Hello There
I’ve had my mini 3.0 X+ sitting around doing not much but tinkering with it for a year now and now that SCALE is out I’m thinking about reinstalling it with SCALE before I put it into “productive” use. With my system power efficiency is always one of my main concerns, so the question came up. Sadly I don’t have any power consumption measurement equipment, otherwise I’d have probably done the tests myself.
Has this been tested/compared? Does anyone know who to ask? Has anyone any info on this?
Thanks in advance.
Depending on where you live, those devices are dirt cheap nowadays. In Germany, every hardware store or online retailer that has some electronics/IT background, has these for sale. Got mine for 8,59€ and I used it extensively in several rooms, checking consumption of washing- and coffee machine as well as lighting and my IT stuff. Very nice to have.
But I doubt Linux is more energy-efficient than FreeBSD. Expect a wash.
There should be no difference between Core and Scale just due to the OS that would make a difference.
What you need to consider are two main factors:
- Idle Power Consumption
→ It will run 24/7, so the majority of the time you’ll be idling. Scale vs Core will make a minimal difference in that case.
- Power Consumption under Load
→ What kind of Applications will you run on it, how will you use the System?
→ Core vs Scale will only make a difference in whether Kubernetes and KVM will be more efficient than their BSD Equivalents.
Good point about the software on top of the OS that will make the difference in energy consumption. I plan on using it solely as a NAS though, as I have separate hypervisors. Might look into the kubernetes functionality though, as I’ve recently learnt to use it.
Where I live it’s the equivalent of 30USD for a basic power measurement adapter. If I decide to pick one up and do the testing, I’ll put my findings here.