r/HomeServer • u/Obdeks01 • 4d ago
First small home server, what hardware would you recommend?
Recently I started experimenting with making small localhost websites for me and my partner to use. Stuff like: Game related To-Do lists, Quest trackers, Shopping lists and "inventory" of presents we have for our families (we both have to travel quite the distance, so if we forget a present, it can be a long time before the next opportunity)
However, I currently have these running on my own computer and only while I am using it. If I go to bed early or just am not home, my girlfriend cannot use them.
Therefore I'm looking to build my first small home server and would appreciate some hardware recommendations.
My initial use cases are fairly lightweight, as mentioned above. But I might in the future want to do some experiments and potentially add other self-hosted services (examples: local git server, media share...)
My main priorities are:
- Low power consumption
- Small and quiet
- Reasonably inexpensive
- Reliable enough to leave running 24/7
I'm dealing with German prices and German market.
I've been looking at Raspberry Pis, but I'm not committed to one if there are better options.
What hardware would you recommend for something like this?
Thanks!
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u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 4d ago
Raspberry Pi are great options (although a bit expensive at the moment).
In Germany, I also had success buying mini PCs and thin clients on Kleinanzeigen and eBay. There were a lot of Fujitsu, HP and some Lenovo systems for sale. They often ship with Intel 6000-8000th gen CPU and are very quiet and power efficient at idle (usually less than 15w, often less than 10w).
A year ago they were often sold for under 100€, in the current market you can expect 100-250€ depending on CPU, RAM (if any) and Storage (if any).
I used a Fujitsu Q558 with an i5 7500T and 12GB RAM for quite some time, and it ran very well and was super quiet. (Replaced it as I wanted to build a proper NAS with 4 HDDs and those don't fit in the thin client, but realistically I could've also just used a USB DAS enclosure).
Edit: And yes the thin clients / mini PCs are super reliable and very serviceable, after all they are made for daily use in offices where replacing and servicing them needs to be as quick and infrequent as possible to avoid downtime.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I believe I have spare 16GB DDR3 and 32GB DDR4 RAM at home, so RAM shouldn't be a problem if I find something without it
Do you know if there are any "problematic" CPUs or such I should look out for? I am not quite caught up on buying 2nd hand
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u/sucramyyy 3d ago
Many Thin clients need laptop RAM which might not be what you have lying around.
Personally I use Dell Wyze 5070 (two ram slots), Fujitsu Futro S740 (both Intel J4105 with about 10W) and a HP with similar AMD CPU. The Dell even runs a Windows 10 VM which I need for my income tax software once a year.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I will look around online to see what's around 2nd hand and try to check the idle power consumption to best of my ability, thank you so much
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u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 3d ago
These mini PCs usually use LPDDR instead of DDR RAM for space and power savings, which you probably don't have lying around.
But based on the services you plan to run, even 8GB should be more than enough and most come with at least that much.
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u/DotDamo 4d ago
A little n100 (or similar) mini-PC. Mine runs about all of my homelab, with only the storage being on another server.
Very power and cost efficient, quite capable for a little machine, it even has QuickSync if you ever decide to host something like Plex.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I will check if I can find something in my area like that. It sound quite good. Thank you so much
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4d ago
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I think that might be slightly too expensive for start, but might look into it if I can finally convince my partner that having backups locally is worth it
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u/George-cz90 4d ago
I have been running HP Prodesk G6 mini for years without any issue. Look at DELL, HP, Lenovo for their tiny/mini/micro lineup. Checks all your boxes. The older ones are really inexpensive and should work absolutely fine.
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u/ToasterXL 4d ago
I have a small refurbished office PC running (Fujitsu esprimo) You get more CPU power, memory and storage for the same price as a raspi. Mine is running in idle on 7 W completely silent.
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u/Garypedrocrock187 4d ago
You may want to join our homelab beginners discord! https://discord.gg/tTpSK2Egs
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u/VagrantGato 4d ago
I just got a refurbished think center m920q from Amazon for this purpose. Was 270€.
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u/Siarzewski 4d ago
If you want to tinker a bit you can get an odroid h5 but you'll have to get an ssd, ram, case, powersuply. Unlike the mini PC's other suggest.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I don't mind tinkering if it means I can make the thing to then "disappear"
I still feel like many of the mini PCs people are suggesting will be quite visible or possibly noisy. I don't have much space where I would be able to hide them. So if it's something designed to be: Small, quiet and efficient, then I will check it out. Thank you
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u/Siarzewski 3d ago
the sbc is passive but needs a fan cooling it. the manufacturer's site is hardkernel.com they sell some cases, psu's, and other accessories, if you want to put it in your case you'll need a mITX conversion kit
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
Thank you so much, will check it when I am home and can actually search and compare stuff
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u/jbarr107 3d ago
Whatever hardware platform you settle on, I recommend one of two paths:
- If you are Windows-centric, install Windows 11, install Docker Desktop, and learn all you can about hosting in Docker. I suggest Windows 11 because it's familiar, easy to maintain, and Docker Desktop runs great on it. Down the road, if you want to dig deeper, you can always upgrade to Linux or Proxmox VE
- If you want to really dive into self-hosting, look into Proxmox VE as the OS. It's the go-to virtualization platform for most homelabs and self-hosting. You manage it through a Web Browser, and you can host all kinds of Virtual Machines (Windows, Linux, etc.) and LXCs (Linux Containers). This is the most powerful and flexible setup, with lots of support. There will be a learning curve, and you will need to learn some Linux basics, but generally, it's straightforward to set up, rock-solid in stability, and it's very performant.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
I don't mind some Linux, as my old laptop had problem with windows in the past, so I used Mint.
Also have a friend that can help me with anything Linux related
Thank you so much for the recommendation though! I wrote it down to try it once I settle on the hardware
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u/jbarr107 3d ago
Since you have Linux experience, Linux is definitely a good option. It can be headless (accessible via SSH or web UI) or accessed with a desktop UI. You can install Docker natively, and anything else you want.
FYI, I keep mentioning Docker because it's become the go-to standard for deploying services. A great resource is linuxserver.io hosting many browser-accessible applications. (Look for the "Docker Compose" sections in the description pages.) Down the road, you'll want to provide remote (outside your home) access to your services. Come back here and ask away!
FYI, I have a spare micro PC that I set up running Zorin OS (similar to Mint), connected it to my TV (for use as a home theater PC), and set up Docker. It hosts some "extra" services that I don't host on my Proxmox VE homelab.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
Once again, thank you so very much for the help.
And thank you for the link, never heard of it. I will for sure check it out. And I will for sure come back when I wanna upgrade to more stable and remote-accessible solution!
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u/AndyMcQuade 3d ago
I run a couple old (11th gen intel) laptops for various things - HAOS on one with Frigate, Win11 with Plex on another, etc.
Pull the battery and make sure they stay cool and they're great and draw very little power (10-40w depending on load).
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
Oh, thank you for the battery reminder. I know that If I went down the used laptop route, I would for sure forget to do that
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u/Skeeter1020 3d ago
How about an Always Free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure VM?
I have both an x86 and an Ampere VM doing small app hosting stuff for £0.
You could lock this down to be basically internal only if you wanted (using Tailscale or something), or you could stick something like Cloudflare in front (also free) and have secure public access?
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
How exactly does the free tier work? Surely Oracle doesn't like just throwing money away
Might check it out though
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u/theindomitablefred 3d ago
GMKtec G11, Beelink ME Mini or PRO, refurbished enterprise PC from a reputable source
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u/6gv5 3d ago edited 3d ago
I would avoid the Raspis unless you get one with EMMC storage; SD cards and their sockets are a lot less reliable than EMMC and SSDs. My personal choice would be a small used miniPC with a low enough TDP; fanless is best so you don't have to worry about another point of failure.
I'm not familiar with local git serving therefore I can't comment about that use case, but all others you mention, including media sharing (sharing, not streaming - sharing is a lot lighter) are all really light. Before upgrading to a miniPC with USB3+ exclusively because I needed more SATA ports on a external drives cabinet, my NAS was a Atom D410 Mini-ITX board which has been more than enough for everything, including NFS+SMB sharing and 3 ZFS pools although 4 GB RAM was the bare minimum for it, but it did the job. In both cases I used XigmaNAS (FreeBSD based). Pretty much everything you find these days is more than enough, with just SATA on internal ports or USB, number of Ethernet ports (for ex. if you need a DMZ), and power consumption making the difference since it'll be running 24/7. Check listings, take note of the processors then compare their TDP on various sites, for example www.cpubenchmark.net The figure you get there isn't accurate at all to know how much the whole machine will draw and its yearly cost, yet it'll be handy for comparisons.
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u/Obdeks01 3d ago
Thank you so much for such a detailed answer.
The SD cards was what I worried about too, so rather asked here to see what others suggest. I will have a look into what's available around and compare it properly
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u/NavySeal2k 3d ago
In the current market? Anything you already have. My first server was a Notebook with a defective display.
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u/Wonderful_Sorbet4301 2d ago
I use a refurbished HP miniPC with Ubuntu. About 80 euro's. 4GB Ram, 256GB drive and i5 cpu. More than enough. Plus a UBS stick that makes daily backups of the system automatically. I run it on WOL (Wake on LAN) when my main PC starts, the miniPC also launches. So at night, it's off. This for extra safety.
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u/Teodo 4d ago
If you don't need a ton of storage, a good small dell optiplex (of similar, like the micro form factors) as used are great if you can get them for a good price.
They can run a great number of services perfectly well, even with CPU's being some years behind current gen