Hi all,
I want to spin up a small home server. Nothing crazy, maybe 4 or 8GB ram at most. 1 Docker instance running a few privacy frontends (Invidious, Redlib, Xcancel, SearxNG, etc.) and split tunneling VPN connections for each one.
Obviously, a Raspberry Pi 4 or higher is the internet’s favorite choice, but I don’t need wireless connectivity, I just need a single HDMI and 2 USB ports to get everything set up, one ethernet port, and a dream in my heart.
Has anyone use alternatives like Le Potato or Orange Pi? I’m curious what their community support is like, and if there’s a FOSS-friendly standard.
Thanks!
Unless you specifically need ultra low power draw, a minipc is always a better bang for your buck, the cheapest solution is the dusty old laptop sitting on the shelf at the back of your closet…
This was my approach. Broken screen? Who cares! It’ll run headless anyway. Dead battery? Whatever, I’ll be plugged in 24/7.
A larger sized used motherboard or even a new cheap one often has more capability if you can deal with something that is larger…
Oh, I can deal with something that’s larger…
-wait, not like that.
Cheeky.
Used micro PC is often the best deal. Companies offload old SFF i5 and lower machines all the time. They’re all over eBay.
I used to be of the erroneous mind set that a server had to be some big honkin’, dim the lights, piece of equipment, but that’s not necessarily true now days with modern architecture. Doesn’t take a lot to get a lot back.
Just look at the processors in the Synology offerings, you didn’t need much to run a bunch of services.
I was thinking about waaaay back in the day, before the popularity of Synology, but you are correct. I think this is the year I will finally rid myself of these boat anchors.
Dude same. Back in the day I was dead set on getting older blades and a couple Dell 710 in a rack and “that’s what a real homelab is.”
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool, but it’s all decommissioned workstations, a white box unRaid server, and micro/mini PCs; there’s not a single traditional server box in place.
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool
I recently decommissioned one of my Dell T320s, and replaced it with the Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and maxed out to 32 gb RAM. I paid $117 USD for the Optiplex 7020 SFF which came with 8GB RAM, and I maxed it out with three more 8 GB RAM sticks for about $75 USD.
The Dell T320 costs ~$40/month in electrical costs in my locale to run. The Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF costs $5-8/month to run. So, less than the duration of this year, I will have recouped my initial $200 investment in the Optiplex 7020 SFF just in power consumption alone, and I’ll have ‘left over’ money if I wanted to get yet another Optiplex 7020 SFF. I have 40+ containers running on the Optiplex 7020 SFF, and it hasn’t broke a sweat yet. Far more quieter than the Dell T320 and less heat funneling into the server room.
I’m going to sell the T320 which is also maxed out at 32 GB RAM, so I’ll have more $$ to replace the other T320. Winner winner chicken dinner.
I love it. The savings are real and can be immense.
This is the way to Go!
I have a HP Elitedesk 800 G4 Mini which is running everything (besides storage) in my Home Network. You can Look at the Tiny/Mini/Micro section at Serve the Home https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/
Yeah, I was looking earlier, and sort of didn’t know what to even look for, but then everyone here made suggestions of what to look for. I’m all over this!
Idk if you ever wander over to Reddit, but there’s a poster in /r/homelabsales selling 7 Dell mini PC systems right now.
Thanks- I found an old laptop to give things a test run. I’ll do some thin client shopping once I cut my teeth a bit.
Have fun! It’s a great hobby.
Thanks - I’ve put it off for a while, and didn’t realize how easy this all was to set up!
I see a ton of i5-8th gen 2-in-1s with dead batteries, but under 100 on ebay
It always starts small. I started with a 15 year old pre-ryzen AMD laptop, and an old external USB 4TB hard drive. NEW the laptop was $299.
A year later, I have a ruckus/brocade managed switch, a Lenovo M700 Tiny running home assistant and Jellyfin, while my main media/file server is a Xeon E3-1275v3 with 2 SSDs, and 6 8TiB SAS3 enterprise hard drives in a ZFS pool. And a Pi5 running adguard home as my DNS server.
And I’ve already used 60% of it. 🤣🤣
Great advice. I found an old laptop and I’m putting it through the paces now, and I’m really surprised at how easy all of this is. Setting up my own Invidious instance took minutes. Immich is where I’ll need to plateau out, I expect. My partner will immediately fill up the laptop by dumping her phone onto it, so that will need to wait for a long-term solution. That being said, a Lenovo mini whatever seems like a solid standard.
I run a RockPro64 with Arch Arm. No need for a monitor - you just connect over SSH.
Also to consider are NUCs. I for one got a Firebat with N100 and 8 or 16 GB of RAM and it was already a few years ago cheaper than a RPi 4.
N100 CPU beats any SBC in every aspect except maybe power? Still very low consumption tho. This will leave you headroom for years of selfhosting, because once you get going, there is no coming back.
Nothing more valuable in privacy terms than keeping your photos off the cloud (immich), then data off the cloud (copyparty, nextcloud,…). It never stops and the n100 will support that no problem.
Awesome idea, thanks! I want something that can spend 99% of the time just hiding behind other consoles, and this would work perfectly for that.
Personally, I shuffle photos from my phone to my laptop and then backup manually, which is not awesome. Having my own cloud-based backups for that would be great. Might even get my partner to go for it, which is the hard sell.
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Going directly against your ask: a raspberry pi 3b is cheap and has what you need. :)
If you dont need an sbc or something arm based mini pcs/thin clients/laptops work well. I run redlib, yamtrack and a monero node on hp t630 w/ 16GB ram (bought before the rampocalypse for ~ $60) and a torrent seedbox/streaming nas on wyse 3040 (~$10). Here’s a great website about thin clients https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml
Thanks - I think a NUC/thin client will be how I end up going. I just didn’t even think about them in terms of meeting the criteria of “small thing I can leave running and not care about.” I think I still have an old laptop my partner used to use that would work, which might be my tester.
radxa has very good sbc’s at the most economical pricing and great software support. only thing is they get sold out pretty quickly. something like X4 or rock 5B will be best for your needs. dragon q6a is also extremely efficient but they get sold out almost immediately after stock comes.
they sell through https://arace.tech/ so subscribe to them if for back in stock alerts
Scrounge an old laptop, maybe super cheap if the screen isn’t completely working. Plug in a monitor to deal with screen problems.
Yeah the best option is the old PC you already have. Unless you’re transcoding video or into LLMs it will be more than enough.
Yeah, that’s my fallback idea. I would sort of prefer the ease of a single board option I can just shove behind the router, but this might be easier.
It probably isn’t going to cost less to get something without wifi.
As others mentioned used SFF PCs, here’s my recommendation based on my own experience.
I bought several used Dell Wyse 5070. The 5070 was announced in May 2018 and used as thin client.
They’re tiny, silent (no fan) and you can fit a NVMe SSD via adapter (PCIe A/E key -> M key) in the WiFi card slot next to a SATA SSD. I picked the ones with Intel Celeron J4105 (Quad Core) with 1.5GHz, up to 2.5GHz burst and put 32 GB RAM in one of them (that was before prices went nuts).
Beware, only if you pick the right dual ranked RAM modules (e.g. Patriot PSD416G26662S), you can have a max. of 2x16 GB. To start your journey, 4 or 8 GB might just be enough and don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Now I have a PVE (Proxmox Virtual Environment) running with several virtual servers and lxc, one 5070 hosts a PBS (Proxmox Backup Server) and both devices are far from their limit. In case of hardware failure I have spare 5070s.
Each 5070 cost around $65 and runs at around 8 watts at average. Dunno about current prices though.It fits my needs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it fits your needs as well?Lenovo thinkcentre tinys
I actually have one of these: Dell Optiplex 3020 Micro
Has a 16 GB RAM max. Doesn’t come with HDMI but you can utilize one of these VGA/HDMI or Display port /HDMI
Surprisingly snappy little machines. Drop in another 8 GB stick of RAM for $25 and you’re off to the races.
Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 maxed out to 32 gb RAM are pretty nice too and can be found on Amazon for around $125.
The newer Dell Optiplex micro like the 5070 come with more modern hardware, HDMI and all that. I was fortunate to get a couple for free from my BIL who works in IT and was given them as E-waste.
I usually try to stay within the upper ranks of DDR3 equipment. DDR4, while a better option, is far more pricey than DDR3.
