Hi :)
I’ve been playing around with a pi 4 for a few months now, but I want a dedicated home server now, since I want my pi to run HomeAssistantOS.
I’m looking for something that can store documents and photos (paperless and immich) and maybe run a small program like Ad guard. At first I just want to hookup an old SSD (250GB) and a HHD (1TB), but maybe I will buy a second one for RAID in the future. Power consumption at idle is really important for me (energy prices in Germany are really high).
As a beginner I find it very hard to find the right hardware, because everyone is recommending different things. (Slim-Clients, Intel Nuc, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS).
I hope someone can recommend me something that will work for me.
Amazon has a “refurbished” program, where you can find lots of cheap thin clients and smaller form factor desktop machines.
However, the refurbished computers often have their SSD/HDD replaced with a crappy one that is unreliable, so I would recommend assuming that you assume that you will need to buy storage in addition to that.
But, overall I really like Amazon Refurbished because you get a better quality guarantee (warranty/returns), but a cheaper price.
Look of a refurbished thinclient with a 6th or 7th gen Intel CPU with the “T” at the end (for example i5 6500T). Those are basically power optimized mobile CPUs for desktop PCs. Those are currently best value for money IMHO.
Alternatively use an old laptop, which is great for beginners, but storage extension will be very limited.
Old Laptop actually sounds interesting to me, very nice form factor for my “inside the bookshelf” approach, but probably a lot of tinkering.
How do thin clients compare to a pi 4? I’ve heard most of them are worse in computing power and efficiency in comparison to the Pi.
Up to RPi4 the power efficiency was a lot better, but performance wise you really struggled due to lack of options to connect faster storage. With the RPi5 becoming more power hungry (but also more performant) it is less clear cut, and price wise a refurbished x86 pc isn’t really more expensive either.
All in all I would say the benefits of using standard x86 outweigh the slightly higher power use these days. RPis are still good if you need the specific hardware GPIO etc. that is has though. But for self-hosting go for x86 and be mindful of peak loads (these CPUs become much more power hungry on higher clock-speeds, especially turbo-boost).
Efficiency? Worse. Power? Way more.
Big thing is going from usb 3.0 or really weak microsd to sata ssd or especially m.2 nvme.
Pi4 has a72s which are weak, like clock for clock on par with sandylake or even nehalem, and they aren’t clocked near as high.
Pi5 is closer to broadwell, maybe Sky-lake, which is starting to hit tolerable performance.
As this is self-hosted, I feel the majority will reccommend against a Synology or similar pre-built, closed source solution.
At a budget of 150€ it will probably be challenging to build a whole system with new parts, but it can certainly be achieved with two or three generations old, second hand hardware.
The easiest way would probably be to keep a lookout for old office midi-towers (Dell Optiplexes and similar). Those usually have a few pci slots to throw an hba into and hook up a few hard drives. The mounting of the harddrives itself will need to be handled with uhm… Creative solutions. Depending on the system, you’ll probably want to upgrade the ram. And if you want easier Hardware handling, you may be able to just throw the system in a different case later on.
Another solution, and maybe even cheaper would be an old NUC or other mini-PCs. To be honest, I have no idea how people manage to use those as NAS or how you are supposed to manage multiple hard drives with them. External enclosures? Then there’s also more Pis and other micro PCs. Same challenges.
So, this writeup has not actually adressed your question: what’s the /best/ solution?
I also have no idea. It really depends on what you want, what your budget is, how much you want to fidget around. How much space do you have to put a system? What is on offer around you? Does the company/university/school you work at maybe offer hardware they would otherwise need to dispose of? Check craigslist/marketplaces/ebay.
I am partial to the midi tower approach, as it offers a good deal of flexibility, depending on the included motherboard.
Hope I could offer at least some help :)//Edith: The least energy consumption would probably be the Pi, but depending on how much HDDs you add, this will also depend on what management System you run and what HDDs you use (some NAS drives come with some powersaving features). If you are in any position to do so, talk to your landlord or Eigentümergemeinschaft and get a Balkonkraftwerk. Those 800Watts will more than offset your Homelab needs.
Thanks for your detailed response. I thought about an old office PC, but I guess they’re not even close to <10W idle.
Another quick newbie question: What do you need PCI Slots for? Many SATA ports for Drives makes sense to me, but why PCI
If you don’t have enough sata ports on the mobo (the optiplex 7010 has 1x Sata), you’ll need a pci sata controller, is my understanding. Not sure what other possibilities there are to connect more hdds…
Pcie slots also allow adding more nvme ssd drives, although sadly most mainboards do not support pcie bifurcation, so you will be limited to a single nvme ssd per slot.
