Pretty much what the title says, I was wondering, since I want to invest on self hosting applications and my raspberry pi 3 b+ can barely function. I don’t have enormous expectations, just docker containers, nextcloud, pihosted, jellyfin… Any further suggestions (regarding the hardware) will be much appreciated.
Intel NUCs are known for that purpose, a lot of plex builds are based on the iGPU
+1 to this
Some models also have programmable LEDs in the front that you can use to display the status of the system or app/service
I hit the limit of my Raspberry Pi 4. It would periodically crash itself by overheating (Heatsink was hot to the touch) I now use a NUC. It runs excellently, and handles my home automation setup fine. Unless I start doing something extreme, I can see myself overloading it.
One of the less mentioned things with self hosting is running costs. A Pi is extremely cheap to run. A NUC is a bit more, but still well below a full blown PC. Servers can actually pull a significant load, even when idle.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers Plex Brand of media server package SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage nginx Popular HTTP server
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
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Good bot
Very similar, but usually dramatically cheaper… Look into the Lenovo Tiny line of PCs, you can get a used model with a surprising amount of power for a lot less than you’d see in a comparable NUC and in my experience, they’re usually hardier machines.
If you’re buying and want it cheap this is 100% the way to go. I got an M900 to go with my NUC and it only cost $60 for one with an i7 vs $200 for a similar NUC
@[email protected] In general I think old, small computer laptops are going to be a better long-term solution for self-hosting than a raspberry pi.
Sure, it is hard to compete in terms of size, but you will soon find yourself looking for bigger specs anyways
I think you may have responded to the wrong person.
The Lenovo tiny line isn’t related to Raspberry Pi/etc and I didn’t mention a Raspberry Pi. I have a server running on an M900 tiny with an i7-6700 in it and 32gb of RAM. That is the high spec config from Lenovo, but there are room for upgrades if you were willing to buy parts separately, however the value proposition starts to fall apart rapidly when buying non-standard parts and compatibility is kind of a coin flip. Even the lowest spec ones should almost always outpace a Pi though (usually by a healthy amount) while still being very small compared to a typical computer. Solid chance the tiny will also be cheaper than a Pi. Compared to laptops, they’ll usually also easily outpace those too in terms of performance in terms of money spent, but that’s obviously a lot more variable.
You may get more bang for your buck by getting a comparable mini PC rather than a NUC. Some ThinkCentre Tiny machines are listed on eBay for less than $100 USD. HP and other manufacturers sell their own versions as well.
ThinkCentre Tiny machine
Or dell optiplex for a bargain.
Got myself a Dell 8gen 8GB 256GB SSD for 40€… Got a 6 core (8500?, It came with a “Pentium Gold” bi core) for 60€ and a 4TB HD for 70€… For example. I think it will handle a lot before needing an upgrade. It’s a smallish tower though, but sff versions exist too.
It’s as crazy how cheap those PCs are and how expensive Raspberries has become :-/
I agree, but what about power usage?
Yeah sure, it’s not the same.
It’s as crazy how cheap those PCs are and how expensive Raspberries has become :-/
On the former, it’s because these are mostly models sold en masse after company upgrades. Often marked as “refurbished” although I suspect it’s just basic checks. Regarding the Pi, seems to be supply issues; they should at least start being sold at retail price again this year from what I hear, not that it’s necessarily worth it.
Yes, the only thing being that most NUCs can only have one drive (or one m.2 and one 2.5" sata drive) so you can’t do anything like drive mirroring so if you lose a drive you’re in trouble.
Ideally youwould be storing those files on a NAS anyways.
Totally. My setup is on a NUC8i5BEH.
Handles 4K Plex like a dream, all the *arrs, multiple website services. I have about 50 or so containers and it doesn’t get close to full CPU usage.
A nuc is far more better than a Raspberry Pi. A Pi sure can do some things, but once you start, you will want more 🌞
They provide the best balance for efficiency. Not too powerful enough to be a workhorse and not to weak to run multiple simple applications/services. NUCs are great in that they come with hardware video acceleration tech that’s highly optimized for media transcoding.
i3 are good enough for the things I wrote or should I got for i5/i7?
Celeron would handle that (see my other reply)
I am running almost everything in my home on a NUC (Celeron J3455 1.5GHz with 8GB RAM) and it doesn’t break a sweat.
Running invidious, nextcloud, kavita, airsonic, n8n, audiobookshelf, freshrss, calibre-web, vaultwarden, nginx proxy manager