My understanding is the Pi 5 automatically clocks down and threads enter a wait state when there is no work to do. While there aren't a bunch of power states like an modern x86 system, power usage still drops significantly when idle.Can I optimize the pi 5 to take less power on idle, and can I make it idle if no network requests are being made?
I found a really cool pi 5 nas case with support for 4 4 TiB drives.
https://the-diy-life.com/building-a-4-b ... enclosure/
Over time the Pi 5 firmware has been optimised to reduce power. There may be additional tricks for specific use cases like NAS to reduce power but I don't know them.
In my opinion the most important thing is to make sure the HD spins down when not in use. This is also important for disks in fanless USB enclosures to prevent them from overheating.
Are you running off batteries or solar?
Statistics: Posted by ejolson — Thu Jan 08, 2026 6:55 pm