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.
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
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.
