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Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by lka1988@sh.itjust.works to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Cool!

Just be cautious that you don't over-optimize for power. I ran around my house w/ a Kill-a-watt meter checking everything and made some tweaks, and I still don't think it has paid for itself since power costs are so low here ($0.12-0.13/kWh, so 10Wh 24/7 < $1/month), and some of the things I tried doing made my life kinda suck. So I backed off a bit and found a good middleground where I got 80% of the benefit w/o any real compromises.

For example, here's what I ended up with:

  • put desktop to sleep - power draw is negligible, and I don't need to keep typing my FDE password to use it
  • "upgraded" NAS from old 2009 HW to my old gaming PC HW (1st gen Ryzen) - cut power draw in half, but I had to buy some RAM; will take years to pay off w/ electricity savings, but it has much better performance in the meantime
  • turn off work laptop - was drawing ~20W; I WFH MThF, so I leave it on Th night for convenience, but have it sleep M-W and turn it off Friday

I could probably cut a bit more if I really try, but that would be annoying.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, my power bill is pretty reasonable already, considering my large family plus all the electronics I run. I just like seeing what everything is doing as a matter of curiosity.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, as a hobby, it's absolutely fun. I like tinkering with all kinds of things.

My point was to just be careful since it's not necessarily going to be worth the expense and time.

I've been considering getting a breaker-level power monitor to watch for spikes. It's a bit more expensive (hundreds of dollars), but it measures the types of things I'm interested in. My kid flipped on our gutter heaters (I never use them) and shot our electricity bill to the moon for a couple months until I noticed. If I had a home energy monitor, I would've noticed a crazy energy spike and that might have paid for itself.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 hours ago

Yeah, I never expect a financial ROI for hobbies; the ROI for that is nothing more than my own enjoyment.

[–] AliSaket@mander.xyz 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I made a similar discovery after installing a Shelly Switch with Power Metering. The monitors and their brightness make a huge difference as well when in or near idle (for photography, so not a surprise). I've also implemented an "anti-standby" function, so the switch opens whenever the current falls under a specific threshold.

For the WoL, since I have a switch, I configured my BIOS so it would turn on after power loss. Now I can start to boot up from afar :)

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

That's certainly one way to do it...

[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 22 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Chest freezers are exceptionally energy efficient. It's not a very good comparison.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Ah, but only one is a chest freezer 😉

That, and I used to have a freezer that was a power suck.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] czardestructo@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

Older speakers like that use always on transformers, constantly wasting energy to keep the core energized. You're correct those cannot be made any more, they must use efficient switch mode supplies.

[–] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 1 points 14 hours ago

What are you running your server on?

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Sinthesis@lemmy.today 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Place a surge protector between the smart plug and the PC to be safe.

What benefit does this serve in this situation?

[–] OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Sinthesis@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)
[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

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 1 points 5 hours 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.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 53 points 1 day ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I also found out something interesting. My desktop uses about 1/3 of the power one of my freezers do. :)

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

That's either a really efficient PC or a really old freezer 😂

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 5 points 22 hours ago

The PC is effecient. It's not a gaming PC. It idles at around 16W and maxes out at 80'ish.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It has never occured to me my whole life to not suspend or shut down computers overnight. It wakes up in like 2 seconds why wouldnt you, even if it used only an extra 1W

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 9 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

The problem I have with this I put the PC to sleep overnight every night - and like clockwork, Windows wakes it back up sometime overnight to do.. Something.

I've been diagnosing the issue for years - checking wake timers, switching hardware devices permissions to wake the system off. I might fix it for a few months and then a new Windows update comes along and it's back to its usual routine of waking itself.

Looking forward to seeing if it persists with Linux when I move at the end of support period for Win10 later this year.

[–] droporain@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Did you check the bios?

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Looking forward to seeing if it persists with Linux

I have never had what you described happen in my past 15 years of using linux, i hope you find your way around things, linux is dope once you get used to it.

My PC goes down from 70W idle to 2W when suspended. I also have a master slave power strip, that turns of all my peripherals (speakers, lights, audio interface, etc) when the PC drops below 10W so that saves some extra energy.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Yeah I use Linux for my servers and my HTPC, but I never really hibernate or sleep those so I had no idea if it might occur there too. It's great to hear this is not likely to be an issue - thanks

[–] OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 3 points 13 hours ago

Windows is gonna Windows. Even if you did track down the issue your one update from a borked system or square one when they alter the setting and relocate it on their own accord.

[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 16 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You must be pretty young, because back in the dark days of spinning HDDs a computer would take 5+ minutes to boot.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 17 hours ago

Those days were at worst almost 10 years ago.
Stop living in the past with those situations.

And you get an SSD.
And YOU get an SSD.
And you fine sir also get an SSD!

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[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Those storage freezers are doing nothing the vast majority of the time. Not really a fair comparison.

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[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (14 children)

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

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