I use a similar Dell Optiplex 7000 series.

It boots from the NVME, with an 8TB 3.5 disc for data, and a 500GB SD for my VMs. (Since spinning disks can idle much lower than SSD, getting my always-on VMs off the big drive lets it idle, with the SSD peak power being lower than the peak of spinning disk Adding the SSD increased net power slightly).

I use a splitter on the 12v power line for both of the drives. It’s fine.

This box only has an 80w power supply, and with both those drives hooked up it draws 20w at idle, and peaks at 70w when converting multiple videos simultaneously.

The manuall tells you what you can do without voiding the warranty.

Edit: Given it’s age, I’d pull the CPU cooler and replace the paste. It’s likely hardened by now. Mine was randomly rebooting because the cpu would overheat. Replaced the thermal paste and its been rock solid since.

I self host on a 5 year old Dell Optiplex Small Form Factor desktop.

I also have a Raspberry Pi, which has about 1/16 the performance of the desktop - Pi can be used for all sorts of stuff.

Someone’s never had X

Get in line!

Yep.

My Pi is about 8 watts. Really hard to beat.

The SFF started at 12w, but swapping out the data drive for a much larger one pushed it up 5w. And now with 2 VMs always running (PiHole and a Windows VM), it hovers at 20w.

The ancient NAS (Drobo) sits at about 15w.

The number one thing you can do, by orders of magnitude, is to start with power-friendly hardware.

For example, my previous server was an old gaming machine. It’s lowest idle power consumption was 80 watts. That was with running an OS that permitted heavy power reduction control, and enabling every power saving feature in the BIOS.

Compare that to my 2019 Dell Optiplex Small-Form-Factor desktop I’m running as a server. The power supply is rated for 80 watts, MAX. It idles at 20w, peaks at about 70w when converting multiple videos simultaneously. This with an 8 TB enterprise drive for data.

So 1/4 the power draw when idle, where it spends perhaps 90%+ of its time. Even things like Resilio Sync and Syncthing don’t significantly raise CPU time.

Streaming with Jellyfin or Mediamonkey have nearly no CPU impact.

There’s nothing in heavier hardware you could tune to get down to 20w.

I love how that page adds snowfall over itself… Cluttered, distracting snowfall.

Irony is dead… Long live irony

Funny, I hear this all the time but never see it.

Then again, I use Windows Pro only. Never use Windows home. Paying for pro is worth it.

And don’t use One Drive. Turn that off from the start.

That’s not data redundancy - there’s still only one copy of your data.

Those are mitigations against loss of data due to loss of parity.

There’s still only ONE copy of your data.

Fine.

Pull 1 drive and see how redundant your data is while it’s resilvering.

RAID is NOT data redundancy. You still have a single copy of your data.

Tell me again how RAID is data redundancy?

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1987/CSD-87-391.html

Really? Because hundreds of VM’s I’ve built used the same key.

XP never validates the key online as far as I can tell.

*ACU

RAID isn’t data redundancy, it’s an array of drives combined to form a single logical storage pool. It solves the problem of needing a single storage pool larger than the available drives. As such, it’s very sensitive to loss of a single drive.

At your storage size requirements (2 TB), RAID is unnecessary today.

Edit: Let me say it again for you downvoters-RAID is NOT data redundancy.

There is only ONE copy of your data in RAID (excepting mirroring). It’s why RAID now has double parity and hot spare drive capability.

RAID is for creating a single pool that’s larger than available drive size.

Go ahead and downvote in ignorance, and learn about data redundancy when your RAID fails.

RAID is NOT data redundancy - it’s DRIVE redundancy.

Take it from the source https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1987/CSD-87-391.html

But XP never really needed actual activation, it used a key.

So long as you had one valid key you’re good forever.

In my career and private lab, I’ve built literally thousands of machines - never once had to call MS to activate.

Microsoft ended activation over the phone.

That’s fine, I don’t know anyone who ever used it.

Just use Microsoft’s own activation scripts.

May be worth buying used in a year or two…

Like its forerunner, the MC02, the new model is a subscription-based smartphone

What??

Or, be an adult and adjust it as you need.

Having dogs solved the problem in my house

Unless you need the super-compactness of a mini PC, the Small Form Factor is a significantly greater value.

You get more horsepower, more space, and better cooling.

And they tend to be very quiet. Mine only has some fan noise when converting video, and it’s always running 2-5 VM’s (mostly Windows).