[imhoguy]

Did the same with 16GB i7 Dell E7420 laptop (2013), it draws 4W when idle, can spin up two cores instantly and fairly quickly transcode video with iGPU or host multiple Minecraft worlds. No way phone or RPi can get these params.

[t0mas88]

Same here but with an XPS 13 model. Power usage from laptop chips is great for home servers. They're still really fast when needed compared to a Raspberry Pi, and typically come with 256gb or even 512 of built in fast SSD storage.

The battery in mine is old, but with the screen off it still lasts several hours as a sort of UPS.