I’m going to run generic server tasks (webhosting, Nextcloud, Home Assistant) but also use it as a torrent client, NAS and media center. It will sit close to the dumb TV and give it IPTV and file playback capabilities. I haven’t decided between a SBC or mini PC yet.
My requirements are:
- low idle power consumption (electricity is expensive here, I’m aiming for 5 W with the HDD spun down, able to idle without spinning the fan) so preferrably ARM
- reliability (I’m worried about SD cards in particular, maybe booting from NVMe/mSATA is better)
- connecting my 8TB SATA HDD
- Bluetooth+WiFi+100Mb/s Ethernet
- no dedicated GPU or NPU needed
- 1x FullHD video output (HDMI or even VGA, the TV is ancient)
- GPIO for IR receiver (IPTV should be accessible to tech-illiterate parents)
- budget of 100 € for the whole setup
- available in the Czech Republic (preferring local retailers or used market to Amazon or Aliexpress)
Raspberry Pi 4/5 seems compelling but the HDD needs a separate 12V source and USB adapter, making the setup a little unwieldy, plus people say RPi is overpriced. Mini PCs boot from reliable storage but lack GPIO so they need a USB infraport, and many don’t have SATA or wireless either so that adds more adapters. Or should I repurpose my old laptop, which would run at 10 W and need an adapter for IR but have wireless (and kind of a UPS) built in?
I think that there might be other SBCs (RPi competitors) suited for my use case but I haven’t been able to find a better deal than a used 60 € Raspberry Pi 4B/5 (+10 € fan box + 20 € high-endurance SD card + 2 € microHDMI adapter + I already have the power adapter) from the official site. Given that the 4B and 5 with 4GB RAM cost almost the same, I wonder if the power upgrade is worth it given that the 5’s idle power draw is higher, there is no A/V jack (I can solder though) and I only have the 3A power supply, requiring an extra 20 € to use its full CPU power.
I used to run my nas from a raspberry pi with an USB to Sata bridge, but I found that USB cables are as always super unreliable and keep disconnecting and eventually I get filesystem errors, had to format and restore from backup.
I ended up repurposing an old i3 computer as nas. Which worked well for few years until I was scrubbing the harddrives this summer and one of the harddrives died, when I took it off it was super hot. So I learned that having front fans blowing air directly to the hardrives is important so they don’t overheat. I’m not sure if external cases have enough air circulation.
So maybe you could consider the overall reliability of the system and temperature of the harddrive, electricity can be expensive but an 8TB harddrive surely is more. Also you say you want no fan, so that makes things harder, maybe you can use the raspberry pi just as a client and have a big noisy NAS made from some old computer somewhere else in the house? And maybe have it so it wakes up on LAN when it’s being used and powered down when it’s not to safe power?
I’m OK with a fan running when the HDD is spinning. To save power, a SSD can perhaps be used as a cache to minimize HDD usage time during file transfers over LAN or torrent.
Maybe you can use the raspberry pi gpio to control the fan and get drive temperature via smart to control the fan speed.
Most MoBos allow programmatic fan control too, right?
I don’t know, never tried anything like that, I just plug the fans to the 12v voltage rail and leave them full power all the time.