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!
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 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
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 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.
A larger sized used motherboard or even a new cheap one often has more capability if you can deal with something that is larger…
Oh, I can deal with something that’s larger…
-wait, not like that.
Cheeky.
I run a RockPro64 with Arch Arm. No need for a monitor - you just connect over SSH.
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 :/
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.
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
Used micro PC is often the best deal. Companies offload old SFF i5 and lower machines all the time. They’re all over eBay.
Yeah, I was looking earlier, and sort of didn’t know what to even look for, but then everyone here made suggestions of what to look for. I’m all over this!
Idk if you ever wander over to Reddit, but there’s a poster in /r/homelabsales selling 7 Dell mini PC systems right now.
Thanks- I found an old laptop to give things a test run. I’ll do some thin client shopping once I cut my teeth a bit.
Have fun! It’s a great hobby.
Thanks - I’ve put it off for a while, and didn’t realize how easy this all was to set up!
This is the way to Go!
I have a HP Elitedesk 800 G4 Mini which is running everything (besides storage) in my Home Network. You can Look at the Tiny/Mini/Micro section at Serve the Home https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/
I used to be of the erroneous mind set that a server had to be some big honkin’, dim the lights, piece of equipment, but that’s not necessarily true now days with modern architecture. Doesn’t take a lot to get a lot back.
Just look at the processors in the Synology offerings, you didn’t need much to run a bunch of services.
I was thinking about waaaay back in the day, before the popularity of Synology, but you are correct. I think this is the year I will finally rid myself of these boat anchors.
Dude same. Back in the day I was dead set on getting older blades and a couple Dell 710 in a rack and “that’s what a real homelab is.”
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool, but it’s all decommissioned workstations, a white box unRaid server, and micro/mini PCs; there’s not a single traditional server box in place.
Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool
I recently decommissioned one of my Dell T320s, and replaced it with the Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and maxed out to 32 gb RAM. I paid $117 USD for the Optiplex 7020 SFF which came with 8GB RAM, and I maxed it out with three more 8 GB RAM sticks for about $75 USD.
The Dell T320 costs ~$40/month in electrical costs in my local to run. The Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF costs $5-8/month to run. So, less than the duration of this year, I will have recouped my initial $200 investment in the Optiplex 7020 SFF just in power consumption alone, and I’ll have ‘left over’ money if I wanted to get yet another Optiplex 7020 SFF. I have 40+ containers running on the Optiplex 7020 SFF, and it hasn’t broke a sweat yet. Far more quieter than the Dell T320 and less heat funneling into the server room.
I’m going to sell the T320 which is also maxed out at 32 GB RAM, so I’ll have more $$ to replace the other T320. Winner winner chicken dinner.
I love it. The savings are real and can be immense.
I’m shocked with what I’ve been able to do with an old Dell SFF desktop.
Upgraded to 48GB of ram it’s running ESXi hosting a couple Debian VMs, a DietPi VM, 3 Windows VMs, a massive data drive, idles under 20w and peaks at 80w when I’m doing video conversion.
At this point I’m shopping for some old mini PCs to run the VMs as independent servers because their idle power is so low.
Same: https://lemmy.world/post/47654461/24048649
I’m looking for a couple more Optiplex 7020 SFF or similar and just get rid of all the heavy equipment.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers PoE Power over Ethernet RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer
[Thread #327 for this comm, first seen 2nd Jun 2026, 07:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I see a ton of i5-8th gen 2-in-1s with dead batteries, but under 100 on ebay
Also to consider are NUCs. I for one got a Firebat with N100 and 8 or 16 GB of RAM and it was already a few years ago cheaper than a RPi 4.
N100 CPU beats any SBC in every aspect except maybe power? Still very low consumption tho. This will leave you headroom for years of selfhosting, because once you get going, there is no coming back.
Nothing more valuable in privacy terms than keeping your photos off the cloud (immich), then data off the cloud (copyparty, nextcloud,…). It never stops and the n100 will support that no problem.
Awesome idea, thanks! I want something that can spend 99% of the time just hiding behind other consoles, and this would work perfectly for that.
Personally, I shuffle photos from my phone to my laptop and then backup manually, which is not awesome. Having my own cloud-based backups for that would be great. Might even get my partner to go for it, which is the hard sell.
N100/N150 doesn’t use that much more power and going for x64 instead of ARM could be a pretty big benefit too. Depends on what you want of course.
Unless you specifically need ultra low power draw, a minipc is always a better bang for your buck, the cheapest solution is the dusty old laptop sitting on the shelf at the back of your closet…
This was my approach. Broken screen? Who cares! It’ll run headless anyway. Dead battery? Whatever, I’ll be plugged in 24/7.
For a first machine a used Mac mini, especially one that precedes the T2 chip(although that’s not a deal breaker) is probably the best bang for the buck, solid hardware that will get what most people really want from a server unless they want a full on homelab, and they are easy to find cheaply on eBay. Also comes with the advantage of being able to run OSX with fewer hoops if you had a specific use case for that(running blue bubbles in the background or syncing to iCloud… mostly just convenience stuff if you have a leg in that ecosystem could also make a potential slow migration away less irritating)
If you can find a cheap NUC first tell me where because they are great options
Lenovo think centers can be found refurbed for under $100 too and will also be available for a long time because those fuckers were in every bank, hospital/drs office, and all manner of non-tech related offices for years and years.
Or you could be like me and jump two feet in with a used enterprise server, I dunno if I’d recommend this but I do know a lot more than I did when I started and have tons power and capacity to expand. And I’ve gotten more than enough use out of them to justify the $300ish I paid for my Poweredges plus electric bills. But do your research it took me a year to find documents on how to bypass the idrac drive virtualization bullshit and my power draw significantly dropped afterwards
