[iammjm]

“I repurposed an old gaming PC with a Ryzen 1600x, 24GB of RAM, and an old GTX 1060 for my NAS since I had most of the parts already.”

Wouldn’t running something like this 24/7 cause a substantial energy consumption? Costs of electricity being one thing, carbon footprint an another. Do we really want such a setup running in each household in addition to X other devices?

[rainsford]

In addition to energy, the biggest reason I no longer use old desktops as servers is the space they take up. If you live in an apartment or condo and don't have extra rooms, even having a desktop tower sitting in a corner somewhere is a lot less visually appealing than a small NSA or mini-PC you can stick on a shelf somewhere.

[jasomill]

Tastes differ. I personally find the 36U IBM rack in the corner of my apartment more visually appealing than some of my other furniture, and consolidating equipment in a rack with built-in PDUs makes it easier to run everything through a single UPS in an apartment where rewiring is not an option.

[dijit]

sure, but the co2 emissions from a new machine would take about 10 years to offset, by which time this thinking has made you replace it.. twice.

[leobg]

? It’s not like the machine would be custom built for him.

Are you saying it’s fine to drive a huge truck if you’re single and just need to get around the block to buy a pack of eggs, just because the emissions are nothing compared to those required for making that smaller, more efficient car that you could buy instead?

[onionisafruit]

If your only use for a vehicle is a weekly or even daily trip around the block to buy a pack of eggs, the best environmental choice is to use a vehicle that is already manufactured. If the only vehicle available to you is a semi truck, that’s the best choice. Even over a lifetime of daily trips, the difference in emissions between the semi truck and a golf cart won’t make up for the emissions of manufacturing the golf cart and transporting it to you.

Of course this is a contrived example that ignores the used vehicle market or the possibility of walking around the block.

[Groxx]

no, they're saying the emissions needed to create that smaller, more efficient car may vastly exceed their car's emissions during its entire lifetime under their use. so it may be a net loss.

[ahtihn]

The break-even point for the small car vs truck is much lower, so there it makes a lot more sense to switch.

[alehlopeh]

It’s actually fine to do that because people are allowed to make their own choices no matter how much you disagree with them.

[zahlman]

Sheesh. The described "old gaming PC" is much more powerful than the machine I'm using to post this.

[embedding-shape]

> Wouldn’t running something like this 24/7 cause a substantial energy consumption?

Obviously depends on the actual usage, and parent's specific setup, lots of motherboards/CPUs/GPUs/RAM allow you to tune the frequencies and allows you to downclock almost anything. Finally, we have no idea about the energy source in this case, could be they live in a country with lots of wind and solar power, if we're being charitable.

[teiferer]

> could be they live in a country with lots of wind and solar power, if we're being charitable.

Because solar wind and hydro have no impact on the environment at all. Or nuclear.

I wish people would understand that waste is waste. Even less waste is still waste.

(I don't argue for fossil fuels here, mind you.)

Plus, the countries have shared grids. Any kWh you use can't be used by someone else, so may come from coal when they do, for all you know. It's a false rationalization.

[embedding-shape]

> Because solar wind and hydro have no impact on the environment at all. Or nuclear.

> I wish people would understand that waste is waste. Even less waste is still waste.

So if I have 10 mining rigs connected to the state power grid, what the source of that energy has matters nothing for the environment? If I use a contract that 100% guarantees it comes from solar, it has the same environmental impact as if I use a cheaper contract that guarantees 100% coal power?

I'm not sure if I misunderstand what you're saying, or you're misunderstanding what I said before, but something along the lines got lost in transmission I think.

[plqbfbv]

> I repurposed an old gaming PC with a Ryzen 1600x, 24GB of RAM, and an old GTX 1060 for my NAS since I had most of the parts already

> I wish people would understand that waste is waste

I think the point is that the configuration from the post can easily run as low as maybe 30-40W on idle, but as high as a couple hundred depending on utilization. An off-the-shelf NAS probably spikes at most in the ~35W range, with idle/spindle-off utilization in the 10W range (I'm using my 4-bay Synology DS920+ as a reference). Normally the biggest contributor to NAS energy usage is the number of HDDs, so the more you add, the more it consumes, but in this configuration the CPU, the RAM, and the GPU are all "oversized" for the NAS purpose.

While reusing parts for longer helps a lot for carbon footprint of the material itself, running that machine 24/7/365 is definitely more CO2-heavy w.r.t. electricity usage than an off-the-shelf NAS. And additional entropy in the environment in the form of heat is still additional entropy, whether it comes from coal or solar panels.

[intrasight]

I will sell my old desktop as a gaming pc and use the funds to offset the cost of a new NAS.

[itishappy]

Humanity currently produces 30 TWh, with roughly 60% of that from fossil fuels. You connect 10 mining rigs. There are two options for what happens to the world's power generation:

1. You affect the mix! Your rigs create new solar and decommission coal plants! The world is cleaner!

2. You claim a "clean slice" of the existing mix. You feel good because you use only solar, but MRI machines still use power, so their mix is now "dirtier" without changing the actual state of the world.

In real systems, it's probably a combination of the above. I assume our decisions only meaningfully matter by exerting market pressures over longer timescales.

[happyweasel]

does your gtx 1060 help in any way for the NAS use case?

[Tarball10]

If you're running a media server (like Plex or Jellyfin) you can do hardware accelerated transcoding on the GPU.