To calculate the cost per year I assume each machine is used 8 hours a day under light usage. A kWh is £0.2573 (the current price cap from July 2025 in the UK).
| Computer | Wh | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Firefly AIBOX-3588S | 3.2 | £2.40 |
| Orange Pi RV2 | 3.7 | £2.78 |
| Orange Pi 5 Max | 3.9 | £2.93 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 4.9 | £3.68 |
| Banana Pi BPI-F3 | 5.6 | £4.21 |
| DreamQuest N100 CPU | 12.9 | £9.69 |
| DreamQuest N95 CPU | 13.5 | £10.14 |
| Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P CPU | 17.7 | £13.30 |
- The annual cost is the electricity cost of the computer only. To calculate the overall running costs, you’ll need to factor in peripherals such as monitors, speakers, external devices etc.
- The Balanced CPU governor is used with the Intel-based machines. I find using the DreamQuest or NUC with the Power Saver CPU governor enabled greatly limits their usability in some basic tasks.
The next table shows the annual electricity cost with each machine headless running at idle. This information may be useful if you are thinking of using the machine say as a NAS server and want a baseline running cost. Again, I’m pricing a kWh at £0.2573 (the current price cap from July 2025 in the UK).
| Computer | Wh | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Firefly AIBOX-3588S | 1.3 | £2.93 |
| Orange Pi 5 Max | 2.4 | £5.41 |
| Orange Pi RV2 | 2.5 | £5.63 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 3.5 | £7.89 |
| Banana Pi BPI-F3 | 4.3 | £9.69 |
| DreamQuest N100 CPU | 6.5 | £14.65 |
| DreamQuest N95 CPU | 7.8 | £17.58 |
| Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P CPU | 12.7 | £28.63 |
Specifications
To look at the specifications of the machines featured here, please refer to each series which are listed in the hardware section here.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs / Specifications
All articles in the series:
| Firefly AIBOX-3588S | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the AIBOX-3588S |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the AIBOX-3588S Embedded Fanless PC |
| Power | Comparing the AIBOX-3588S power consumption with other SBCs and Mini PCs |