I use my desktop PC for Jellyfin and torrenting, but I’m looking for something that I can keep on 24/7 that draws less power and run other self-hosted services on Linux. I would like to have at least 2x 14 TB 3.5" hard drives in or attached to it with the possibility of expanding in the future.
From my research, these seem to be some good options:
- Mini PC like this Beelink S12 Pro + USB hard drive enclosure. The price seems reasonable for the specs and low power consumption. Not sure if USB will limit transfer speeds.
- ODROID HC-4 or similar SBCs. I feel like these have much lower performance for not much price savings, and it’s harder to get software running up because of ARM. But it seems like they don’t use too much power.
- Used enterprise PCs/servers. I know they can be found cheap used, but I’m a little lost at comparing the performance and power draw to other options.
- DIY build. I’m interested in getting a Mini-ITX case like this Jonsbo N2 and getting parts for it, but it seems like it will be the most expensive option. It does seem like the most modular and upgradable.
- Classic NAS products like Synology. It seems like these are falling out of favor because they are pretty under powered for the price.
What does selfhosted think about these options, and what would you recommend?
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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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
There is no 3800G afaik
You are correct. It was a R5 5600g, sorry bout that…
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
- RockPro64
- Quartz64
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 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
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 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
Only problem that I have with mine is it just doesn’t have the power to transcode audio flawlessly. I have a lot of DTS content and it just stutters all the time. I had to set up a Tdarr pipeline just to add EAC3 tracks to everything.
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.
