Hello , dear lemmy users , I am starting to really like self-host because they are really fast and mostly i use open source stuff (like lemmy /photon etc) which were sometimes slow but after self hosting it now on the pc i am on using , i really like it
Now , I would like to host some stuff like jellyfin , navindrome , photon , adgaurd home and just leave it running on a device in maybe near future (i can convince my brother to pay for it , after he gets his job maybe)
TLDR : I wanted to ask What’s your favourite alternative to raspberry pi for simple self hosting or maybe possible near home automation
Edit: thank you all for helping me , I am starting to believe that i should look into using dell wyse or the likes which are meant to be used for hosting or a old laptop (since i dont own a laptop anyway , i just own a pc ) and since i run linux anyways , i am thinking of owning a laptop dual booting it with alpine (that has docker) and a simple minimalist os like hyprland on it just in case i need to travel with it (which to me seems very unlikely , I dont travel much so…) I am confused about it
Edit 2 : I am very new to self hosting so currently i would run stuff on my pc only (using portainer) , However when needed to buy , i am thinking of buying the cheapest thin client maybe a nuc or dell wyse
I am already trying searxng , shiori(bookmark manager) , portainer,freshrss , photon , froodle-s pdf tool which i have all closed except portainer currently I am also thinking of shifting to podman as well but cant find a good gui for it like portainer , (portainer really just blew my mind with its templates)
Jellyfin recommends not using SBCs. I was in the same boat as you a month ago. Started on an RPi. Works fine for raw (no transcoding). Poor performance if you do any scrubbing or try to watch something while new content is processing. Got a mini PC. It was better but its basically a laptop chipset, so still not the best experience. Had other things I wanted to do on my self-hosted setup so decided to just bite the bullet and make a proper build: 12th gen i5, Intel Arc GPU, 4+8 SATA ports with PCI card, 3xNVME, 10xHDD/SSD case. Can’t speak to the performance yet. Learning Ansible to automate managing it including installing the OS.
I would stay away from NAS systems like QNAP or Synology. They tend to not be much better than a SBC.
For the budget constraints I would just echo getting the cheapest desktop-class PC you can get your hands on in a suitable form factor.
While hardware acceleration is supported on Raspberry Pi hardware, it is recommended that Jellyfin NOT be hosted on Raspberry Pis or other SBCs. Many hardware acceleration features are not supported and will fallback to software. In addition, they are generally too slow to provide a good experience when transcoding is needed. Please consider getting a more powerful system to host Jellyfin.
I would stay away from NAS systems like QNAP or Synology. They tend to not be much better than a SBC.
Some NAS systems have regular Intel x86 CPUs, and some have Ryzen CPUs with built in graphics. You need to check the specs carefully though.
I migrated on to a NUC. They seem to have the right mix of performance and power efficiency, for me. The i3 processor also means you’re not dealing with the extra complexity of Arm64.
Unfortunately Intel have discontinued the NUC line, so they won’t be available in the future and we’ll have to get one of the copycats instead.
Intel ended up changing their mind and sold the product line to Asus, who will continue producing NUCs!
Oh I didn’t know that. That’s great!!
Do you mean NUC?
Yes I did. Autocorrect decided to “help”. Apparently the edit I made hasn’t propagated through.
The RK3566 and RK3588 alternatives are pretty good, and there are a bunch of them from different companies.
I have a 3566 myself as a compatible alternative to a CM4, and it does its job just fine.
I got a mini pc (e.g. a NUC). I did this after the price for rasps went sky high. Check out used NUCs, you can get a lot of power for the price.
I just picked up one of these since I had the change: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C1X191NR
Plus a 4TB samsung external drive. Should be awesome, and fits anywhere in my house.
Seconded that used minis ought to be quite reasonable and fast if this seems like too much. (Although you can also get a similar new one for half this, if you cut down on disk and ram.)
The one advantage of using megacorp “1-liter” business PCs from Dell/HP/Lenovo over brands like Minisforum is that parts commonality / availability is likely to be a lot better for the big brand boxes.
This will make little or no difference to a lot of people of course :) in my case it’s a big factor because I’m trying to do everything on a shoestring budget and I want the hardware to be physically small but still as repairable/upgradable as possible, and to last as long as possible. So I ended up going with used 1L PCs even though you get a bit less CPU capability per dollar spent, as right now these PCs are the smallest platform that I know of that tends to be upgradable (no soldered RAM etc) and have lots of parts available.
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That’s actually great for the price, i7 12, 32Gb ram, 1Tb M2, etc? Not bad at all! Would even be a great little gaming setup
I have a nuc from 2015-2018 and its very bad at heat management. Like during summertime if the AC is not on its going to reboot itself after a while when using it (it can reach 35C° where it is stored) I now have a optiplex micro which is much better but I still want to use the NUC for something else
This is the way I went, I got the tiny form factor versions of a Lenovo and Dell business desktops for about 100 bucks each. If you get lucky you can find real good deals on these things most will take a 2.5" drive as well as a m.2 drive, and they’ll fit upwards of 32 or 64gb of ram depending on the device.
I use Hardkernel products for my kid’s PCs, as pihole, etc. Their products are sold under the Odroid brand. I have the Odroid C1 and C4 line of SBCs and they work as expected. The C1 used to be my mediaplayer, now it runs a game server and pihole. A little older, but it still has use.
I use their toaster NAS. The HC4 I think. Not the best multimedia server but it’s a serviceable file server.
I’ve been using an XU4 for a number of years. Not used it as a server but it works great as a client. I’m sure it would with excellent as a server. I’ve had Ubuntu, tried Android, and currently running Batocera for gaming.
I like that it has an SD slot like a Pi but also a storage module which plugs onto the board which is much faster. I can boot from one or the other by flicking a switch on the board.
Only draw back is that it doesn’t have onboard WiFi or Bluetooth and limited USB ports. I had to use a powered USB hub then find a PSU with a step down inverter to power it all, making it bigger than a small board. I’d still highly recommend it though.
I’m a big fan of dell wyse machines. Loads on ebay, ex business machines. X86 so decent support, decent dell power supply, on / off button / in cases and low power.
I have wyse 3040 for pihole cost 39.99
I have wyse 5070 with windows 10 for plex and running a Ubuntu 22 server in virtual box, cost 59.99
Thanks for the suggestion (I am looking forward to other comments as well) Well , I like x86 in general but not for self-hosting maybe? i have heard that they are bulky and take a lot of energy
When people say x86 is not power efficient, it usually means it’s not very efficient for battery powered devices, or is kind of wasteful in situations like in data centers where they’re running thousands of machines. For home use, with a machine that’s gonna probably end up idling most of the time, my best guess is it would cost you a couple tens of dollars a year to run vs a slightly smaller amount.
Personally, just so I don’t have to deal with software compatibility on different architectures, I’ll gladly pay that small difference in power usage, but this will of course vary depending on what you’re looking to run on there.
You can expect a thin client to use about 10 watts idle (but more under load), which adds up to about 100 kWh per year. Some models use even less.
Even less. My thin client draws 5W in idle.
https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/3040/ https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/5070/
Both mine are there and tested for power use.
Running 24/7 for a good 6 months. Certainly not noticed any difference to power cost.
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I’ve recently been looking into ESP32 programming - they’re microcontrollers with onboard Bluetooth and WiFi, that are smaller yet more powerful than Arduinos. Randomnerdtutorials gets recommended a lot elsewhere; I believe I saw one tutorial for running a web server on an ESP32.
If you need a full OS and/or more resources, I’m not sure raspberry pi can be beaten (at least, that’s how the market was years ago when I was looking)
Running a webserver is not the same as hosting a service. For the software examples requested by OP, an ESP32 is useless
Ah must’ve skimmed over that part, my bad. The home automation part jumped out to me
It’s Alright but for me microcontrollers like the one you told me are out of way since i need to run most and foremost docker for things like jellyfin /adgaurd home etc.
You alluded to this already but ESP32 et al is really awesome but they (and arduino) are microcontrollers, not mini pcs like a raspi which have very different purposes.
You CAN run a webserver on a microcontroller but you’re essentially writing a program to do so. On a raspi you’re installing a full OS and then installing apps (nginx, Apache, jellyfin etc).
Conversely raspi has GPIO which can be used to easily interface with electronics just like the ESP32 but now you’re stuck maintaining a whole os to make your LED blink.
Not as cheap as the wyse, but probably way more powerful.
Framework sells a case to turn their mainboard into an SFF pc.
https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case-and-mainboard-kit
Second hand thin clients (like the dell wyse already mentioned) are often cheap and easy to use https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/
Compact business desktops like others have mentioned are great. Depending on your needs, I also like using older or used laptops. They’re still power efficient if you get a recent processor model, people sell them for fairly cheap used, and sometimes having an attached keyboard and display is more convenient than having to hook up a crash cart
Are they cheap though? Maybe in the grand scheme of things.
Like $200 for one Thinkpad versus five raspberry pis.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Raspberry Pi for $40, the demand still has prices sky-high
Yep, looks like we have. You linked the highest tier RPi available from CanaKit and it’s in stock and still being sold at the same price it was when it released in
20192020, $75 (I forgot the 8GB model released a year later).When they are in stock, they are selling at normal retail prices again. The stock is still only lasting for hours to days unfortunately.
Plus it’s got a built-in UPS
It’ll become a spicy UPS if you leave the power plugged in all the time though.
Why?
Laptop batteries are not designed to be at 100% charge for a long period of time. Same as phone batteries. They’ll expand and become a fire hazard. Batteries that have expanded look a bit like a pillow so they’re commonly referred to as “spicy pillows”.
Are you sure this is true with nowadays batteries too? My laptop is almost always connected to the power supply, is about 5 years old and the battery still seams to be in a good shape.
Take it off the charger and see if you get the claimed battery life. Maybe you will, or maybe your 3+ hours of battery time runs out in less than one.
It doesn’t last as much as it did when it was new (about 5/6 hours), and that’s expected, but it still last about 3/4 hours and it seems pretty decent to me!
Rock 64 or zimaboard are some other alternatives. Iirc they’re around the same price range though.
I’m current using a refurbished business Lenovo mini PC. I’ve seen a similar model with i7 and 16GB of RAM for about $170 on Amazon. There are also mini PC’s using NXXX model Intel CPU’s with a TDP of 10w, but I don’t think you can upgrade parts on those.
That’s what I use for my low intensity projects. I didn’t realize the i7 ones were that cheap now, maybe I should grab another.
I7 doesn’t mean much without knowing the CPU generation. A 4th Gen i7 is dirt cheap but is only 4c/8t and a power hog. Meanwhile a much newer i3 could be more capable at 1/3 the power.
Check eBay and you’ll get a good look at pricing, Amazon sellers will take you for a ride here.
This. My old 2nd gen i5-750 doesn’t hold a candle vs. a modern i3.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone go older than 6th Gen Intel CPUs these days. They’re already 6+ years old, anything before that doesn’t usually support x86-64-v3 and the perf/watt just isn’t worthwhile. Your total cost of ownership on, say, a Haswell i7 is going to be significantly higher than a Skylake machine even over the first year once you account for energy costs.
That doesn’t even touch on iGPU performance or hardware codec support, you really want to go as new as possible if you’re looking for media playback or transcoding - the energy cost on decoding alone without HW support is bananas.
Preferably you’d use Intel 8th gen (when the i3s stepped to 4c/8t and the i5/i7s went to 6c/12t) but I don’t know how competitive pricing is on those these days. I’d try to stick with Zen2 on the AMD side if possible, that’s about when their perf/watt really started to get good - I do have a soft spot for Zen1 embedded though, you can get great prices on v1756b boxes on eBay now (the HP T740) and those make nice virtualized 10Gb router platforms.
Preferably you’d use Intel 8th gen (when the i3s stepped to 4c/8t and the i5/i7s went to 6c/12t) but I don’t know how competitive pricing is on those these days.
I bought a small form factor PC on eBay (HP ProDesk 600 G5) with a Core i5-9500, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD for $199 around a year ago. I upgraded it to 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe. Made a great home server with a bunch of stuff running on it. I actually want to sell it soon since I built a new server/NAS system.
Used “1-liter” business PCs which come with a modest amount of RAM+storage (assuming you’re likely to replace/upgrade after buying anyway) and an 8th gen Intel CPU should run between ehhh like $125 to $250 depending on which model CPU, how much RAM etc. Totally worth it IMO, I use one with an i5-8500T as a Proxmox host for my web services and so far I’m quite happy with it. Snagged a deal on it a couple months ago, $110, shipped with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD which I immediately replaced.
I’ve used lots of different boards. The Radxa Rock 3c is cheap and has decent performance, but the official OS support is a bit old. The Libre Computer boards are also good and have Armbian support. Libre Computer is releasing a couple more this year too. BananaPi has good options that aren’t expensive, like the BananaPi M5. Friendly Elec has some boards like the NanoPi R2C and R5C that aren’t pricey and have Armbian support. Any one of these boards are fine for a small home lab. Just boot Armbian, install Docker, and add your containers.
Go on eBay and look for “tiny” or USFF boxes. Dell, HP, and Lenovo make various models of 1L units that are commonly available. Just make sure to do some research on what the specific hardware capabilities are to make sure they satisfy your needs.
Source: my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
Will second this idea. I’ve had good luck running low-use Samba servers on a Lenovo tiny model.
Thin clients are also solidly good as container hosts. I’ve used HP T630s and Wyse 5070s in place of RPis during the great pi shortage with good results. You know something is fucked when you can spend less money on a J5005 with 8gb RAM than you do on a Pi 4.
I’ve had good luck running more intensive loads on more recent models of these systems, say 3 to 5 gens old … multiple desktop OSes running concurrently on Proxmox, etc. The “1 liter” class of PCs is really quite capable these days!
Yeah Lenovo tinies ares great I have a bunch of m910q’s I use for everything
my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
Can you get 10Gbps NAT throughput through it? That’s the main reason I’m not running my own pfSense/opnSense router.
I’ve currently got a TP-Link ER8411 which was affordable ($350) and can reach 10Gbps, but it doesn’t have an IPv6 firewall (what???) so I can’t actually enable IPv6.
So the big gain you’ll likely see is bang/capability for the money. If you’re careful and wait for a deal, can usually find 1L boxes for like $50-75. Get a cheap m2 ssd (and back up your confs regularly if you’re not running raid z2). The nic is going to be anywhere from about 30-70, but you’ll need to do your research on exactly what capabilities the thing you’re buying has (for example: I had a false start initially, because the RJ45 10G nic I found couldn’t negotiate at 2.5G (what I’m running now), and it’s actually pretty hard to find a 2.5G enterprise nic. Make sure the nic is intel, too - none of that Realtek crap, which is less performant and often has stupid driver crap you have to deal with under Linux and BSD (pfSense). You may want to spend a few extra bucks and get the Lenovo external pcie mount plate/bracket for aesthetics/“don’t stick your fingies in here”, and you will need an adapter for Lenovo’s proprietary PCIe-but-not-a-standard-PCIe-port thing.
If you’re careful and wait for a deal, can usually find 1L boxes for like $50-75
I’ve actually got a spare HP ProDesk SFF PC with an Intel Core i5-9500. Would that CPU be sufficient?
Make sure the nic is intel, too - none of that Realtek crap
I’ve also got a spare 10Gbps Trendnet NIC which uses an Aquantia AQC107 chip. Are Aquantia OK for this purpose?
Yeah, though the advantage of the T sku CPUs is that they have ultra low tdp. Great for 24/7 boxes.
The T version is usually the same price as the non-T version, and on a good motherboard you can modify the power limits in the BIOS to make a non-T CPU perform similarly to the T version.
my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny
With which CPU? How much does it consumes?
i5 8500T. I don’t recall exactly what the power draw is, but iirc it’s in the 20-30w range - admittedly a bit high, but that’s likely due to the old LSI nic in there which is technically an enterprise-grade card, and not terribly power efficient. Nonetheless, works great, full 10G speed, no thermal issues in the last few months I’ve been running it (in the summer, so I should be totally fine in the winter).
