How Much Energy Does Building Distro Packages Use

09 November 2026 ·updated 09 November 2026 When I set up the infrastructure for Casuarina Linux I repurposed an AMD AM4 system with Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core CPU (105W TDP) and 32Gb of DDR4 RAM as the build server. I set it up in our laundry, connected it via a smart plug, and reset its counters. Over the course of the project I would regularly pull package updates from Chimera Linux, build and install them locally, and then push them to the repo, which would trigger Buildbot to build and publish them. The project ran from 30 March 2026 to 8 November 2026 (a bit over 7 months) the total energy used was 98.4 kWh. My electricity plan is a 100% renewable plan (meaning they offset the non-renewable parts) and costs AU$0.33 kWh….