this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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A cited, filterable database of mini-PCs / SFF boxes by measured idle power (not TDP), for picking a low-running-cost box to self-host on (idlewatt.vercel.app)
submitted 3 weeks ago by idlewatt@lemmy.cafe to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Affiliation up front: I built this, the data is open (CC BY 4.0), no signup, not selling anything.

What pushed me to make it: when you're choosing the box your self-hosted services run on 24/7, the number that decides the power bill is measured idle watts, and nobody prints it. Spec sheets list TDP, which is a thermal rating for sizing a cooler, not actual draw. The same Dell OptiPlex Micro chassis idles around 11W with a 35W-TDP "T" chip vs around 18W with a 65W-TDP desktop chip, and at roughly $1/W/year (US) or $2.50/W/year (EU) that gap adds up over the life of an always-on server.

So I aggregated 51 boxes into one filterable table built around the facts that actually decide a self-host box: measured idle (wall-metered, with the method noted), the 2.5GbE chipset (i226-V is fine, i225-V has the documented random-dropout bug that takes a headless box offline until a hard reset), ECC support, RAM ceiling, and IOMMU / GPU-passthrough notes for anyone running VMs. Every field is cited to a dated source or left blank, never guessed.

Finder: https://idlewatt.vercel.app/ Open dataset (CC BY, pull it or send corrections / new wall-meter readings as PRs): https://github.com/SolvoHQ/homelab-mini-pc-dataset

What are you running your stack on, and does anyone have measured-idle numbers for a box I'm missing?

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[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Idle power is determined some by the system controlling its own load, but also by the PSU itself. HP and dell units lock down which PSU you can use with them, but lots don't, meaning you can get a 19v 90W power supply or a 19v 175W power supply, but it won't mean anything if the PSU doesn't have the ability to scale down with load.

That's what those bronze/silver/fold/platinum ratings are about on atx PSUs.

Anyway, good list. This was just a comment about that. Power is weird.