cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/23170671
I need to keep power usage in mind and don’t want to spend more than 500€ on hardware. Power is roughly 0.35ct/kwh in Germany
I like the small square machines (former NUC). But I don’t have any overview which ones are worth the price.
For data storage I am thinking about a NAS, but it would need at least two HDDs for redundancy, otherwise it’s not better than an external HDD that I have. Also it does have its own power draw, which isn’t insignificant (10w->~300€/10years).
Capabilities of the machine don’t matter too much, I will see what I can do with the hardware I get.
Is there a sweet spot, a device that everyone buys or cheapest brand or best package or whatever?
I have a terra master f4-425 plus. 3 NVME slots and 4 HDD slots. N150 CPU 16GB memory out the box
https://www.terra-master.com/products/f4-425-plus
F2-425 Plus has 2 HDD slots. 8GB memory out the box
https://www.terra-master.com/products/f2-425-plus
You could also go for the cheaper options like the non plus versions. Run whatever OS on it. I’m satisfied with the companies TOS
How much storage would your NAS need? What apps are you running? What’s this all for?
NVME/SSSD is better in every way than HDD (speed, noise, heat and power) but obviously more expensive, especially for larger capacities. Decide whether you can do it with that or need hdd’s, and that then informs what hardware supports either 2x nvme (or 3x if you want separate for OS) or 2x sata.
Don’t get hung up on power costs btw. 500E is a lot of power and you’ll likely never regain that. Rpi is what, 5watts? Laptop somewhere around 5-50? HDDs around 5w average, nvme’s ~1w. Any equivalent hardware or faster is going to use similar power, it’s not like you’re replacing a DL360.
But if you want to replace anyway and NAS/media is your main thing, then perhaps buy a NAS and run docker apps on that. uGreen make some nice ones.
sorry I meant I don’t want to spend more than 500€ on hardware. So I guess power usage should be like a tenth of that.
A few years ago I bought some used Lenovo Xeons on eBay. Xeon E-2276G, 2224G, 2174G.
The 2224G pulls 15 watts streaming 4k videos with Plex. They are available for under $500.
For desktop, any AMD mini PC like a Beelink will work well and many are under $500.
There are some nice NAS focussed mimi-itx boards with integrated CPU and cooling (usually Intel N150 or similar) that fit well into small media PC cases.
That is a bit bigger than a NUC, but you can fit hard drives easily and these mainboards usually have a lot of extension ports and multiple on board m2 slots for NVMe discs.
Where do I find them though?
Alibaba and the like, although I think there are also resellers on Amazon etc.
Really? I don’t know if I feel comfortable spending that much money on aliexpress. Aren’t there EU stores that stock this stuff? And reputable brands?
ASrock has a few similar mini-itx boards with passive cooled CPUs soldered on, but they are not nearly as fully featured as what some of the Chinese brands sell.
