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.
Couple of thoughts:
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.
Sounds like you know this with WoL, but suspend is your friend π If the gaming PC is linux and you run into suspend issues, let me know, I've seen 'em all.
What benefit does this serve in this situation?
Fail safe. It'll trip the power before it hits the wall and burns the house potentially limiting a fire or containing whatever did happen.
Ok, just be sure it has an integrated circuit breaker otherwise its just....a surge protector. You'll also need to identify what load it triggers at. For example, I use these on my gear https://tripplite.eaton.com/isobar-4-outlet-surge-protector-6-ft-cord-3300-joules-diagnostic-leds~ISOBAR4ULTRA and they're rated to 12A which should protect a 15A rated smart plug. I put rated in italics because errrryone is buying CE (instead of UL listed) smart plugs.
The plugs are rated for 1800W each. Should be fine. I hit 670W a bit earlier, running Furmark VK and Cinebench R23 multi-core simultaneously for shits and giggles.
Oh nice. Do you have a link to the plugs you chose? I got some 20amp ZigBees from Aliexpress for $3 each, work great, but I wouldn't trust them to handle their rating.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQTFM1T6
Hah, Wyze use the same shell for their WiFi model: https://a.co/d/3kSQaoF
I think these are all based off these ZigBee models at $4 a pop: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/US-Smart-Home-Tuya-Alexa-Voice_1601241553658.html
how do you deal with kb+trackpad not working after wake?
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?
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?
There are a couple of ways:
Or
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.