So far it’s; genmachine 5500u pc barebones, will get random ram and steam decks 256gb ssd, fedora server and some rabdom twin drive hdd enclosure with used 4tb disks to start with. 8gb of ram should be plenty as going 16gb ddr4 to 32gb ddr5 made no difference at all on my main gaming/dev/3d rig.
Total cost: 158 for mini pc, twin drive enclosure 60, 4tb drives: 50 eur each, ram 15 eur or around entry level twin drive nas price.
Id if there’s any build thread to post about “i shoved an external drive up the ass of a chinese mini pc and labelled it homelab”
Honestly, those are the most interesting builds to me. As an American, I’m waiting for tariffs to die before buying stuff of AliExpress, but one can hope.
I have built and maintained all manner of home servers using inexpensive used hardware. Any PC or old laptop can do this stuff. Unless you’re doing something crazy on them, I’ve not encountered a lot of situations that I could not sort out. Usually throwing some more memory and storage into them solves most issues.
I ran a used desktop machine with an i3 processor (retired school system) for YEARS as my NAS with zero issues beyond adding a little cooling. Did the same with a firewall, worked for ages with no issues.
Getting a mini pc is nice if you are putting it in your living room, but there are still many choices for small form factor devices. Not quite as small, but still pretty small. Lots of them were used as POS terminals at stores. Wipe 'em, reload and start fresh.
This seems like it could be a fun project. Mind making a post about the build sometime?
So far it’s; genmachine 5500u pc barebones, will get random ram and steam decks 256gb ssd, fedora server and some rabdom twin drive hdd enclosure with used 4tb disks to start with. 8gb of ram should be plenty as going 16gb ddr4 to 32gb ddr5 made no difference at all on my main gaming/dev/3d rig.
Total cost: 158 for mini pc, twin drive enclosure 60, 4tb drives: 50 eur each, ram 15 eur or around entry level twin drive nas price.
Id if there’s any build thread to post about “i shoved an external drive up the ass of a chinese mini pc and labelled it homelab”
Honestly, those are the most interesting builds to me. As an American, I’m waiting for tariffs to die before buying stuff of AliExpress, but one can hope.
I have built and maintained all manner of home servers using inexpensive used hardware. Any PC or old laptop can do this stuff. Unless you’re doing something crazy on them, I’ve not encountered a lot of situations that I could not sort out. Usually throwing some more memory and storage into them solves most issues.
I ran a used desktop machine with an i3 processor (retired school system) for YEARS as my NAS with zero issues beyond adding a little cooling. Did the same with a firewall, worked for ages with no issues.
Getting a mini pc is nice if you are putting it in your living room, but there are still many choices for small form factor devices. Not quite as small, but still pretty small. Lots of them were used as POS terminals at stores. Wipe 'em, reload and start fresh.
That’s weird, which is cool.