Looking for recommendations for a mini pc server to start self hosting
With all this migration i’ve been inspired to start self hosting some services.
I am looking for a mini pc to ideally run linux and host a media server with radarr and sonarr, pihole and some other stuff as i start getting more into self hosting.
Any recommendations / experiences that you can give? Or some general guidelines on what i should look for or things to avoid.
I am running openmediavault on a HP workstation I bought off ebay. I paid less than $100 dollars for it I think 10 years ago. I have jellyfin set up for media. I should probably upgrade as it is an old Core 2 Quad.
I replaced my aging NUC with a Minisforum SFF box and am also very happy with it. Footprint is slightly larger, but actually find it much quieter. The NUC was basically silent 90% of the time too, but it had an annoying high pitched whine if you were doing something very CPU-intensive.
Depending on model they can support up to 2 m.2s and a 2.5" drive.
I got myself a used/refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Tiny, which works pretty well. Put in more ram and bigger storage and it is pretty beefy now as well as silent.
Originally I had planned to do what you’re doing and use a mini PC to upgrade from my pi4 eventually what I did was get a Mac Mini and keep the pi for pihole and dhcp.
Not saying you should get a Mac mini m2 but the power consumption was the main push for me to go down that route cause remember you’re running the thjng 24/7 for years and depending where you live electricity isn’t cheap. (I pay 32.5p per kWh)
Considering the cost the same as a decently mid range mini pc (i got mine for £500 new) it makes sense.
If you’re looking at a cheaper budget try finding something at least 8th gen intel and up for better power savings
sounds like you need newegg.com. I build a new PC every few years and they have most things you want. tom’s hardware usually has reviews and lists. couple sites I can’t remember help with parts compatibility. use the search www.newegg.com
It’s no way “conventional” by any means but it definitely gets the job done – Orange pi 5 plus. You can even set it as a “middleman” and get yourself an extra “soft” layer of protection on your internet.
Another vote for Asrock Deskmini. I’ve had an A300 going for a while now. It started off just doing a few things on Docker, it’s now been repurposed as a Proxmox host. The nvme plus 2x 2.5” sata is very useful for storage options, and you can put some reasonable desktop CPUs in - subject to cooling, of which you can get a very low profile replacement if you need to. As there’s no video on the motherboard and no space to fit a PCIe (let alone the video card) you are restricted to CPUs with onboard video, which I think is more of a restraint for the AMD version than the intel, but even so there are enough options in the AMD lineup if you need firepower.
I have a big enough house to be able to put this machine somewhere out of the way but there are plenty of cheap server gear on classifieds. I paid ish 300 euros for a 32 core machine with 40gb ram. I can host all the things without it even breaking a sweat.
Probably uses a lot more electricity, but I haven't really noticed it on my power bill
Maybe stating the obvious, but don’t skip over older laptops if you can get your hands on them. Especially because the CPUs are already optimised to be power efficient. They also come with a built in UPS that even in bad cases will still be good enough for 15 minutes or so, which is good enough for 99% of the power cuts. Only down-side: lack of SATA ports, but that is more or less the same with mini-PCs.
I just built a Server using J5040 board. With 16gb ram (yes it works) a 500gb m.2 as system , 2x4tb ironwolf as ZFS mirror pool, 350 W power supply all in the node 304 fractal case for 550 euro.
Runs proxmox as hypervisor for VM or Container. As example LXC container for motioneye and syncthing
I’ve had mostly good luck with lower end NUCs. I say mostly because of 3, one died a hard and abrupt death after 2 years; but the other 2 have been fine going on 2 years now. The only problem with NUCs in general is they tend to be over priced. If you can find them on sale they are totally worth it. As others have pointed out, you should have a plan for more storage. Personally I’ve found a good usb hub and some external disks work great for what I do. As to why I like them: 1) form factor, low profile cube, 2) they happily run headless, 3) hardware seems to be of decent quality (ignoring my i3 box that never turned back on after a reboot), 4) most models have enough I/O to fit your needs.
I bought a Morefine N100 recently, it’s a great device. Support 1 NVMe and 1 SSD 2.5, you can use both combined in RAID and even backup options in the cloud or on an external disk through the USB3.0 ports.
Quicksync for Plex/tdarr works great on the latest version of Debian Bookworm.
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