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Running a 60 W Mini PC server 24/7 costs about $95 a year

A 60 W low-power home server running 24/7 at 80% utilisation costs about $94.61 a year at $0.18/kWh — $7.88 a month and 526 kWh annually. This is the cost profile for the efficient homelab: an Intel N100 Mini PC, a Raspberry Pi 5 with a few USB drives, or a Synology DS220+ class NAS.

Annual cost
$76
At $0.18/kWh
Monthly cost
$6
24 h/day at 80% load
Annual consumption
420 kWh
60 W rated

Calculator

Power Cost Estimator

Device Configuration

W

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Effective Power: 48W

Hours
$/kWh

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Daily Cost
$0.21
Monthly Cost
$6.22
Yearly Cost
$75.69
420 kWh / year

How this is calculated

Once you drop under about 60 W idle, it stops making sense to hyper-optimise for power — the return on a $300 investment in more-efficient silicon is years, not months. More useful levers: scheduling heavy tasks (backups, re-encodes) during off-peak electricity hours where available, putting rarely-accessed drives in spin-down mode (saves 5-8 W each), and sizing the PSU closer to actual draw (an 80+ Titanium 200 W PSU is more efficient at 50 W than a 750 W unit at the same load).

Verdict

$95 a year is as close to free as an always-on machine gets. For most homelab use cases, stepping down from a full PC to a 60 W Mini PC pays for itself in electricity savings within 3-5 years — and frees you from the noise and heat of a bigger rig.

More Server scenarios

100 W home NAS, 24/7
Home NAS / home server (100 W)
View details ➜
1200 W professional server, 24/7
Professional server / rack unit (1200 W)
View details ➜

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to run a gaming PC 24/7?
At 300 W continuous draw and €0.30/kWh, a gaming PC left on 24/7 costs about €788 per year. Cut that to 8 hours per day of active gaming plus idle the rest and it drops to roughly €260/year. Sleep mode and turning the PC off when not in use are the biggest levers.
How do I calculate kWh from watts?
Multiply wattage by hours, then divide by 1,000. A 500 W device running for 4 hours uses 500 × 4 ÷ 1,000 = 2 kWh. Multiply by your electricity rate (e.g. €0.30/kWh) to get the cost.
What uses more electricity: an RTX 4090 or a typical fridge?
Peak power, the RTX 4090 wins (450 W vs roughly 100-150 W compressor draw). Annual consumption is the opposite: a fridge runs 24/7 at an average of 40-50 W, adding up to around 400 kWh/year — more than many gaming PCs used only a few hours daily.
Does a 1000 W PSU use 1000 W all the time?
No. A PSU is rated for its maximum output capacity; actual draw depends on what the components need. A system with a 1000 W PSU at idle might pull 80 W from the wall, jumping to 400-600 W under gaming load.
How much does an always-on TV or server cost per year?
At 100 W continuous draw and €0.30/kWh, any device running 24/7 costs €263/year. A home NAS at 50 W costs €131/year; a 65-inch OLED TV watched 4 hours/day at 150 W costs about €66/year.
Why is my electricity bill higher than the estimator predicts?
The estimator assumes the wattage you enter is the average over runtime. Real devices spike, idle, and have standby draw. Measure with a cheap wall-socket power meter for the most accurate baseline, then use the estimator to project costs for different usage scenarios.

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