EDIT: Holy shit, was not expecting so much support for my inquiry. Thank you all for the bevy of ideas and solutions. I think Iām still gonna go for the Intel 12th Gen+ NUC style, although some of your setups seriously made me quite jelly. Maybe Iāll get there one of these days. Iāll update this when I finally lock down my purchase :)
Hey all, lurker for a bit, but just joined because Iāve started my journey of self hosting the simple stuff (or at least I hope itās simple). For the past couple years Iāve been using a RPi Zero W for PiHole, and more recently go into Jellyfin and Home Assistant, using an RPi4 and an RPi3+ respectively. Iāve also got a hand-me-down Synology ds214j NAS with 2x8TB in RAID0 RAID1, which is about half full atm. Iām not expecting to expand that storage anytime soon, so Iāve pivoted to an attempt at combining the 3 Pis above into one NUC/SFF/etc device with a roughly similar power draw. Also looking at re-jumping back into 3D printing using OctoPrint.
Iāve looked briefly at jumping to a Pi5, but that led me down the rabbit hole with Jeff Geerlingās article/video on Pi vs. NUC. Iāve continued to putter around looking at NUCs in the ~$200 range. Hoping to stick with MinisForum, GMKTek, or Beelink if possible, but only becauseā¦ itās all I know. Iād like to also tinker deeper with Linux flavors, as Iām a noob at best with it but want to at least have some growing knowledge, as Iāve primarily been a Windows gamer and use Apple at the office almost exclusively. Iād like to try staying with AMD as Iāve slowly moved over from the ādark sideā (donāt hurt me) that is Intel and Nvidia.
Last nugget is that Iāve never tinkered with Docker, as it seems that may be the best route to host all these apps on one contiguous installation. Iāve new-ish to VMs too, so anything āBabyās First VMā would be nice.
I know I made a giant pile of wants/needs, so if thereās no magical unicorn, Iām cool with other ideas. Thanks in advance, and Iām really keen on seeing what options I have.
Buy a 7th gen Intel based tiny/mini/micro PC instead of a Pi or NUC. You get much more bang for your buck. 35W max draw. They are far more capable than people give them credit for. I run 3 of them (4 if you count the Mac mini).
As tempting as that is, Iām not expecting to build up something that hefty. Love the wireminding and all, but Iām hoping to keep this as something I can mount nicely in my teeny tiny network cabinet. The horsepower Iām looking for, alongside the low thermal and power loads, are my goal. Maybe Iāll expand beyond eventually, but who knows?
Thank you for the suggestion though! Also love the R&C refs :) Still need to finish Rift Apart.
Understood! Iām just showing you that a tiny/mini/micro PC is incredibly beefy for what it is, especially when you stuff it with an i7 and a bunch of RAM.
I name all my physical machines after R&C characters. HA is āAceā as in Ace Hardlight, and the Optiplex on the left (running Frigate) is āSkrunchāā¦ As in Qwarkās monkey sidekick š
Rift Apart was super fun. The final battle sequence is awesome for grinding if you wanna 100% the game. Iāve got it down to a science haha.
I think you are misunderstanding. The part they are talking about are just the small boxes in the center, labelled āmortā āratchetā and āhome assistant.ā. You can get used office PCs like those for around the cost of a rpi, and they are way more powerful, but with a low power draw.
Yeah I did get a little __ Lost __ :P
But for reals, yeah I did. I was taking in the entire picture, but still way more than Iām hoping to utilize. One tiny box for now, but maybe down the line Iāll expand to a rack. Its only me, as my housemates use the Jellyfin setup a bit through our TVs, but the HA stuff, and even the PiHole are more or less all mine.