4
Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by lka1988@sh.itjust.works to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm in the process of getting my Home Assistant environment up and running, and decided to run a test: it turns out that my gaming PC (custom 5800X3D/7900XTX build) uses more power just sitting idle, than both of my storage freezers combined.

Background: In addition to some other things, I bought two "Eightree" brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare. One is monitoring the power usage of both freezers on a power strip (don't worry, it's a heavy duty strip meant for this), and the other is measuring the usage of my entire desktop setup (including monitors and the HA server itself, a Lenovo M710q).

After monitoring these for a couple days, I decided that I will shut off my PC unless I'm actively using it. It's not a server, but it does have WOL capability, so if I absolutely need to get into it remotely, it won't be an issue.

Pretty fascinating stuff, and now my wife is completely on board as well; she wants to put a plug on her iMac to see what it draws, as she uses it to hold her cross-stitch files and other things.

all 43 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 1 month ago

Couple of thoughts:

  1. That smart plug may not be rated to the max wattage when GPU and CPU are at full blast. Be careful, because that could be an expensive mistake. Place a surge protector between the smart plug and the PC to be safe. Also run the PC full tilt for a while and make sure the smart plug doesnt get warm. If it does, fores have been known to start from those.

  2. Sounds like you know this with WoL, but suspend is your friend 😉 If the gaming PC is linux and you run into suspend issues, let me know, I've seen 'em all.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

how do you deal with kb+trackpad not working after wake?

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 1 month ago

Depends on the driver. Usually for finicky ones you can do an rmmod at suspend and a modprobe on resume. What distro, and are you using the default suspend mechanism?

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

yes, i'm on ubuntu, using all the default drivers.

and i would guess its finnicky because its an old laptop.

is it a matter of scripting rmmod and modprobe to run on suspend/wake?

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 1 month ago

There are a couple of ways:

  1. Formally add a system entry to run at suspend/resume (like how nvidia does in their driver package)

Or

  1. Write a script that rmmods, suspends, sleeps, modprobes, and map it to Cntrl-Alt-Shift-S

I usually do 2 because I like the hotkey method for desktops, and it keeps things the same for both. Also allows me to close a lid on a laptop and leave it on. But 1 is more "formal".

Happy to share some scripts if you'd like, on my phone now, though.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

how do i do 1? having timeout to suspend and lid close to suspend would be great. and id like to see some example scripts!

i had pretty much given up on standby with this one.

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 1 month ago

Will grab some when I back, but assuming you are using systemd, it's easy if you follow this old but good method: https://blog.christophersmart.com/2016/05/11/running-scripts-before-and-after-suspend-with-systemd/

If that doesn't work out of the box, it's likely because you're hitting S1 instead of S3, but give that test script a shot and let me know how it goes!

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

what kind of driver could the keyboard be using? lsmod shows nothing beyond the HID driver, but thats being used by the external mouse which works normally after sleep.

lshw shows it going by /dev/input/event6 or something like it?

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

Could be internal to kernel? Try updating /etc/default/grub to include: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash atkbd.reset" and run sudo update-grub. This will cause a full keyboard reset on resume.

If you have not run BIOS updates, that could be it, too.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

ok it worked! thanks a lot! can't believe it was that easy. Gnome spazzes out a little bit after wake sometimes, is that something i can work around?

do you happen to know a thing or two about diagnosing trackpad issues? or at least the right direction? 😂

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 1 month ago

Yeah, man, getting into Home Assistant and messing with energy monitoring did more than thousands of chastising TV segments to get me to fully shut down my computers.

Who gives a crap about gaming use power consumption, give me idle benchmarks, you cowards. Do you even know how kWh work?

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 0 points 1 month ago

Plus PC that's idling is just adding an attack surface IMHO

This tinfoil getting hella tight lately 🥲

[-] tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 month ago

How, if it's not exposed to the internet? Burglars?

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 0 points 1 month ago

Do you really trust your consumer grade router and firewall on the desktop?

[-] tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 month ago

Against random internet noise? Yes, absolutely

[-] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

OK but what if you have a lava lamp that is synced to the moods of a sarcastic and greedy AI?

Security is about to get really weird. It used to be the Internet of Things we had to worry about, but now we have Things in Internet.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 month ago

Yeah. I got a pro managing it.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'm sorry my corrections to all your many errors are bothering you.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

You got a pro managing it?

\sigh

[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago

If you want to expand from just monitoring a couple sockets to monitoring the whole house; I'd recommend Iotawatt. I've been using one of these to monitor every circuit in my house for a few years now.

You can use the built in webpages shown below to view it's internal graphs, or setup an exporter to feed the data into external DBs like influxDB+Graphana or Emoncms.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Very cool! However, my house is a rental, so any monitoring equipment has to be somewhat non-invasive.

Edit: it helps if I actually look at the product before spouting nonsense... Looks promising.

[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm in a rental too. It's non-invasive; just gotta pop the panel cover off, clip the transformers over the wires without disconnecting them, and put the cover back. It can all be removed just as easily.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago

just

Uh oh. Red flag.

gotta pop the panel cover off,

This may be where the rental agreement is broken. Define 'pop' . Two hands and a tool? Clear it with the landlord first. The company running the 400-unit building where I am now is gonna say F No.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

Spaces before a full stop? Really?

[-] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Have you considered putting your gaming pc in one of the storage freezers? /s

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Perfect, I don't need to run the fans anymore!

Seriously though - we have 5 kids, and feeding the little shits is expensive, so we freeze a lot of things for storage. I thought for certain the freezers would be power hogs compared to an idling PC, but I was very surprised to be proven wrong.

Next up... Measuring my server cluster 😬

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

Measuring my server cluster

Personally, I just don't ask questions I don't want the answer to.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

I know they're gonna be a power suck lol. Three mini PCs, a SFF PC, 4-bay hard drive docking station, 8-port switch, and a RPi0w... Hoping for a max of 200W, but I suppose we'll see what happens 🫤

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago

You might need to lower your expectations

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

FYI - the cluster is pulling 115-140 watts.

  • 1x Mac mini 2014, running OMV as a dedicated NAS (i5-4308U, 16GB RAM)
  • 4-bay Sabrent DS-SC4B, attached to Mac mini (3x 4TB WD Reds in RAID5, 1x 4TB WD Black as hot spare)
  • 1x 8TB WD backup drive (it's something)
  • 2x HP Elitedesk 800 G3 mini (or G4, don't remember), both running Proxmox (i7-7700T, 32GB RAM each)
  • 1x Dell Optiplex 7050 SFF running Proxmox (i7-7700, 32GB RAM)

All running multiple VMs (Docker and other) and LXC containers.

I'm impressed, honestly. I was expecting 200+ watts minimum. It'll be interesting to see the spikes as it's used over time. I am going to move the HA server (Lenovo M710q running HAOS on a Pentium G4560T & 4GB RAM) down to the cluster soon, as it's sitting on my desk at the moment...

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago

I'm surprised! Seems like it should be more, but I haven't done any wattage calculations in a while, so maybe power efficiency really has gotten that much better.

Do you know if the drives were spun up or down at the time? I know idle vs. active makes a difference, but if they were spun down entirely, that's kind of cheating.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I watched as everything booted, didn't pull much more than 150 watts. But it'll be interesting to see how it goes over time.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago

Lat I checked, it was 40w idle for me on the kill-o-watt. Spinny rust and all!

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

What kind of freezers are they? I hear that top loading freezers are quite efficient because the cool doesn't escape when it gets opened like a front loading one.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

One is a smaller chest freezer, about 3 feet tall, probably 6 or 7 cubic feet if I had to guess. The other is a Hamilton Beach upright freezer from Costco. Both are full, so that helps with keeping them cold.

[-] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 0 points 1 month ago

Is your upright the one with all the little compartments? That one looked to me like the most efficient upright design I've ever seen.

[-] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yep, it's awesome. We got it for $300 from Costco to supplement the smaller chest freezer, and it's been an absolute godsend.

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I discovered a similar issue. PC desk was using 8-9W when the PC was turned OFF! My power strip was taking a bit under 1W (the little light, old), two smart bulbs as well but I'll allow those losses. An older Logitech speaker setup (2+1) was taking 6-7W, turned off! Crazy.. and illegal if it were made today (in EU). So this is completely wasted energy in my opinion.. started disconnecting the whole desk now.

For comparison, my home server is averaging 7-8W, turned on all the time:

I also learned that PC's draw a lot of power lol. I used to sit on my PC all day, now I know how much it cost. Even the monitor turning off splits the power draw by half.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

I also learned that PC's draw a lot of power lol. I used to sit on my PC all day, now I know how much it cost. Even the monitor turning off splits the power draw by half.

My state has a green energy initiative that gives us free home energy audits, mostly it means we get a lot of free led lights. But it also got us these nice automated power strips, you plug one item (the pc) into a control socket, and when that device turns off, it cuts power to the other managed sockets (monitors, speakers, etc). A really simple solution that must save a bunch of power.

[-] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 week ago

What brand are those power strips? Last time I went shopping for power strips, they were all the rage and I could hardly find one WITHOUT that feature. Today, several years later, I can’t find any. Except, perhaps, some Chinese ones without safety approvals. I need one for my tv.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

The brand seems to be "Tricklestar" (I have to admit I've never even heard of the brand, but it's been working for years now).

this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
4 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

43577 readers
555 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz