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Is Mac Mini suitable for self-hosted server?
(lemy.lol)
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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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I want to see numbers. How much is "a lot of money"?
I don't have a Mac Mini, but for always-on systems, the idle power consumption can become quite significant.
If you pay 0.30$/kWh, running your old 100W gaming PC all the time would cost you 263$ per year. My NAS is 45$ per year...
It also depends on what you need/want from the machine. The Mac Mini doesn't have any HDDs and can't run a regular Linux distro, for example.
Would the Mac Mini actually idle at that wattage if it's open for connections? I doubt it, it's probably more like 10W, which is generally the range for those smaller AMD MiniPCs or NUCs.
If it's 10W, that's a $20 savings from your NAS w/ a desktop CPU (and probably a discrete GPU, unless it's running an APU). I can get 4% easily on savings, so I'd only need a $500 savings vs the Mac Mini to recoup that difference every year ($500 * 4% = $20). So if you already have an old PC, use that instead of buying a Mac Mini, and you also won't have to fight macOS to do what you want.
I do think it can achieve that while waiting for network packets (see e.g. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested).
But in terms of money savings it would rarely make sense, as you need to make it back during the time you run the system. If we assume 6 years lifetime then it would only make sense to pay $120 more. But yes, I'd also go for a system that runs regular Linux :)
Cheap in Germany for example nowadays is 0,20 EUR / KWh + 15 EUR / month base fee. Most people have more expensive contracts though, 0,30 EUR / KWh and more
I’m no lab scientist but when I switched from a hackintosh to an M1 Mac mini a few years ago, my total electricity consumption went down by around 15-20%. This can mean a lot on the long run if you’re tight on budget.