I dusted off my RPI4 and started tinkering with self-hosting things and it’s sparked a fire. Suddenly I have 7 docker containers running and I need more RAM, more space and I want something reliable with room to grow. I like small form factors but it doesn’t need to be RPI small. Any recs for your favorite hardware under $500?

  • SteelCorrelation@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Definitely a NUC or similar mini PC from the likes of Geekom, Beelink, or Minisforum. My whole homelab was mini PCs until I consolidated to a NUC 12 Pro as I build up my rack. Slap Proxmox on the machine, build some VMs and LXCs, and have at it.

    • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Or HP/Dell units second hand. Tons of companies ditch those computers after two o three years and they’re still perfectly good for self hosting with Linux. We can also find really good deals on Intel 9th gen machines for around 35% of the price of all those you suggested brand new.

  • zikk_transport2@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Intel NUC. Myself I prefer Proxmox as the first layer (so I can do stuff remotelly), and Alpine Linux VM as a second layer.

    This been rock stable for me for the past 1 year or so.

  • OrangeCorvus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I have a couple of Intel NUCs and they are great, one is the first generation NUC with the Celeron and runs Home Assistant without problems.

    At the moment I am eyeing the new N100 CPUs they are pretty powerful compared to the previous generation. Asrock and Asus are bringing out motherboards with the CPU soldered and they are also fanless. The Asrock is nicer because you don’t need a real PSU for it and it has an extra SATA port. They are not yet available.

    https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N100DC-ITX/index.asp

    https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-n100i-d-d4/

    Planning on making an unRaid miniPC

    • BetterNotBigger@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      There are so many brands of these NUCs on Amazon it’s dizzying, it’s hard to know what’s reliable or just cobbled-together hardware. Should I just stick to the big names like ASUS or are there some diamonds in the rough?

      • OrangeCorvus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Personally, I would stick with name brands in case something goes wrong. Asus is ok or you can get directly with Intel, they are the original creators. Before deciding to wait for a N100 motherboard I was looking at getting the Intel NUC13ANHi3 or the i5 version.

  • mazkarth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I use a Dell Micro with Ubuntu for docker containers mounted to a wall with a Synology NAS 4 bay for storage. I used to have a small form factor with a 12bay SAS array attached but the power consumption was ridiculous.

  • rylo@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    You can get some decent enterprise hardware for fairly cheap on places like amazon. I got a dell R710 for around $800 a couple of years back. The equipment tends to be a little scuffed up and older in terms of hardware, but they still offer plently of performance IMO. The one I have has a 6 drive RAID with 1.5TB disks, dual 6-core processors, and 128GB of ram. Only downside I would say is they tend to use quite a bit of power (around 207W from what I’ve measured).

  • Justin@lemmy.loutsenhizer.comEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I’d recommend taking a look at used small form factor PCs on eBay. I’ve been using one for a couple years now that came with an i7-8700 16GB of ram and an nvme SSD for about $300. Running 30+ docker containers without any issues (most are lightweight to be fair)

    The only drawback to small form factor is that you have limited expansion opportunity with the unit itself. In my case I use an external NAS for storage of larger files.

    ServeTheHome has a bunch of videos on YouTube about these small form factor computers.

  • hydrian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    If you don’t need much storage internally, I like lots of a Celeron based industrial SSF from qotom. For rack mounts, i like used Xeon-D U1-2 servers.

    If I need bigger processing power for home, I like Ryzen (preferably 3000 or newer) processors in some of few ryzen entry-level server boards. They can support ECC RAM if needed.

  • eosph@lemmy.remotelab.ukEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    At the moment hardware is just expensive. I ended up with a NUC with 32gb of ram in order to future proof myself while I wait for hardware to become cheaper. Other than another stick of ram I can’t see me needing to update any time soon.