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Comment by madjam002 | Hacker News Reader

If I wanted to build a home server with very good single core performance but very low power consumption (storage and upgradability aside), what are the best options right now? Probably a Mac Mini M2 haha

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Or a cheap Zen 3/4 with ECC compatible motherboard.

For a home server, idle power consumption is probably more important than efficiency under load. Ryzen desktop processors are certainly better than most server platforms, but their chiplet-based design is quite bad for idle power. AMD has sold laptop SoCs packaged for their desktop sockets, but I don't think those come with ECC capability enabled.

Comparing the mobile 7840U[0] to the M2 Mac Mini[1] suggests it's kinda a wash. Both idle around 6-7w, and under load they both max out around 50w.

There are definitely less efficient chips you could bring into the comparison fold, but the M2 is a mobile chipset. You need another mobile chip if you want to draw more interesting power consumption comparisons.

[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Framework-Laptop-13-5-Ryzen-7-...

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201897

I think you lost the plot. Bringing up AMD's low-end mobile processors in a discussion of whether their desktop processors are well-suited for a home server with ECC is pretty far off topic.

If your goal is to get the best single core performance at a given wattage: pick any high end option (13900k, 7950x, M2) and just limit the power target/available performance to the power level you want. I.e. there is a massive amount of power variance in getting dozens of cores to eek out slightly more multi-core performance but the power variance for single core performance at a given wattage is really not that much.

If your goal is to go cheap but still have decent performance it depends on what exactly you need it to perform at but mini PCs like Beelink usually give otherworldly performance vs what you'd expect in the 100-200 dollar category.

I have been interested in the low power home server space for a while.

What I ultimately want, is a collection of SBCs that are able to be remotely booted so I can have Intel and AMD x86 systems, ARM, Risc-5, Apple that can spin up on demand.

If you're willing to look at 1L form factors (think Mac Mini), you do have options there.

Intel has vPRO and AMD has AMD DASH for remote power on. A Mac Mini won't have remote power on, but if you're willing to just keep it slept, Wake-On-LAN is an option.

If you are willing to mod it a little you can start the mac mini with a tiny solid state relay on an esp32.

Depends on your definition of "very low power consumption". The M2 Mac Mini will max out at 50w[0] from the wall, which is several times higher than a Raspberry Pi under load. You genuinely might have better luck with a laptop board in a mini-PC, depending on your particular constraints.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201897

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