Laptops will typically always use less power than a desktop.
But desktops can be cooled much more silently than laptops.
And performance will almost always be better in a desktop. But might also be overkill for what you want to do.
Personally, my 2 servers are a Raspberry Pi 4 running off a USB SSD, and a Synology DS220+, where I found an 8 GB stick of RAM that it would boot with for a total of 10 G.
This perfectly suits all I want to have at this time, with a combined continuous power draw of around 15W.
do you think they would be better or worse than a desktop? i’m here trying to decide to use my old laptop or desktop as a headless server
Laptops will typically always use less power than a desktop.
But desktops can be cooled much more silently than laptops.
And performance will almost always be better in a desktop. But might also be overkill for what you want to do.
Personally, my 2 servers are a Raspberry Pi 4 running off a USB SSD, and a Synology DS220+, where I found an 8 GB stick of RAM that it would boot with for a total of 10 G.
This perfectly suits all I want to have at this time, with a combined continuous power draw of around 15W.