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Homelab power & electricity cost
Add up what your gear actually draws, enter your electricity rate, and see what it costs to run 24/7. Every number is editable and updates live. Bookmark the link and it remembers your build.
How this is calculated
A device that draws a constant number of watts and runs every hour of the year uses watts times 8,760 hours, divided by 1,000, to get kilowatt-hours per year. Multiply that by your electricity rate and you have the yearly cost. Idle draw is what matters for a homelab, since most boxes sit near idle almost all the time and only peak briefly during boot or heavy work.
Why the number matters
The gap between a Mini PC and an old desktop tower is almost entirely power. A NUC-class machine idles around 15 to 25 watts. An old gaming tower doing the same job can pull 120 watts or more, and that difference runs every hour of every day. Over a couple of years the tower can cost more in electricity than a used Mini PC costs to buy outright. That is the whole argument for using efficient hardware, and it is why the number above is worth checking before you commit a machine to running 24/7.
This is the cost math behind Vol 1: Repurpose an Old PC as a Home Lab Server, which covers picking hardware that will not fight you, sizing a UPS, and getting a stable Docker host running. Read the opening free.
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