Measured idle and load wattage for popular homelab hardware. Numbers come from manufacturer specs, community testing, our own measurements where available, and Wendell-from-Level1Techs energy if we can't measure ourselves.
| Device | Category | CPU | Idle (W) | Load (W) | Source |
|---|
"Idle" means the device is powered on, fully booted, with the operating system running, an SSH session connected, and zero active workload — no transcoding, no scrubs, no scans. "Load" varies by device class: for mini PCs and servers it's a sustained CPU stress (Prime95, stress-ng, or equivalent); for NAS units it's a multi-drive read benchmark; for switches it's full port utilization at line rate.
All measurements are taken at the wall with a Kill A Watt P3 P4400 or equivalent. Numbers from external sources are flagged in the source column and re-verified when we can get our hands on the hardware.
Real-world idle for any of these will vary by 1–3W depending on BIOS settings, BIOS version, drive count, drive type (SSD vs HDD), connected peripherals, and ambient temperature. Treat these as a tight range, not a single point value.
Have a device that's not in the database, or numbers that conflict? We'd genuinely love them. Send measurements with your meter model, BIOS version, OS, and drive configuration to the contact on the about page and we'll add or update with credit.