I use my desktop PC for Jellyfin and torrenting, but I’m looking for something that I can keep on 24/7 that draws less power and run other self-hosted services on Linux. I would like to have at least 2x 14 TB 3.5" hard drives in or attached to it with the possibility of expanding in the future.
From my research, these seem to be some good options:
- Mini PC like this Beelink S12 Pro + USB hard drive enclosure. The price seems reasonable for the specs and low power consumption. Not sure if USB will limit transfer speeds.
- ODROID HC-4 or similar SBCs. I feel like these have much lower performance for not much price savings, and it’s harder to get software running up because of ARM. But it seems like they don’t use too much power.
- Used enterprise PCs/servers. I know they can be found cheap used, but I’m a little lost at comparing the performance and power draw to other options.
- DIY build. I’m interested in getting a Mini-ITX case like this Jonsbo N2 and getting parts for it, but it seems like it will be the most expensive option. It does seem like the most modular and upgradable.
- Classic NAS products like Synology. It seems like these are falling out of favor because they are pretty under powered for the price.
What does selfhosted think about these options, and what would you recommend?
Another option: Used ThinClients.
I run Proxmox with HomeAssistant, Jellyfin, and some other services on a refurbished Futro-S740, it has a J4105 CPU and 8GB RAM (not officially supported, but 16GB is reported to work) and I use 2 m2 SSDs (required an adapter from AliExpress) for storage.
It could also support 2 proper SATA drives with adapters (power issues might start if you use 3 or more HDDs, plus connection issues), but that always depends on the ThinClient in question.
A good bit more powerful than a PI4, but can be found cheaper with roughly the same idle power draw.
Source: CPU-Monkey
I just got into selfhosting with a used thin client (Dell Wyse 3040), only $30 on eBay. I don’t know what I’m doing at all and it’s still working out great for me so far, so I think that’s a good enough endorsement.
I assume it’s a x86 CPU, being an intel processor? How does it manage to be as energy efficient as an ARM CPU? Or maybe it’s only when it’s idle?
Modern Intel CPUs are actually very efficient. And PI’s are not very efficient, just low-powered ;)
Interesting. I’ve been using ARM cores for low energy for so long that I haven’t bother to look if things were changing. :) How does it perform on the heat dissipation front? Because if it requires a fan, this should be included in the energy consumed.
I think ARM is still more efficient. It’s specifically the PIs (or it’s chips) that’s not that efficient by my understanding. AFAIK Intel also is not as close for power draw under load.
The S740 is actually passively cooled, and it sits in my cupboard together with a pi4 backup server, router and modem ;) The S740 became very popular with German selfhosters (used prices actually went from 40€ to 80€ for just the base model because of high demand :D), so there’s a page with power measurements, it’s in German, but pretty self explanatory for the most parts.
Thanks for the link!
Because Pi’s chip is basically GPU with additional ARM processors, while for server use you need only CPU
Nope, the J4105 (which is not a server CPU, server ones are powerful, not power saving) has an iGPU that’s again way more powerful than the PI’s.
Yes, but it uses less part of space and power compared to Pi. On BCM chips ARM core relatively weak compared to VideoCore there.