Hi all,
I want to spin up a small home server. Nothing crazy, maybe 4 or 8GB ram at most. 1 Docker instance running a few privacy frontends (Invidious, Redlib, Xcancel, SearxNG, etc.) and split tunneling VPN connections for each one.
Obviously, a Raspberry Pi 4 or higher is the internet’s favorite choice, but I don’t need wireless connectivity, I just need a single HDMI and 2 USB ports to get everything set up, one ethernet port, and a dream in my heart.
Has anyone use alternatives like Le Potato or Orange Pi? I’m curious what their community support is like, and if there’s a FOSS-friendly standard.
Thanks!
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Thanks for this, this sounds like where I’m headed. I just hadn’t even considered thin clients/mini PCs, and it sounds like a lot of people are using Lenovos for this exact thing. I’m not at the point yet of doing something big, just small home lab, but I would like to get to the point of hosting immich for the family, and maybe having an LLM or SD in there at some point. But by then I’m hoping the RAMpocalypse is easing up. For now, it’s just privacy front ends until I know what I’m doing.
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Get an old Android phone, possibly with a dead screen (bootloader must be unlocked). Flash PostmarketOS on it, or (if not supported) Termux. Its idle usage (with WiFi on, screen off) may be considerably less than 1w. It’ll have considerable amounts of CPU cores and RAM, more than a cheap VPS.
I’ve used a RockPro64 and a Rock Pi 4 for that purpose before. They do it quite well.
The main reason people recommend Raspberry Pi’s when talking SBCs is the software support (OS choices) and comminity size.
No one in the SBC industry beats Raspberry Pi at those things, and they can be quite important ones.
If you dont need an sbc or something arm based mini pcs/thin clients/laptops work well. I run redlib, yamtrack and a monero node on hp t630 w/ 16GB ram (bought before the rampocalypse for ~ $60) and a torrent seedbox/streaming nas on wyse 3040 (~$10). Here’s a great website about thin clients https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml
I have a 16GB ram HP t630 running vaultwarden (bought for £50) and some other stuff and a HP ProDesk 400 G5 16GB ram (bought for £100) running jellyfin & immich. They’re great. I also have a Wyse 3040 that I intend to run as pihole, just haven’t got round to it yet.
Thanks - I think a NUC/thin client will be how I end up going. I just didn’t even think about them in terms of meeting the criteria of “small thing I can leave running and not care about.” I think I still have an old laptop my partner used to use that would work, which might be my tester.
I was looking at bee-link a while back, shame prices have gone through the roof on everything though.
Yeah I grabbed a… Mele quieter or something back in November to replace the noisy greenpower thing I’d had for about 2 years and I got a bit more back than what I spent on it, looking at the mele tiny pc today and it’s doubled in price since I got it. So far it’s been nice though, passive cooling unlike the noisy fan on the other one.
I run a RockPro64 with Arch Arm. No need for a monitor - you just connect over SSH.
I went rpi4>n100> a couple n100s and that pi> the dxp4800, I think it’s a pentium, and those n100s. I think I’m ok here, I have networking, compute + local backup, and storage all in their own box.
Have a look at DietPi. That is a single-board-computer optimized Linux distribution that, in contradiction to what the name might suggest, runs on (almost) all of the SBC’s out there. It has stripped away all the things you don’t need and only installs and loads what is needed to run the software you choose, resulting in a very lightweight but powerful operating system for these kinds of devices. It has its own software catalog with a broad selection of optimized software, but you can of course install anything you want. Ive been running this on a Raxda Rock4 without any problems, and would definitely suggest this even on a Raspberry over the regular Pi image.
Plus one for Dietpi here. It really simplified installing all my services on a Pi Zero, and it’s available for most chinese SMB brands and x86 too. If I can find an used thin client for 60 euros with low shipping costs I’ll definitely use Dietpi.
Will do, thanks!
radxa has very good sbc’s at the most economical pricing and great software support. only thing is they get sold out pretty quickly. something like X4 or rock 5B will be best for your needs. dragon q6a is also extremely efficient but they get sold out almost immediately after stock comes.
they sell through https://arace.tech/ so subscribe to them if for back in stock alerts
I’ve owned a few devices like Orange Pi but really more as a curiosity that I never did much with. I have, however, seen discussions suggesting that when you move away from the RasPi ecosystem, support for various tooling gets more complicated because you’re in a much smaller pool of hardware and this makes them more effort to setup. I don’t know the validity of that, but it sounded plausible to me.
Just get a Pi. Just because you don’t need wifi doesn’t mean it won’t potentially be useful down the road.
Lenovo thinkcentre tinys
Dell 3060 Micro.
Yet another good option. Just looked them up on Amazon. Going for around $130 USD.
I found a bunch of ddr4 and ssds in scrap so I ordered some bare ones to make a server. Two 3060’s and two 3070’s. With the 6 core chips.
Two 3060’s and two 3070’s. With the 6 core chips.
Nice! I generally stay at the upper end of the models which use DDR3. Yes, it’s not as snappy as DDR4, but the prices are much better.
I scored like 60+ sticks of 16gig DDR 4
As others mentioned used SFF PCs, here’s my recommendation based on my own experience.
I bought several used Dell Wyse 5070. The 5070 was announced in May 2018 and used as thin client.
They’re tiny, silent (no fan) and you can fit a NVMe SSD via adapter (PCIe A/E key -> M key) in the WiFi card slot next to a SATA SSD. I picked the ones with Intel Celeron J4105 (Quad Core) with 1.5GHz, up to 2.5GHz burst and put 32 GB RAM in one of them (that was before prices went nuts).
Beware, only if you pick the right dual ranked RAM modules (e.g. Patriot PSD416G26662S), you can have a max. of 2x16 GB. To start your journey, 4 or 8 GB might just be enough and don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Now I have a PVE (Proxmox Virtual Environment) running with several virtual servers and lxc, one 5070 hosts a PBS (Proxmox Backup Server) and both devices are far from their limit. In case of hardware failure I have spare 5070s.
Each 5070 cost around $65 and runs at around 8 watts at average. Dunno about current prices though.It fits my needs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it fits your needs as well?8 watts… That’s RPi territory but with lots more actual horsepower when needed, in a useful package.
I love the concept of the Pi, but this stuff is so hard to compete with.
If you don’t mind some low specs, and are focused on lowest price, a potato pi runs for about $30 IIRC, and is plenty to do small stuff like an openvpn server.
I’m using soquartz compute modules on soquartz blades, because of the nvme slot and PoE. Just one cable for each is so nice in a tiny rack. They are running dietpi and docker swarm with dokploy.
I generally recommend the pine64 stuff, but shipping and tax might be high depending on where you live :/
Used Lenovo mini PCs are nice (m720q for example)
Or for example the Futro S740 if you do not need the power of the m720q
