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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As I always say, have a look through https://forums.serverbuilds.net They have tons of guides on building whatever you need at whatever price point you can afford. The NAS Killer 5.0 is pretty great and I went with a second box for transcoding. Both low power and pretty cheap.
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.
This is what I did and I love it. I will add that sff is bad for upgrades. I wanted to add a gpu to mine and now I have to buy a larger case to put it in.
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.
I recommend going with option 1.
Just make sure you get an Intel box. If OP ever wants to use Plex it only plays nicely with Intel and Nvidia hardware transcoding.
I suggest you to look at SBCs:
- RockPro64
- Quartz64
- And many others
I don’t find running them problematic, but this is maybe because I have crossdev on gentoo.
Here’s how to install distro on sdcard for SBC:
- Partition sdcard
- Make devicetree file
- For most SBCs dts files are already made
- Configure and install bootloader(e.g. u-boot)
- Unpack base system to sdcard
- Configure, compile kernel and then copy to boot partition(can be shared with system, bootloader must support FS)
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 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.
I have not experienced this with any lossless transcodes and my friends streaming remote haven’t said anything about it. What client are you using to watch media?
It was streaming locally from my 920+ directly to my LG tv using the official Plex app on the tv and the Plex docker container on the NAS with iGPU passthrough. Tried it in both mp4 and mkv formats. Since the tv doesn’t support DTS it was transcoding into (I think) AAC. When I would change the playback from DTS to any other codec (for files with multiple formats), the video would play flawlessly, it was just the audio transcoding.
I think every time I’ve heard about the plex smart TV app it has not been positive lol
Gonna be honest, I don’t know the exact logistics behind plex transcoding and what resources it may or may not use on the client and I’ve never tried a smart TV app as a client. I’m really not in a place to comment on it. But I can attest to having no issues when transcoding lossless formats to windows or the Nvidia shield.
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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.
I’ve been getting pretty excited about RISC-V devices. They are quite efficient and outstrip similiar SOCs in many ways.
The Lichee Pi4A has better benchmarks than a Raspberry Pi 4 at a TDP of 4W and includes a NPU. They are coming out with a cluster board as well.
Cristopher Barnatt does a review of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apoFXZ9ad8
Since Debian has added RISC-V as a supported architecture, we should start seeing most major software like Docker and KVM being packaged for it. If not, it can be compiled too.
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.
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
One of the VMs is Plex/Sonarr/Radarr/Transmission. Media is stored via NFS to the NAS.
Why VMs?
I don’t like lxc containers, and my build automation works well at the full system level vs containers.
Running your services bare metal these days is insane. If I have a problem, I just restore or rebuild that purpose-built vm from configuration management. This is also a lot more flexible and cost effective vs having separate hardware for each thing.
Redundancy is also easier, should I decide it is worth the hardware investment.
While you are correct with insanity of running bare-metal, this argument is manipulative. Indeed, no sane person will ditch existing kernel(e.g. Linux of FreeBSD) and write one themselve, running program in common OS is not bare-metal.
Another manipulation is VM vs per-dervice dedicated hardware.
Redundancy is also easier, should I decide it is worth the hardware investment.
Same thing valid for regular userland.
The Thelio looks awesome, but it seems overkill for what to do and spend. I would probably do DIY if I wanted something with the specs of the Thelio.
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.
I recently got the Beelink Mini S12 Pro. I’m completely impressed with its capabilities, especially for that price. I got the 16GB Ram N100 version. Great piece of hardware.
I’m running 27 different services, including the *Arrs, Jellyfin, paperless-ngx, home assistant, and even stuff like Kasm workspaces and emulatorjs.
I’m seriously thinking of getting this. Maybe the Firebat brand though as it has two Ethernet ports and it’s cheaper for me.
Have you had Pi’s? I’m currently using a pi4 4gb and wondering how it compares.
I’m also frustrated with arm as a lot of docker images aren’t working. Recently had issues with Hugo and Jekyll which needs node.js that doesn’t support arm at this version.
Have to tried Immich on it?
Yes, I have a Pi4 2GB, it’s still working as a second pi hole node. That’s what got me into the world of self-hosting, but 2GB is not enough for a lot of things. I went from that to a N100 with 16GB of RAM, so the difference is huge and I think it’s totally worth the money.
I haven’t tried Immich, but I probably will once I have a better solution for storage.
Yeah, the mini PCs look great. How do you have your storage set up?
I just have the included 500GB SSD and an external 2TB HDD, but I’m planning on getting a 4TB 2.5" SSD to put it inside the mini PC, since it has an extra slot for that.
- 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.
It’s up to you how much you want to pay vs. how much time you are willing to sink into it. A synology is overpriced and underpowered, but you get a nice plug and play solution eith sane defaults. I went with that, fully knowing that price-wise, it’s not optimal. But I don’t enjoy tinkering as much as I used to.
If you want x86-64 support in fanless, take a look at Celeron (low powered) based industrial PCs. Qotom comes to mind. You can get a passively cooled machine. Most come with a NVMe and 2.5 slot for storage, do doing raid 1 is possible without external storage. I’ve bern running my J1900 based one for nearly 5 years and haven’t had an issue with hardware at all.
