Today, we are going to analyze the average consumption of one of these devices and its impact on our electricity bill.
How much does a NAS consume?
This is a very common question when we buy one, because in the end it will be a device like a router, something that we will never unplug and therefore generate permanent consumption.
Logically, a NAS is not a router and its power and functions are superior to those of this one, so its consumption will not be so low.
It must be said that most of these teams have similar consumption, it is true that there may be differences between some models or others but not to the point of analyzing them separately.
An example would be the Synology 118 (one of those I have). A fairly basic equipment that ensures us a consumption of 9.4W (Accessories); 4.22W (hibernation).
Another model of this brand and something more powerful would be the DS220+ 14.69 W (access); 4.41W (hibernation).
As we can see the consumption increases if our equipment is better, however, in hibernation their consumption is very similar, and this is where we must be careful, because unless we have a NAS working 24 hours a day , what interests us is its spend at rest, when we are not using it but always leaving it connected in case we need to access it from anywhere.
If we switch to much more powerful equipment like the DS723, we notice that there is a little more difference, 21.07 W (Access) and 8.62 W (Hibernation).
If we make a rule of thumb to know the monthly cost at rest, we would only have to multiply 4.5 W, which would be an average of equipment at the user level, for 24 hours and for 30 days . That is, a result of about 3.2 KW. This translated into a price assuming a cost per kilowatt of 15 cents would give us the amount of approximately 50 cents per month
In case you have a server like Plex connected all day and with multiple users accessing it, its cost can be multiplied by 3 or 4 times. Even so, they should not exceed a few dollars, so if you are thinking of buying a NAS server, we can say that no matter how much we use it, it will in no way provide us with a very high energy cost. At least at the national level.
At a more professional level, like the DS723 we mentioned earlier, that would mean about double the cost, however, that would still be a handful of dollars, and if you really have a server like that, which m would worry most about is what it cost you, not your monthly usage. So enjoy it and don’t worry about the rest.