I’m in the process of getting my Home Assistant environment up and running, and decided to run a test: it turns out that my gaming PC (custom 5800X3D/7900XTX build) uses more power just sitting idle, than both of my storage freezers combined.

Background: In addition to some other things, I bought two “Eightree” brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare. One is monitoring the power usage of both freezers on a power strip (don’t worry, it’s a heavy duty strip meant for this), and the other is measuring the usage of my entire desktop setup (including monitors and the HA server itself, a Lenovo M710q).

After monitoring these for a couple days, I decided that I will shut off my PC unless I’m actively using it. It’s not a server, but it does have WOL capability, so if I absolutely need to get into it remotely, it won’t be an issue.

Pretty fascinating stuff, and now my wife is completely on board as well; she wants to put a plug on her iMac to see what it draws, as she uses it to hold her cross-stitch files and other things.

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 小时前

    Plus PC that’s idling is just adding an attack surface IMHO

    This tinfoil getting hella tight lately 🥲

        • tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 小时前

          No. What kind of attack are you afraid of by idling a computer connected to your ISP router?

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 小时前

            Any program on your PC that maintains or frequently initiates outbound connections, other machines on your LAN spreading an infection, literally any Trojan, etc. Double that if you haven’t disabled UPnP on your ISP router which is probably on by default.

            • tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              46 分钟前

              If you are afraid of your PC infecting itself by background outbound connections, you should not turn it on at all. Running 24h vs 6h a day barely makes a difference in this regard - yes, there are fewer “random internet noise attacks” in less hours, but if your LAN is that dangerous, the computer should not be on for 5 minutes. Either you trust your LAN enough to have a computer running, or not.

              Double that if you haven’t disabled UPnP on your ISP router which is probably on by default.

              Talking about the sane defaults I mentioned earlier - my router has it off as a default. But if it wasn’t, my approach wouldn’t be to turn devices off¹ but change the router setting.

              ¹ I actually do turn off/plane mode all my non-server devices when I’m not using them but not for that reason.

          • SreudianFlip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            3 小时前

            OK but what if you have a lava lamp that is synced to the moods of a sarcastic and greedy AI?

            Security is about to get really weird. It used to be the Internet of Things we had to worry about, but now we have Things in Internet.

            • tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 小时前

              wtf is that 😄

              But I agree, random hardware in your LAN is more of a security threat than anything coming from outside in many cases.

            • tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              3 小时前

              Most ISP routers have sane default settings and block all incoming traffic, you don’t even reach their log in interface. If they are somewhat updated you’ll be fine in most cases.