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original post: https://mk.moth.zone/notes/a8zer7ypj6uv02ka
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Not my experience. I've used a bunch of stuff, and I can tell you a RasPi is what, 10W under load and 4 idling? A repurposed laptop (with a dedicated GPU but screen off) was 11W idling and 45W under load, and a repurposed desktop was about 40W idling and 120W under load.
You maaaay be able to find some laptop with an efficient CPU and iGPU that gets into the realm of a RasPi, and I guess the "identical storage" qualifier helps if you're adding a bunch of heavy storage to the Pi to bring total consumption up and lower the percentage gap, but my real world, real time measurements don't quite match that.
That said, if you already have one of those things and not the other the power consumption difference is fairly small in absolute numbers. You may save more money by buying a slighlty better lightbulb for your living room lamp. Definitely recycle whatever you have lying around that will still do the job.
Your pi is idling at 4w? That seems quite high. Does it have a nvme drive attached or something?
That is high for a laptop. I have a PC, its fanless which helps, but it runs maybe 15w idle with display shut down, and 23w if graphics display is active. 45 watts if I'm rendering video. Your 120w might be the battery charging at max maybe?
Nah, it's the dedicated Nvidia GPU. Gaming PCs with those come with 250-300W power supplies these days. I was using that one specifically for transcoding and to try to self host AI models for a voice assistant, so it did go all in under load. If anything I'm mildly disappointed. The power brick is 100W, I would have expected higher power limits. I guess they saved the rest for the display and the USB ports.