Father-in-law, I think, was originally having some kind of problem with his old, old computer, and as a result, I ended up giving him my old Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 system to him.
Recently, said Q9550 system started to have some issues, so I gave him my Intel NUC NUC7i3BNH (Intel Core i3-7100U (2-core, HTT enabled), originally 4 GB of RAM, but I upgraded that to 8 GB (2x 4 GB), and it also originally came with a 16 GB Intel Optane module and a 1 TB HGST 2.5" 7200 rpm HDD, but I swapped that out I think for an Intel 520 Series SSD). Anyways, but I digress.
I don't know if I ever took power measurements for the NUC (probably not), but let's instead, compare it for example to the Beelink GTR5 5900HX system, which, at idle, could be sipping somewhere between 9-maybe 16 W of power.
Compare and contrast that to the old Q9550 system which has 4x 2 GB G.Skill DDR2-800 RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 260 in it, with a 610 W PSU, and a single I think it's an Intel 525s Series 240 GB SSD in it. At idle, it sucking back somewhere between 120-160 W.
That's CRAZY!!!
I thought that I was going to re-purpose that system to be a server of some kind. But now, I'm not so sure.
Granted, the Q9550 system does have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard in it, and as such, sports 8 SATA 3 Gbps ports. And the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 dose support Intel VT-x and Intel VT-d, which means that, again, in theory, I can run a few virtual machines on it and throw TrueNAS onto that system and make it into a storage server.
I don't know if I'm going to that for sure yet, but it is a potential option.
But man, that idle power is really making me re-think that plan. (Sadly, I'm not sure if newer servers would really be that much more efficient. Desktop systems and/or mini-PCs, yeah, but towers and/or servers - I don't know about that.)
