Comment by AdrianB1
4 months ago
I thought the same until I calculated that newer hardware consumes a few times less energy and for something running 24x7 that adds up quite a bit (I live in Europe, energy is quite expensive).
So my homelab equipment is just 5 years old and it will get replaced in 2-3 years with something even more power efficient.
Where in Europe?
Asking coz I just did a quick comparison and it seems to depend but for comparison I have a really old AMD Athlon "e" processor (like literally September 2009 is when it came out according to some quick Google search, tho I probably bought it a few months later than that but still ...) that runs at ~45W TDP. In idle conditions, it typically consumes around 10 to 15 watts (internet wisdom, not kill-a-watt-wisdom).
Some napkin math says it would cost me about 40 years worth of amortization to replace this at my current power rates for this system. So why would I replace it? And even with some EU countries' power rates we seem to be at 5-10 years amortization upon replacement. I've been running this motherboard, CPU + RAM combo for ~15 years now it seems, replacing only the hard drives every ~3 years. And the tower it's in is about 25 years old.
Oh I forgot, I think I had to buy two new CR2032 batteries during those years (CMOS battery).
Now granted, this processor can basically do "nothing" in comparison to a current system I might buy. But I also don't need more for what it does.
Well if you have a system that does "nothing" it's hard to argue to replace it
"Nothing" from parent was a comparison. Doesn't mean their system is idle.
However many systems are mostly idle. A file server often doesn't use much cpu. It often isn't even serving anything.
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I guess you did the math but wouldn't it be more effective to spend the money on solar panels instead of replacing the computer hardware?
I have panels and the night is long. Batteries are still very expensive.
Energy is very cheap for data centers. have you ever looked up wholesale energy rates? It’s like a cent per kilowatt hour.