My old laptop for self hosting just croaked, and I’m thinking of buying a 2nd hand mini pc, but this time I want to do it proper. I want to optimize the electricity consumption and specs needed/ future upgreadability, considering how expensive everything is now.
My use case is just for self hosting files (infrequent access and reducing reliance to google drive), and occasional dev workload via ssh. I’m thinking of buying a used optiplex with at least i6 gen cpu (SFF or micro form factor), but I want to see if there are better options.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
If anyone could suggest me better options it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Recently I decommissioned a Dell T320 and replaced it with a Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM all for right at the $200 mark. I’m running a total of 52 containers on it right now with load averages looking like 0.31, 0.51, 0.72. The Dell T320 running the same 52 containers cost me $40 USD per month to run. The Dell 7020 costs me $5-8 USD per month to run 24/7. If you wanted a wider tower, I set up a Dell 9020 for a friend of mine’s son who wanted to get into selfhosting at the age of 10. Similar running costs. I’ve got an Optiplex 3020 with 16 GB RAM and a 4 TB external drive running Proxmox quite well and costs probably $3 USD per month. I’m pretty well chuffed with the performance so far of the 7020, and in fact am eyeballing another one to replace a second Dell T320.
Optiplex etc. with an Intel 8th gen “T” chips seem to offer the best bang for the buck + energy efficiency on the second hand market right now.
The main issue with these thin clients is the lack of SATA ports and power connections for them if you want to add some larger 2.5” SSD/HDD storage. Usually it is only one, but you can also use the DVD drive slot with an adapter in the mid sized versions.
I’ve been running an HP ProDesk 600 G4 mini (i5-8500T, 32 GB RAM) for a few years now and am very happy. I bought it with 8 or 16 GB RAM and a 256 GB M.2 for 140 €. It can fit one 2.5" SATA drive and two M.2 2280 drives. I have it running 24/7/365 with 2x2 TB M.2 SSDs and a 256 GB boot SSD and it usually uses around 7 Watts.
If you want to go the HP route, ProDesk 600 and EliteDesk 800 have two M.2 slots, while the ProDesk 400 only has one.
Alternatively, Lenovo and Dell also have similar formfactor PCs, but I don’t remember their names.
Performance wise, the 8th gen i5 is more than fine for TrueNAS and 10-15 docker containers.
Go for a n100 or even one with an Atom CPU. Get as much ram as you can afford…
I have a Beelink Mini S that I got 4 or 5 years ago (N5095, 8GB RAM, 256GB SDD). It was $200 new at the time. It’s easily handling the hosting of 20-25 services.
For the little that you plan on doing with it, I think you could grab just about anything.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
I don’t think so. The Vercel link just redirects me to vendor HIPAA comparison stuff
Huh, you’re right. That sucks.
The GitHub with the data is linked in that post if you want to look through the csv file.
Lemmy has relatively good search, usually if you remember bits of the title that works?
In any case: Both n100/n150 and raspi are in the <10W range. Obviously raspi is lower, but also A LOT slower and much worse connectivity. As the price is roughly comparable, I’d go for the much more capable N100/N150. Only go the full ‘minipc’ route if you don’t mind the (probably) higher power usage, which can depend highly on model. Older (but cheap on eBay) models can be 25W on idle.
Depending on what you actually need, I’d setup a Sync thing or NextCloud or something and go from there.
I have a FriendlyELEC NanoPi R4S with metal case, running Armbian with a couple of USB SSD drives, for file and website hosting mostly. Just my personal use: no heavy loads. It’s air cooled (no fan). It typically reports a temperature of about 35 centigrade. Up into the 40s if I increase the load (development, upgrades, indexing, etc.) I don’t know the actual power consumption, but the power adapter is only 15w. My original NanoPi R1 works fine for the same purpose and uses even less power - runs cooler. I got the R4S and an R2S Plus, so as to have spares and development/tinkering systems and to have a 64bit CPU, in case I wanted to run anything that requires it.
It’s not upgradeable but it’s fairly cheap and has worked well enough that I haven’t wanted to upgrade it for years, other than migrating from the R1 to the R4S, as mentioned. If by dev workload you mean running local LLMs or heavily loaded CI build system it probably wouldn’t be a good fit, but fine for compiling a package occasionally, local git and npm servers and similar. I don’t recall when I got the R1: some time before Covid. The R4S and R2S Plus have been running for about 5 years now.
There are many other SBCs supported by Armbian. You might find something better matched to your requirements.
Compare the processors at Versus.com for a rough overview.
