5 ms·

I still think the best bang for your buck is an old desktop PC. Something like an i5 with 8GB RAM and an SSD will suit 99% of home server uses with capacity to

I still think the best bang for your buck is an old desktop PC. Something like an i5 with 8GB RAM and an SSD will suit 99% of home server uses with capacity to spare. Even in this environment of inflated hardware prices, you can get one for a reasonable price. Although I do see the appeal in getting unconventional hardware to do what you want, just for the love of the game.

jeppester 1mo ago
Second hand SFF office PCs are super good for this. Machines like Lenovo Thinkcentre or Dell Optiplex. Because there are so many of them (at least in Denmark where I live) they are pretty cheap and it's easy to get one with an I-processor. My current machine's idle draw is also very low at 5-6w.* *Based on some quick research it does seem that I was a bit lucky with mine, so I guess it's fair to mention that mileage may vary.
sourcecodeplz 1mo ago
not to mention avoiding all the headaches with android
yohannparis 1mo ago
I mean, it's hard to beat almost free. The phone was being unused, therefore it was free hardware for this project.
Denatonium 1mo ago
Old thin clients can be good deals too. Dell Wyse 5070s are great for basic tasks, especially if you can get the Pentium Silver J5005 models. They take M.2 SATA SSDs and they don't have UEFI whitelists on their M.2 WLAN cards, meaning you can get one of those M.2 A+E key SATA cards and connect a SATA HDD to it. Expect to pay around $40-$50 for a Dell Wyse 5070 with 4GB of RAM and eMMC storage. You can easily add an SSD, and since it takes M.2 SATA SSDs, you can buy lightly used ones relatively inexpensively. Old Optiplex are also good deals. I bought a Dell Optiplex 5070 MT for $150 for myself and 2 Dell Optiplex 3070 SFF computers for $75 each to replace my mom's aging Windows 7 PC. All 3 computers take DDR4 and M.2 NVMe SSDs and have an Intel i5-9500 CPU that will also run Windows 11 pretty well, if you're into masochism that is.
coffeecoders 1mo ago
It only makes sense if we are measuring raw capability per dollar. Once you factor in noise, physical size, idle power, battery etc, I think the calculation changes. For a home sever that's mostly idle, it is almost like commuting in a pickup truck.
- alightsoul 1mo ago
  also factoring in spare hardware. most people have more spare phones than PCs.
- auspiv 1mo ago
  Modern dell desktops (like 8th gen+) idle around 10W. Raspberry pi isn’t saving much
  - p0w3n3d 1mo ago
    I made calculations and got the same results. Bought low profile and as a server
  - lostlogin 1mo ago
    I’m impressed with that. I had a Nuc 9 extreme with a 10gb SFP card in it. It averaged 69w. The Mac Mini I replaced it with uses just under 5w. A Mini is possible the worst bang for buck. Also, the horror that that is Desktop Docker can’t be over emphasised. I know there are better ways of using Docker on a Mac, but having got something working I can’t face rebuilding it.
    - microtonal 1mo ago
      But when starting from scratch, it might be better to get an older Mini that is supported by Asahi and run Linux on it.
    - kalleboo 1mo ago
      My home router is a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny with a Core i3-8100T with a dual 10Gbit SFP in it (1x DAC, 1x 10GBase-T) and it idles at 14W, routing 10gbit full bore 24W. I got it for $80 I also have some Fujitsu office machine I picked up for $50 as my "I need to run some random task on a physical linux box" machine with an i5-7500 and it idles at 15W
mikepurvis 1mo ago
This is my situation exactly. Got an i5-4570 with 16GB, no GPU, running Unraid with a bunch of containers for Jellyfin, qBittorrent, Crafty Controller (minecraft), HomeAssistant, etc. I'm using a PCIe expansion card to get double NVMe drives for the cache disk, and then three (up to five) 3.5" spinning 8TB drives for long term. I tried really hard to get it on 32GB but sadly the motherboard only has two slots and only supports 8GB DDR3 modules. I literally ordered some of the rare late-generation 16GB ones and it refused to boot, with no firmware updates available from the vendor (Advantech, board is an AIMB-274).
- TacticalCoder 1mo ago
  > I tried really hard to get it on 32GB but sadly the motherboard only has two slots and only supports 8GB DDR3 modules. Buy a refurbished Xeon workstation with DDR4 RAM. If you're in the US or China they're basically free and if you're in the EU, they aren't too pricey (like you can definitely find ones for less than 200 EUR). Slap your double NVMe expansion card, your two NVMEs and your 3 3.5" spinning rust in it. If the workstation doesn't come with a Xeon with lots of cores, just buy one on eBay for $25.
  - mikepurvis 1mo ago
    I like my little jonsbo N2 case, and really I haven't hit actual perf limits yet, so I'm fine for it to chug along as-is for as long as I can get it to.
hakunin 1mo ago
Yep. My 2010 server does everything I need incredibly well, and I see no point in retiring it anytime soon. ASRock H67M-ITX, i3 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR3 1333Mhz, 2TB+4TB SSDs, DVD-RW, in this Mini-ITX Antec case[1]. [1]: https://www.antec.com/product/case/isk300-150 https://www.antec.com/product/case/isk300-150
- lucb1e 1mo ago
  What's the idle draw on that?
  - hakunin 1mo ago
    I don't have a measured plug on it, but estimate roughly around ~32-38w.
wraptile 1mo ago
I just bought a refurbished Lenovo k14 with 32gb of ram and Corei7-1165G7 with 500gb for 350$ which I'll use as my 2nd home server. My first home server is a 2nd hand gaming PC that I bought for 500$ with 32gb and 7700rx video card that I use for GPU based tasks but it's quite audible when it's working so wife and I agreed it has no place in the living room anymore and is being deported to the corner of my office. You can still find really good bargains for home servers from refurbished good computers, and given how well solved tech reliability is now, it's really not worth buying new.

jeppester 1mo ago

Second hand SFF office PCs are super good for this. Machines like Lenovo Thinkcentre or Dell Optiplex. Because there are so many of them (at least in Denmark where I live) they are pretty cheap and it's easy to get one with an I-processor. My current machine's idle draw is also very low at 5-6w.* *Based on some quick research it does seem that I was a bit lucky with mine, so I guess it's fair to mention that mileage may vary.

sourcecodeplz 1mo ago

not to mention avoiding all the headaches with android

yohannparis 1mo ago

I mean, it's hard to beat almost free. The phone was being unused, therefore it was free hardware for this project.

Denatonium 1mo ago

Old thin clients can be good deals too. Dell Wyse 5070s are great for basic tasks, especially if you can get the Pentium Silver J5005 models. They take M.2 SATA SSDs and they don't have UEFI whitelists on their M.2 WLAN cards, meaning you can get one of those M.2 A+E key SATA cards and connect a SATA HDD to it. Expect to pay around $40-$50 for a Dell Wyse 5070 with 4GB of RAM and eMMC storage. You can easily add an SSD, and since it takes M.2 SATA SSDs, you can buy lightly used ones relatively inexpensively. Old Optiplex are also good deals. I bought a Dell Optiplex 5070 MT for $150 for myself and 2 Dell Optiplex 3070 SFF computers for $75 each to replace my mom's aging Windows 7 PC. All 3 computers take DDR4 and M.2 NVMe SSDs and have an Intel i5-9500 CPU that will also run Windows 11 pretty well, if you're into masochism that is.

coffeecoders 1mo ago

It only makes sense if we are measuring raw capability per dollar. Once you factor in noise, physical size, idle power, battery etc, I think the calculation changes. For a home sever that's mostly idle, it is almost like commuting in a pickup truck.

alightsoul 1mo ago
also factoring in spare hardware. most people have more spare phones than PCs.
auspiv 1mo ago
Modern dell desktops (like 8th gen+) idle around 10W. Raspberry pi isn’t saving much
- p0w3n3d 1mo ago
  I made calculations and got the same results. Bought low profile and as a server
- lostlogin 1mo ago
  I’m impressed with that. I had a Nuc 9 extreme with a 10gb SFP card in it. It averaged 69w. The Mac Mini I replaced it with uses just under 5w. A Mini is possible the worst bang for buck. Also, the horror that that is Desktop Docker can’t be over emphasised. I know there are better ways of using Docker on a Mac, but having got something working I can’t face rebuilding it.
  - microtonal 1mo ago
    But when starting from scratch, it might be better to get an older Mini that is supported by Asahi and run Linux on it.
  - kalleboo 1mo ago
    My home router is a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny with a Core i3-8100T with a dual 10Gbit SFP in it (1x DAC, 1x 10GBase-T) and it idles at 14W, routing 10gbit full bore 24W. I got it for $80 I also have some Fujitsu office machine I picked up for $50 as my "I need to run some random task on a physical linux box" machine with an i5-7500 and it idles at 15W

mikepurvis 1mo ago

This is my situation exactly. Got an i5-4570 with 16GB, no GPU, running Unraid with a bunch of containers for Jellyfin, qBittorrent, Crafty Controller (minecraft), HomeAssistant, etc. I'm using a PCIe expansion card to get double NVMe drives for the cache disk, and then three (up to five) 3.5" spinning 8TB drives for long term. I tried really hard to get it on 32GB but sadly the motherboard only has two slots and only supports 8GB DDR3 modules. I literally ordered some of the rare late-generation 16GB ones and it refused to boot, with no firmware updates available from the vendor (Advantech, board is an AIMB-274).

TacticalCoder 1mo ago
> I tried really hard to get it on 32GB but sadly the motherboard only has two slots and only supports 8GB DDR3 modules. Buy a refurbished Xeon workstation with DDR4 RAM. If you're in the US or China they're basically free and if you're in the EU, they aren't too pricey (like you can definitely find ones for less than 200 EUR). Slap your double NVMe expansion card, your two NVMEs and your 3 3.5" spinning rust in it. If the workstation doesn't come with a Xeon with lots of cores, just buy one on eBay for $25.
- mikepurvis 1mo ago
  I like my little jonsbo N2 case, and really I haven't hit actual perf limits yet, so I'm fine for it to chug along as-is for as long as I can get it to.

hakunin 1mo ago

Yep. My 2010 server does everything I need incredibly well, and I see no point in retiring it anytime soon. ASRock H67M-ITX, i3 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR3 1333Mhz, 2TB+4TB SSDs, DVD-RW, in this Mini-ITX Antec case[1]. [1]: https://www.antec.com/product/case/isk300-150 https://www.antec.com/product/case/isk300-150

lucb1e 1mo ago
What's the idle draw on that?
- hakunin 1mo ago
  I don't have a measured plug on it, but estimate roughly around ~32-38w.

wraptile 1mo ago

I just bought a refurbished Lenovo k14 with 32gb of ram and Corei7-1165G7 with 500gb for 350$ which I'll use as my 2nd home server. My first home server is a 2nd hand gaming PC that I bought for 500$ with 32gb and 7700rx video card that I use for GPU based tasks but it's quite audible when it's working so wife and I agreed it has no place in the living room anymore and is being deported to the corner of my office. You can still find really good bargains for home servers from refurbished good computers, and given how well solved tech reliability is now, it's really not worth buying new.