For the money: Used sff like an optiplex 7050 or similar for $100. Typically <20W, real computer performance, can handle a bunch of ram, pcie accelerators depending on what you get into. Add a multi drive enclosure for more storage when needed.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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This is what I did and I love it. I will add that sff is bad for upgrades. I wanted to add a gpu to mine and now I have to buy a larger case to put it in.
As I always say, have a look through https://forums.serverbuilds.net They have tons of guides on building whatever you need at whatever price point you can afford. The NAS Killer 5.0 is pretty great and I went with a second box for transcoding. Both low power and pretty cheap.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| NVMe | Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
[Thread #77 for this sub, first seen 24th Aug 2023, 01:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Check out ServeTheHome's "Project TinyMiniMicro" on Youtube for a great overview of ultra-small form factor ("1 liter") business PCs.
The big three PC makers each have standardized products in this form factor with (relatively speaking, compared to smaller manufacturers) tons of spare parts available.
This is the correct answer. And I think in September most companies do hardware refresh so keep an eye on ebay
I hate to admit that I love using these micro business computers, but they're pretty awesome. Stackable, powerful, upgradeable, cheap second hand or refurbished. I've considered nucs, but you can find buckets of these for cheaper.
I feel like a loser after reading some of these awesome setups, but i just use an rpi4 4gb. It's enough for 1-2 ppl casual use as NAS, media server, nextcloud, pihole, and a few other things here and there. I have USB hub with it's own power supply because if not the hard drives lose power occasionally. All in all it's like 20W max but usually under 10. Best of all it's completely silent.
Same. I'm using a 2012 Mac mini running Proxmox attached to an OWC Thunderbay 4. It's old but does everything I need it to do.
I think your setup is fine. I use a raspberry pi on each TV in my home as a media player (Jellyfin, retroarch, sometimes steam link) then also make them act as a docker cluster on the backend to play around with making some services 'high availability' so that the service moves around to whichever TV is not under load. I'm also playing with HDMI-CEC on those Pi's to let my home assistant (also running on a single board computer, zima board) send commands to the TVs and all HDMI connected devices. I have a Pi running Open Media Vault with two drives that provide redundancy. The only high power device I use is my Linux gaming machine also doubles as my Jellyfin transcoder.
I too enjoy the silence and lack of moving components of this setup.
I set myself a budget of ~€150 and eventually settled on a Lenovo Mini PC with an i5 and 8 GB of ram for €160 including shipping. In retrospective, one of those Beelink mini PC's would have been a better option, they use significantly less energy and have a better performance/price ratio.
I recommend going with option 1.
Just make sure you get an Intel box. If OP ever wants to use Plex it only plays nicely with Intel and Nvidia hardware transcoding.
I suggest you to look at SBCs:
- RockPro64
- Quartz64
- And many others
I don't find running them problematic, but this is maybe because I have crossdev on gentoo.
Here's how to install distro on sdcard for SBC:
- Partition sdcard
- Make devicetree file
- For most SBCs dts files are already made
- Configure and install bootloader(e.g. u-boot)
- Unpack base system to sdcard
- Configure, compile kernel and then copy to boot partition(can be shared with system, bootloader must support FS)
My home server is a RockPro64. I didn't specifically buy it for that purpose but since I had it lying around I figured I might as well use it.
It has a PCIe Slot which I used for a SATA controller, with two 3,5" HDDs.
They have an official NAS case for it too, not sure I'd recommend it as it's kind of expensive, doesn't isolate HDD vibration / noise at all and isn't very convenient to service (to replace the drives for instance). I'm not aware of a better case option for this board though.
I run debian and OpenMediaVault on it (I didn't have to mess with the kernel or device tree at all), with the ZFS plugin, and several docker containers (Jellyfin, PiHole, Syncthing, Tailscale).
For my needs it's working perfectly fine and doesn't need much power. But:
- It isn't particularly great at video transcoding
- 4GB of RAM isn't a ton especially with ZFS, keep that in mind if you wish to run more / heavier services such as Nextcloud
- being ARM based, this board basically limits you to OMV or manually setting up stuff on Linux through the CLI, as TrueNAS, Unraid and Proxmox only support x86. OMV is fine for it's core functionality and you can get some more advanced features through plugins, but at that point it often gets kind of janky and annoying compared to e. g. TrueNAS. Also, the KVM plugin apparently doesn't work on ARM.
TL;DR these low power ARM boards are just fine as a cheap option for getting into homelab / Self hosting and I wouldn't necessarily recommend against them, but sooner or later I want to build a low power x86 based NAS with more RAM, SSD cache and TrueNAS Scale instead.
I've tried a few of the things you mention over the years.
However, I've lately gotten into the used business PCs. The performance of even a 6th get Intel CPU more than double an RPI4 or the ATOM in my NAS, depending on how you count. Sure, it's quite a bit more power, and they have their place (RPI in the garage), but I've gotten a few SFFs that have room for multiple HDs for like $50-$60 shipped, as long as i'm patient, since I don't care for the windows license.
The CPU benchmark sites are what convinced me that more SBCs was not the solution for me.
I also tell myself that i'm recycling what could have been ewaste otherwise. I am afraid to calculate the energy cost.
I also try and ignore energy costs and prevent ewaste: my home server is my three builds back gaming PC with a lower power GPU shoved into it. Whenever I build a new main gaming PC my old one becomes my wife's gaming PC, and her old PC is rebuilt into the home server.
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I just decided to bite the bullet on paying for a Synology DS920+ and I don't regret it at all. For media hosting on my scale, 4K direct or 1080p transcodes to 6 or less concurrent streams, it does everything I need it to do and it has pretty decent software.
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Here's what I did...
JONSBO N1 Mini Itx Case 5 HDD (Size of your choosing) Mini Itx MB AM4 ~500 Series Best/Cheapest Amd Processor with GPU (I got a R7 3800G) 350w Itx PSU RAM of your choosing
I use 2.5GBE for my network, so I just got a USB to 2.5GB Ethernet Adapter. So make sure the Mobo has USB 3.1 or 3.2, or a 2.5GBE Port. I bought most refurbished, or clearance. If you really wanna go crazy transcoding, you can pickup Tesla P4s for cheap on Ebay.
It's low power, small, and powerful enough to run the whole suite of Arrs*, Jellyfin, Jellyseer, etc., etc.
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It's not one of the options you listed, but it's worth considering a laptop since it has a UPS built in.
- Laptop with broken screen
Perfectly server grade, the way the manufacturer intended
Amen. Also they tend to draw less power than your average cheap desktop, so it’s a great middle ground between pc and sbc
And usualy they ARE SBCs. So...
As someone with a used 4U server... the noise, weight, cost, poeer consumption all are an inconvenience generally. I now have some mini PCs and I wish I started small and built up, rather than trying to treat myself with the best single solution possible.
Depending on power prices in your country I would take that into strong consideration, while some server or desktop grade hardware might be technically very good, they often have high idle power consumption without offering greater functionality.
Take a look at this German Forum Post: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/die-sparsamsten-systeme-30w-idle.1007101
They also have this google sheet: https://goo.gl/z8nt3A
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I've been getting pretty excited about RISC-V devices. They are quite efficient and outstrip similiar SOCs in many ways.
The Lichee Pi4A has better benchmarks than a Raspberry Pi 4 at a TDP of 4W and includes a NPU. They are coming out with a cluster board as well.
Cristopher Barnatt does a review of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apoFXZ9ad8
Since Debian has added RISC-V as a supported architecture, we should start seeing most major software like Docker and KVM being packaged for it. If not, it can be compiled too.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=1apoFXZ9ad8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Same question here. I'm about ready to upgrade from my 8GB Pi 4B, but I'm overwhelmed by options and lost as to where to go next.
There's an old adage for cars that I think applies to home servers.
Fast, Cheap, Reliable. Pick two
In my experience, SBCs take a whole lot more tinkering than I like to do. I bought a cheap matx motherboard and a second hand ryzen 2400g which has served me well. Inside a second hand htpc chassis with an ssd for the os and a couple hdds for storage. It even has a 5.25" bay I can install a drive for ripping. I'd rubbing OpenMediaVault with Docker for Sonarr/Radarr/Overseerr/Nextcloud etc.
It's probably not the cheapest to run, but it was cheap to buy and it's very reliable because it's based on x86 so the support will probably outlast me.
I had a 10Gbps USB Icy Box enclosure, speeds were ok but cooling was simply inadequate. Now I have just built a pc with an Asus B550-Plus and a 5600G, idles at 19W with the drives in standby but with three fans active. I thought about going with a mini pc and a better external enclosure, but that would've been much more expensive and I doubt that I would've saved that much power with that anyway
My $0.02c worth - I have run all sorts of servers at home over the years, and one of the main challenges around the hardware is managing heat.
I’ve used mini-ITX mobos and tiny cases for builds. They look gorgeous, but at some point, when you stick enough drives in there (assuming you can) or make the CPU/GPU busy, you are going to have a heat problem, or a noise problem, or both.
On my mythtv build I used M-itx and a gorgeous Lian Li small case. It was a beautiful add to my home theatre stack, but in the end I drilled a ton of small holes in the top and added a slow 140mm fan to control the heat without noise.
The same goes for my file server - it was a slightly larger case with no GPU, but once I added my 6th HDD and had a ton of services running, heat became an issue and I was having to add extra fans, which could only be 80mm so they ran fast and noisy.
My new build I’m going to go all the way with a Phanteks Enthoo Full Tower and a few 120mm fans. I’ve decided that looks don’t matter
The other problem for me with these tiny builds is cable management. I’m complete shit at it, and small builds requires some skills. A big case gives you space to spread those cables out.
Lastly, you can get ATX or EATX mobos with 6, 8 or more SATA connectors - room for growth! And there are very low power options available.
I’ll soon have the appleTV + TV upstairs, laptop in the office, and the monster server downstairs with cat-6 + Gb fibre throughout.
I recently got the Beelink Mini S12 Pro. I'm completely impressed with its capabilities, especially for that price. I got the 16GB Ram N100 version. Great piece of hardware.
I'm running 27 different services, including the *Arrs, Jellyfin, paperless-ngx, home assistant, and even stuff like Kasm workspaces and emulatorjs.
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I have a DIY NAS... Not sure of specs any more. Some micro-atx board with a cheaper AMD CPU. All it's for is an NFS share and I use almost no resources on it.
I have a bunch of PI4 8GB and lenovo m92p tinys that I use for the compute. Their storage is the DIY NAS.
If I was starting out and planned on growing m'y setup, id go option 4. Just do an all in one thing, run everything on it. When you run out of ram/CPU consider a pi or mini like I have. When you need more disk, add it into the NAS.
If you just want something simple option 1. USB will 100% limit transfer speed but what kind of speed do you actually need? What will you run?
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As an owner of the HC-2, I’d say if you don’t need to transcode and you really only need qBitTorrent and Jellyfin, the HC-4 should be an awesome NAS and media host. You really only need more power when you have scope creep, and you realize you want your home server to do more and more. In any case it’s a pretty low cost of entry, should you choose to upgrade in the future.
I run proxmox on a System76 Thelio. ZFS mirror, 16 cores, 64GB. Synology NAS for data storage and backup. Dual NICs bonded with ovs for the VMs. The onboard NIC for connecting to proxmox itself. One of the VMs then rclones the backup share to rsync.net
One of the VMs is Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/Transmission. Media is stored via NFS to the NAS.
The Thelio looks awesome, but it seems overkill for what to do and spend. I would probably do DIY if I wanted something with the specs of the Thelio.
- Mini PC if you want small hardware that can be bought for cheap second hand, my recommendation goes for HP;
- ARM SBC if you're crazy about power consumption and you don't care about having potentially unstable systems and/or spend the same as a second hand mini pc in extras like a case, power supply, adapter for this and for that;
- DIY build with a micro-ATX or micro-ATX board if you've the space for it. You can a very powerful machine for less than. Check one of mine here https://lemmy.world/comment/2676457 ( i5-7400 + 8GB RAM + Board for 70€ second hand)
To be totally direct, SBCs are cool but are a waste of money. You won't able to get anything with a decent CPU for less than 120€ considering all the accessories they require and at that price range you can get HP or Dell mini PC's (i5 6th generation) that are WAY more stable and powerful with everything out of the box. Those machines can be found with mobile CPUs so they won't waste power.
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