Full Bitcoin Node Costs

[dkbit98]

Regular light bulbs don't run 24/7 and LED lights have been a thing for a while now with markedly lower power consumption.

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

So you are comparing OLD computer hardware with new led light bulbs? Some people have their TV and other devices turned on all day.
Simply reduce your electricity bill by purchasing any SSD drive and you don't need your monitor running all the time.

Maybe you don't need to run your led lights 24/7 but you have more of them that run every day, let's say each of them spends average 10 watts and don't forget they are much more expensive than regular old light bulbs.

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[ABCbits]

Simply reduce your electricity bill by purchasing any SSD drive and you don't need your monitor running all the time.

You basically trade the hardware cost with electricity bill.

[DaveF]

Regular lightbulbs are also spending similar amounts of electricity and people usually have more than one in their home and I don't see people complaining about that.
It's not like running asic or gpu for mining that have much bigger effect on electricity bill.

Regular light bulbs don't run 24/7 and LED lights have been a thing for a while now with markedly lower power consumption.

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

Simply reduce your electricity bill by purchasing any SSD drive and you don't need your monitor running all the time.

You basically trade the hardware cost with electricity bill.

With the way a lot of modern things work 50 watts is nothing, you can somewhat easily offset it if that matters to you.
The standby power draw of your cable box, using cheap power adapters to charge your phone / tablet / laptop.
Your PS 3/4/5 or XBox sitting in standby mode. Just unplug it. Do you need your Alexa sitting there all day pulling 1 or 2 watts when you are not home?
Things like that can easily go over 50 watts in total.

Worrying about the cost of running a node is really a fringe case. Toast your bread for a few seconds less each day. Cooking a steak, make it medium rare instead of medium.
Do you really need the super powerful Wi-Fi gaming router or can a lower power one that only pulls 2 watts from the wall instead of 7 work?

Note: This is all US 120 volt examples, 220 may vary a bit but you get the point.

-Dave

[Dabs]

$150 a year is $12 a month? Should not be an issue. TVs consume more power, what with the speakers and Kong punching Godzilla making all those noises ...

8TB drives from Seagate now around $170-ish.

[PrimeNumber7]

Regular light bulbs don't run 24/7 and LED lights have been a thing for a while now with markedly lower power consumption.

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

So you are comparing OLD computer hardware with new led light bulbs?

Computers have a very long useful life, while lightbulbs need to be frequently replaced. Some electric companies will also give away x LED lightbulbs for free to new customers to help reduce total electric consumption.

If someone has an old, power-hungry computer to run a full node, that is all that is available without incurring additional costs.

[dkbit98]

$150 a year is $12 a month? Should not be an issue. TVs consume more power, what with the speakers and Kong punching Godzilla making all those noises ...

8TB drives from Seagate now around $170-ish.

Hard drive prices have really gone down in recent years with capacity gone up and I would choose one with longer warranty for running Bitcoin node.
Seagate BarraCuda 8TB $139.99 on Amazon now with only 2 years warranty, and 14TB version is with 5 years but much more expensive.

Computers are actually taking only 1% of total spent electricity at home, lights are taking 12% that is much more, and most is spent for cooling and heating with almost 50% in total.
TV is energy vampire that spends similar energy like computers and I personally don't watch it for years, not to save energy but to save my mental health

[LoyceV]

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

If you run it on a PC (or better: laptop) that's on 24/7 anyway, it barely costs anything. That's what I do.
I wouldn't use a dedicated (old) computer just to run a node, in that case even a VPS can be cheaper and has much better bandwidth.

Computers are actually taking only 1% of total spent electricity at home, lights are taking 12% that is much more, and most is spent for cooling and heating with almost 50% in total.

This must differ a lot per country I don't use electricity to regulate the temperature at home, and in work-from-home-lockdown year computers easily make up 10% of the electricity consumption.

[DaveF]

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

If you run it on a PC (or better: laptop) that's on 24/7 anyway, it barely costs anything. That's what I do.
I wouldn't use a dedicated (old) computer just to run a node, in that case even a VPS can be cheaper and has much better bandwidth.

Computers are actually taking only 1% of total spent electricity at home, lights are taking 12% that is much more, and most is spent for cooling and heating with almost 50% in total.

This must differ a lot per country I don't use electricity to regulate the temperature at home, and in work-from-home-lockdown year computers easily make up 10% of the electricity consumption.

The other issue is that there is no "one size fits all" solution.
I have natural gas heat where I live. It's cheap and efficient.
BUT it's one zone for the entire place. SO we use electric space heaters (old quiet miners) at night and in the back room during the day if we are working from home.
No matter how efficient gas is, heating the entire place just to keep one room warm it's going to be a net negative vs paying more for the service (electricity) but using less because you are heating a much smaller space.

Same with running a node. Are you better off spending a bit more to get a more efficient setup because power is expensive where you are. Or are you better off running whatever because power is cheap. Should you host it in the cloud because although power is cheap where you live and you have a ton of spare computers BUT you have expensive bandwidth that has some sort of a cap on it. Is everything cheap but not reliable at home and you are going to be offline for a few hours each month.

Without that kind of background knowledge of what each user has / needs it's difficult to give a really good answer as to what is best for them.

-Dave

[malevolent]

and don't forget they are much more expensive than regular old light bulbs.

They also last a lot longer.

If someone has an old, power-hungry computer to run a full node, that is all that is available without incurring additional costs.

And depending on their power costs, long-term it's going to cost them more to run an old computer.

Simply reduce your electricity bill by purchasing any SSD drive and you don't need your monitor running all the time.

You basically trade the hardware cost with electricity bill.

Exactly. One Bitcoin node alone is nothing, but still worth mentioning to those to whom costs are a barrier of entry, because these costs can add up to a nice sum every year when self-hosting a lot things (vide /r/homelab to get an idea).

8TB drives from Seagate now around $170-ish.

As low as $190 for a 14 TB drive during Black Friday.

Computers are actually taking only 1% of total spent electricity at home, lights are taking 12% that is much more, and most is spent for cooling and heating with almost 50% in total.

In my case computers are closer to 50%, since heating is via natural gas and good insulation etc. protects against the heat in summers.

[NotATether]

Let's say someone decides to repurpose their older computer that uses 50 watts when a Bitcoin full node is running. 0.05 kW * 24 * 30 * 12 = 432 kW per year. In Germany or Denmark, for example (countries with expensive electricity), that's going to amount to over $150 per year.

If you run it on a PC (or better: laptop) that's on 24/7 anyway, it barely costs anything. That's what I do.
I wouldn't use a dedicated (old) computer just to run a node, in that case even a VPS can be cheaper and has much better bandwidth.

I guess it's possible to save more electricity by running 8 different instances of Bitcoin Core at the same time, each with their own data dies and chainstate, assuming you do have 8 threads.

Granted this is only possible for people who have enough RAM and storage to run all of them at once (networking will not be a problem). So for 2GB dbcache then you'd be using about 16GB of ram in total and about 3.2TB of disk storage, if we future-proof blockchain sizes to 400GB. I think it's doable. Someone could even try selling hosted full nodes with the wallet= setting in bitcoin.conf pointing to some encrypted filesystem. I think bitcoin.conf settings apply to all the bitcoind's you launch, so you could fine-tune the port numbers and data directories via command-line arguments.

It's a nice experiment I want to carry out one day.

[dkbit98]

They also last a lot longer.

That is true, I was one of the first guys to purchase those led lights online years ago when they started to come out and some of them are still working today.
Sucks that I was not so early for mining and running Bitcoin node but better late than never.

The other issue is that there is no "one size fits all" solution.

I know some people who are using GPU mining rigs for warming their house in winter months so I guess they are win-win and net positive

[Jet Cash]

My nodes cost me nothing. I've got an unlimited data plan, and several 2Tb drives. Power comes from solar panels, or from recharged leisure batteries. I take advantage of free WiFi as well. I'm thinking of trying a bit of mining also, and that would be free, apart tom any extra hardware costs. I run the nodes when I feel like it, but at least once in a 2 day period.

[srrrrrr]

Hi! Sorry to hijack the thread here. I'm trying to figure out if its worth upgrading an old iMac (mid-2009) to run a full node on. Or if I should buy something to use as a dedicated node. We have unlimited download/upload 1GB fioptics.

I'd like to run one for privacy reasons but my technical skills end at using a Cricut. Long story short I had a lab partner in college that was really passionate about torr and bitcoin projects and I had a top of the line laptop that he mined on. And I'm a pack rat that recently decided to go through my old college binders and notes and found handwritten wallets/keys (hence privacy reasons).


Just a newb looking for some guidance.

[ranochigo]

Hi! Sorry to hijack the thread here. I'm trying to figure out if its worth upgrading an old iMac (mid-2009) to run a full node on. Or if I should buy something to use as a dedicated node. We have unlimited download/upload 1GB fioptics. .

Bitcoin Core requires OSX 10.12 and above. If you're able to upgrade to that version, you're fine though the synchronization process would be very slow.

I wouldn't buy a dedicated node for this, you'll probably be trying to run a node to help the network instead of using it as a wallet and they are still not that powerful. If you're able to get a new computer, it'll work just fine.

[srrrrrr]

I think it runs on el capitan. Would I be able to run a Linux OS on it if it's not able to upgrade? Not too worried about time. We graduated in 2010 so I don't mind waiting a little longer haha. I'd like to contribute but if it's not going to be powerful enough to actually make a difference what would you recommend?

I have a MacBook Pro M1 chip that I can't seem to get Core to work on and wouldn't mind using it a node if I could figure it out. And a 2011  Pro that has a Core wallet on it (used for other purposes than mining) that I can't get to sync but now the hard drive is too small. Not sure I'm willing to upgrade that hard drive just yet until I can find someone local to try and pull any left on there off.

This is what happens when your non technical friends smile and nod when you explain everything. 11 years later we regret not paying better attention and letting you set everything up! But I would like to learn and contribute as best as my skill set will let me, and this seems like something I might be able to handle.

[LoyceV]

I'm a pack rat that recently decided to go through my old college binders and notes and found handwritten wallets/keys (hence privacy reasons).

I know nothing about iMacs, but: an easy solution to get balances with full privacy: download this 1 GB archive (through Tor), and search your addressse in the text file (more information here). Don't risk your keys on an online system, only type/search the addresses.

[NotATether]

I think it runs on el capitan. Would I be able to run a Linux OS on it if it's not able to upgrade? Not too worried about time. We graduated in 2010 so I don't mind waiting a little longer haha. I'd like to contribute but if it's not going to be powerful enough to actually make a difference what would you recommend?

Bitcoin Core 0.21 dropped El Capitan support, you now need Sierra or newer to run it.

You can dual-boot Ubuntu on that Mac though if you install the rEFInd boot loader and follow these instructions: https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-dual-boot-ubuntu-mac/

[srrrrrr]

I think it runs on el capitan. Would I be able to run a Linux OS on it if it's not able to upgrade? Not too worried about time. We graduated in 2010 so I don't mind waiting a little longer haha. I'd like to contribute but if it's not going to be powerful enough to actually make a difference what would you recommend?

Bitcoin Core 0.21 dropped El Capitan support, you now need Sierra or newer to run it.

You can dual-boot Ubuntu on that Mac though if you install the rEFInd boot loader and follow these instructions: https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-dual-boot-ubuntu-mac/

Thank you for this!!