Hi everyone,
for 20 years now i run servers in my own home to host my stuff. Because i am living in europe with quite high price tags for electricity i am always searching for ways to make my servers more power efficient.

But finding a power efficient ATX PSU with performes well in ranges around 20-25W, where my server idles most of the time, is quite challenging.

Dont get me wrong, the Server has an very efficient PSU, a Super-Flower SF450P14XE Golden Green Pro but thats now 14 years old (but serves me well). I bought it for 55€ back in the days.
Over the years i tried various budget insider tips regarding efficent PSU’s (for example the Cooler Master MWE400) which all were also good but not better than the 14 year old Super Flower, which i think is kind of sad.

Just yesterday i tried a 160W PicoPSU combined with a 150W DELL DA-1 powerbrick (which should also be quite efficient), but it was the same. My Server used 1-3W more than with the Super-Flower.

Long story short: are there any efficient PSU out there that you can recommend for loads around 20-25W, that dont have a price tag like a kidney on the blackmarket?

I also have seen people trying to mod old Dell Server PSU with are 750W with platinum rating an are cheap on ebay, but thats another story.

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    1·
    8 hours ago

    I have an older (2017) Dell SFF OptiPlex 7050 that idles about 12w, with 3 drives (each 1 TB, spinning disk).

    It peaks about 80w when I’m doing conversions, but I can keep that down by limiting cpu usage for handbrake (it doesn’t convert faster above 4 cores anyway, just uses more power).

    I was surprised by the low idle power, I would’ve been happy with upwards of 40w since my previous machine idled at 100w.

    So I think very low idle is possible, I’m just not sure why this box idles so low.