I use my desktop PC for Jellyfin and torrenting, but I’m looking for something that I can keep on 24/7 that draws less power and run other self-hosted services on Linux. I would like to have at least 2x 14 TB 3.5" hard drives in or attached to it with the possibility of expanding in the future.
From my research, these seem to be some good options:
- Mini PC like this Beelink S12 Pro + USB hard drive enclosure. The price seems reasonable for the specs and low power consumption. Not sure if USB will limit transfer speeds.
- ODROID HC-4 or similar SBCs. I feel like these have much lower performance for not much price savings, and it’s harder to get software running up because of ARM. But it seems like they don’t use too much power.
- Used enterprise PCs/servers. I know they can be found cheap used, but I’m a little lost at comparing the performance and power draw to other options.
- DIY build. I’m interested in getting a Mini-ITX case like this Jonsbo N2 and getting parts for it, but it seems like it will be the most expensive option. It does seem like the most modular and upgradable.
- Classic NAS products like Synology. It seems like these are falling out of favor because they are pretty under powered for the price.
What does selfhosted think about these options, and what would you recommend?
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I suggest you to look at SBCs:
- RockPro64
- Quartz64
- And many others
I don’t find running them problematic, but this is maybe because I have crossdev on gentoo.
Here’s how to install distro on sdcard for SBC:
- Partition sdcard
- Make devicetree file
- For most SBCs dts files are already made
- Configure and install bootloader(e.g. u-boot)
- Unpack base system to sdcard
- Configure, compile kernel and then copy to boot partition(can be shared with system, bootloader must support FS)
My home server is a RockPro64. I didn’t specifically buy it for that purpose but since I had it lying around I figured I might as well use it.
It has a PCIe Slot which I used for a SATA controller, with two 3,5" HDDs.
They have an official NAS case for it too, not sure I’d recommend it as it’s kind of expensive, doesn’t isolate HDD vibration / noise at all and isn’t very convenient to service (to replace the drives for instance). I’m not aware of a better case option for this board though.
I run debian and OpenMediaVault on it (I didn’t have to mess with the kernel or device tree at all), with the ZFS plugin, and several docker containers (Jellyfin, PiHole, Syncthing, Tailscale).
For my needs it’s working perfectly fine and doesn’t need much power. But:
- It isn’t particularly great at video transcoding
- 4GB of RAM isn’t a ton especially with ZFS, keep that in mind if you wish to run more / heavier services such as Nextcloud
- being ARM based, this board basically limits you to OMV or manually setting up stuff on Linux through the CLI, as TrueNAS, Unraid and Proxmox only support x86. OMV is fine for it’s core functionality and you can get some more advanced features through plugins, but at that point it often gets kind of janky and annoying compared to e. g. TrueNAS. Also, the KVM plugin apparently doesn’t work on ARM.
TL;DR these low power ARM boards are just fine as a cheap option for getting into homelab / Self hosting and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend against them, but sooner or later I want to build a low power x86 based NAS with more RAM, SSD cache and TrueNAS Scale instead.
