• PainInTheAES@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As far as I can tell a Dell small form factor and Synology idle around 15-25w and 15w respectively. Both seem to pop up to 30-45w under average load depending on what you’re doing with them. But it depends on the kind of processor you pick and additional drives will also pull more wattage.

    The SFF units are limited on space. The one I have is limited to one HDD although you could put a few SATA SSDs in there and 1 nvme. The SSDs would be more expensive but lower energy use. I’ve been toying with attaching a external HDD mount to the case to see if I could add in some extra drives.

    I’m not familiar with the EU/UK market, but in the US I got my used Dell for $87 from eBay. It came with 8Gb RAM and a 250Gb SSD. And it had cosmetic damage so the seller sent me a second for free :P

    I think depending on how much storage you need it could be a viable alternative.

    Currently I’m still using my Odroid HC4 which is probably super power efficient but limited to 2 drives and it isn’t very powerful.

    The Synology units are much more user friendly out of the box though. Also I guess it depends on if you just want a NAS or if you eventually want to get into self hosting.