[der_general]

Recently I've been thinking about buying more powerful hardware (maybe an Intel NUC), then installing some Linux distro (probably Ubuntu) and then installing KODI on that distro. The reason for this is that I would like to utilize the same device for other purposes as well 

I have 4 raspberries, 1 intel pc running ubuntu and a few mediaplayers of various brands in my home. While I enjoy the ubuntu server for its flexibility being the backbone of my virtual household, I learned to love those small devices dedicated for single tasks. With more stuff running on one system, you might introduce unforseen issues, bugs etc., so I'd vote for sticking to dedicated systems.

That's a good point. That's why I'm probably going to keep using the existing dedicated RPI/LibreELEC/Kodi-combination.

However you'd think 1 device doing 5 different things would use less power aka electricity aka cost less money in total than having 5 different devices each doing their own thing. Not a big difference probably but anyway.

[noggin]

Recently I've been thinking about buying more powerful hardware (maybe an Intel NUC), then installing some Linux distro (probably Ubuntu) and then installing KODI on that distro. The reason for this is that I would like to utilize the same device for other purposes as well 

I have 4 raspberries, 1 intel pc running ubuntu and a few mediaplayers of various brands in my home. While I enjoy the ubuntu server for its flexibility being the backbone of my virtual household, I learned to love those small devices dedicated for single tasks. With more stuff running on one system, you might introduce unforseen issues, bugs etc., so I'd vote for sticking to dedicated systems.

That's a good point. That's why I'm probably going to keep using the existing dedicated RPI/LibreELEC/Kodi-combination.

However you'd think 1 device doing 5 different things would use less power aka electricity aka cost less money in total than having 5 different devices each doing their own thing. Not a big difference probably but anyway.

Yes and No.  Raspberry Pis consume very little current - the Pi 4B at peak load is ~6W, and at idle it's less than 3W.  Older Pi models consume even less (the early models and Pi Zero far, far less - some far less than 0.5W at idle)

An Intel Celeron MiniPC (e.g. Apollo Lake) will draw nearer 15-20W at load, and 3-8W at idle.  A more powerful Intel processor will draw more etc.

[der_general]

I have 4 raspberries, 1 intel pc running ubuntu and a few mediaplayers of various brands in my home. While I enjoy the ubuntu server for its flexibility being the backbone of my virtual household, I learned to love those small devices dedicated for single tasks. With more stuff running on one system, you might introduce unforseen issues, bugs etc., so I'd vote for sticking to dedicated systems.

That's a good point. That's why I'm probably going to keep using the existing dedicated RPI/LibreELEC/Kodi-combination.

However you'd think 1 device doing 5 different things would use less power aka electricity aka cost less money in total than having 5 different devices each doing their own thing. Not a big difference probably but anyway.

Yes and No.  Raspberry Pis consume very little current - the Pi 4B at peak load is ~6W, and at idle it's less than 3W.  Older Pi models consume even less (the early models and Pi Zero far, far less - some far less than 0.5W at idle)

An Intel Celeron MiniPC (e.g. Apollo Lake) will draw nearer 15-20W at load, and 3-8W at idle.  A more powerful Intel processor will draw more etc.

So that would mean that two RPI4B's are likely to draw less power than a single 10th generation Intel NUC idling. Maybe the workload would even the situation but still.

A bit offtopic but somewhat still related: I have a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, plugged in to the RPI4B with an USB-to-SATA-adapter, that I use as the storage location for TV recordings. It's not the boot drive though. The drive used to be formatted as NTFS due to previous use cases. I then formatted the drive as EXT4. The idling temperature of the RPI4B CPU dropped from ~55 °C to ~46 °C after the format. I find this quite interesting. Could it be that reading from a Windows-friendly format (NTFS) and writing to it require more CPU resources and thus the CPU generates more heat?

[Norfolk]

That's a good point. That's why I'm probably going to keep using the existing dedicated RPI/LibreELEC/Kodi-combination.

However you'd think 1 device doing 5 different things would use less power aka electricity aka cost less money in total than having 5 different devices each doing their own thing. Not a big difference probably but anyway.

Yes and No.  Raspberry Pis consume very little current - the Pi 4B at peak load is ~6W, and at idle it's less than 3W.  Older Pi models consume even less (the early models and Pi Zero far, far less - some far less than 0.5W at idle)

An Intel Celeron MiniPC (e.g. Apollo Lake) will draw nearer 15-20W at load, and 3-8W at idle.  A more powerful Intel processor will draw more etc.

So that would mean that two RPI4B's are likely to draw less power than a single 10th generation Intel NUC idling. Maybe the workload would even the situation but still.

My newest addition, the Odroid N2 plus draws 3W idle or while working on setup, thats 5 EUR per year in my country. I find that hard to beat and yes, I also check all my equipment for idle power consumation, though if you are interested in such, you need to find a wattmeter dedicated for low power consumation, it would not do if you get like 0W or 10W but nothing in between. Btw, it does pay to check all equipment that way. While today, you might find lots of equipment with low power consumation, about 10 years ago it was quite standard for some power supplies to pull like 5W to 10W permanently, independendly if the device is running or a charger is connected to a phone or not. I replaced a few nice routers, which costed more energy and therefore money per year than a high-quality replacement.