor (as well as more power efficient), more memory, proper RAID controller (if you care about mirroring your drives, so that your data is better protected), integrated gigabit ethernet.

 

[Yuriman]

Home servers cost power. A typical PC idles at ~70 watts, and typical laptop idles at maybe ~20 watts. On my last bill, I payed $0.101/kWh. So the marginal cost of operation for an old PC vs a old laptop may be:
PC cost: (0.07 kW) * (24 hr/d * 365 d/yr) * ($0.101 / kWh) = $62/yr
Laptop cost: (0.02 kW) * (24 hr/d * 365 d/yr) * ($0.101 / kWh) = $17/yr

Of course those are winter rates. So the question is, how serious are you about your server, what do you need it to do, and how long do you want it to last before an upgrade? If you don't know the answers to these questions, use the laptop until you find out.

Anecdote: My home server was a Pentium 166Mhz machine for 4 years before I did this math. Then I bought a first-generation Atom and made up the cost in less than two years. 5 years later, I switched to a Athlon 5350 because of need.

My wife's computer is a Haswell i3, 8GB of RAM (2x4GB), HD7850, SSD and 3.5" mechanical disk, and it idles at ~35w. My Ivy Bridge i5 it the same as above but with an additional 3.5" drive, and idles at ~46w.

The idle power of the video cards is estimated at ~10w (source), which would make them ~25w and ~36w respectively using integrated graphics.

 

[SammichPG]

Speaking from personal experience, the problem with using an old laptop is that the fan eventually starts to crap out and becomes really noisy. Now the cpu load may not be very high so some machines might run just fine for that type of workload even with the fan disabled, but I doubt that one would.

I had an hp laptop mounting a 45nm amd cpu from 2010, its thermal design as you'd expect from cheap hp machines is utter rubbish.

I wired a 120mm fan to a usb cable, disassembled the bottom panel and hotglued it on top of the cpu socket.

The laptop fan doesn't spin anymore and it's dead silent, it's crude but has been working 24/7 for around a year now.

 

[80211ac]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. Is your laptop still running as a server or has it died completely? Even a year's use out of an old laptop isn't bad as long as it doesn't rocket up the energy bill.

I had an hp laptop mounting a 45nm amd cpu from 2010, its thermal design as you'd expect from cheap hp machines is utter rubbish.

I wired a 120mm fan to a usb cable, disassembled the bottom panel and hotglued it on top of the cpu socket.

The laptop fan doesn't spin anymore and it's dead silent, it's crude but has been working 24/7 for around a year now.

 

[beginner99]

What amount of data are we talking about? Laptops don't exactly shine for having many 3.5 drive slots. While it sound like a good idea on paper it will be a hassle. Then you start attaching usb drives and so forth. Sure prefer the desktop. If the stuff actually fits on the laptops old hdd why not just get a usb stick and carry it around? (again, depends on amounf of data).

And about movies: Outside of your home you will be limited to your internet connections upload speed which usually is very crappy. So big ? if movies will work at all and sure not HD movies unless you're lucky to have google fiber or something similar.

 

[SammichPG]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. Is your laptop still running as a server or has it died completely? Even a year's use out of an old laptop isn't bad as long as it doesn't rocket up the energy bill.

Yes it works pretty well since it's idling 99% of the time since it's a simple nas/cups print server for my home network.

gaia@gaia-HP-625 ~ $ uptime
14:30:56 up 23 days, 2:27, 2 users, load average: 0,13, 0,08, 0,11

Since I don't have a wattmeter I used Powertop which reports a power consumption of 22W with the monitor turned off (I ssh into the server).

I came up with an annual energy consumption of around 192kwh [(22W*24h)/1000*365days]


Assuming a cost of 0.18€/kwh (it's crazy expensive here) the final cost of running this laptop 24/7 is 34.69€ per year or 2.89€ per month, if you live in a country with decent natural resources or nuclear power it'll be cheaper.
Buying a raspberry, powersupply and working UPS would cost more than a year worth of laptop usage.


An Atom netbook will likely cut the energy costs in half while offering the ease of use that comes with x86 (raspberry doesn't work with normal debian binaries).

My thinkpad x200s (core 2 duo ultra low voltage) consumes less than 10W with the monitor turned on and low brightness, it's going to give good energy savings when the current HP will die.

 

[SammichPG]

What amount of data are we talking about? Laptops don't exactly shine for having many 3.5 drive slots. While it sound like a good idea on paper it will be a hassle. Then you start attaching usb drives and so forth. Sure prefer the desktop. If the stuff actually fits on the laptops old hdd why not just get a usb stick and carry it around? (again, depends on amounf of data).

And about movies: Outside of your home you will be limited to your internet connections upload speed which usually is very crappy. So big ? if movies will work at all and sure not HD movies unless you're lucky to have google fiber or something similar.

I'm using two hard drives for a combined storage of 800gb and I'm thinking about adding a third 500gb disk I have laying around for storing system images.

Since I'm not a data hoarder this setup works for me, if you need several tbs of storage then I think it's time to think about a desktop setup with raid arrays with ECC support