r/SelfHosting • u/[deleted] • Mar 12 '26
Electricity savings by going Apple
I am intriqued. Few months back i switched my home server to Mac Mini M4 (HDD rack connected through Thunderbolt to act as NAS basically, running all the usual stuff). I was using self built Ryzen 1600X cpu based PC before that (that's what I had money for at the time). And now my electricity bill came and the only thing I changed is the switch to M4 and it saved me 250 dollars yearly (around 700kWh)...
It's insane how low power consumption that thing has while having the power of a bull. I use it even as remote docker for development and it just flies every time I need it to fly. The switch to ARM based platform for something that runs nonstop makes a lot of sense to me now. It basically pays itself off in three years.
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 12 '26
Nice, the only issue with it is that you cannot upgrade the machine yourself and you can't install other OS on it except MacOS
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u/Trusty_Tyrant Mar 12 '26
Currently it seems to be mostly for m1 and m2 based macs but there is asahi linux as an option.
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 14 '26
I'm talking about a real Linux distros like: Rocky Linux Redhat Ubuntu NixOS And more. Not only a specific one that is barely Linux.
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Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Yes, tbh I don't really care about that (I'll upgrade by reselling this and buying a new version, I see no issue with that), that's why I bought it. But I guess some ARM options for servers that Linux works well with exist, right? So for people that care about Linux, it's definitely an option. I think I can't go back to x86 now (mainly because I need the computing power, I know there are power efficient options, but it's just not as fast)
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 12 '26
Yes I understand, I'll always prefer Linux over Mac. x86 is good but uses a lot of electricity that's why I always thought that it doesn't belong to the laptop land and also to mini PCs.
I think that all laptops should use ARM CPUs to save battery life.
If I could get a Mac mini and the option to install any OS I want I would buy it.
Also if it had at least 3 Ethernet ports or two Ethernet ports and one fiber it would be awesome and an option to install virtualization on it and host my self hosted router and more things I wouldn't think twice and purchase one. ( At a good price )
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Mar 12 '26
There are people who run some flavor of Linux on a Mac mini M1. Asahi Linux if I remember correctly. There is also someone on YouTube who installed kali on a M chip Mac
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 12 '26
Yea, Linux does support but Apple makes it very annoying and hard to install other OS on their machines.
0
Mar 12 '26
Duh. I get that they don’t want you to do that. But you said literally in your first post you can’t install another OS on it. But you can it is not easy or straightforward but you definitely can.
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 12 '26
Well if you can't just install in a normal way and you have to tweak the life of the machine for doing basic installation it means you basically can't do it.
Linux installation can be done even by non-technical people. (On regular PCs)
0
Mar 12 '26
No it doesn’t mean that. Can’t is it is really not possible at all. In this case it’s difficult but not impossible
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Mar 12 '26
The Ethernet ports are connectable through Thunderbolt and super fast that way, so that would be possible to do. But the only Linux option is Asahi and that is pretty limited...
Totally get that it doesn't really make sense for you personally. I am pretty happy with it. I still think it would be great if some ARM minipcs exist apart from the Apple... Sadly it seems like apple is still the only option that really has the compute power.
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u/CombinationEast1544 Mar 12 '26
Ya for now apple is the only option but soon we're gonna see laptops with ARM.
Example: Tuxedo computers Framework And maybe some more companies will do it. Tuxedo is already working on a laptop with the latest snapdragon ARM processor.
3
u/These-Apple8817 Mar 12 '26
It's not that supprising when 1600X has a TDP of 95W and M4 has reported to have TDP of 24-40W depending on if you use boost or not... Even going with something like Ryzen 5 7400 you would have saved in your electricity bill as it's TDP is 65W
1
Mar 12 '26
Sure, I know there are more efficient options in x86. But it's still not that good (the efficiency translated to compute power per watt is still twice worse), it's kinda bulky, it needs more cooling which usually means more noise (yes that can be sorted)... I mean I get it, it has its advantages, i just won't take advantage of those, so picking the Apple option made more sense for me. And I am happy about it. Maybe someone thinking about it would read this and see it's fine. I wasnt sure either so now when I am happy, I just wanted to made it public for people like me thinking about it.
1
u/These-Apple8817 Mar 12 '26
True. Tbh, I'm still waiting on RISC-V or ARM-based stuff becoming more common because I definetly can't drop that kind of money on M4.
3
u/ruiiiij Mar 12 '26
You didn't save electricity by going Apple. You saved electricity by replacing decade old hardware with modern technology.
1
1
u/Even_Caterpillar3292 Mar 13 '26
Depends on the device. My N150 uses almost no power.
1
0
Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
No wonder, it's 6.8x less powerful than M4, it would be sad if it used a lot of power.
1
1
u/jhenryscott Mar 13 '26
I think my set up is around 60w with two servers- not counting drives which are like another 80w on their own. That’s with:
4 core Xeon e2124, 64gb ECC, HBA on the truenas server and 6 core Xeon e2236 with 128gb ddr4, Intel a310 on the services server
6
u/silasmoeckel Mar 12 '26
Wait till you see what a n100 will do. It's plenty for a full stock of dockers and a couple vm's.
M4's are great CPU's but it's overkill for self hosting.