I’m working on building a compact, efficient, and budget-friendly home server to centralize my scattered data and host a few lightweight services.
Currently, my data is spread across multiple hard drives, and accessing it is a hassle. A while back, I set up a home server using an old netbook running Debian and a few Docker containers. It was a fun Linux learning experience, but not a long-term solution (its RAM can’t be expanded beyond 2 GB, and its CPU is too weak). So, I guess it’s time for an actual dedicated server machine!
Budget: Around €500, including storage (I’m in Europe, btw)
Requirements:
Centralized storage for data, photos, and phone backups
Run lightweight containers for web services like Immich, Paperless-ngx, Pi-hole, and custom services I’ve developed
Occasionally download Linux ISOs (I use and delete them; the whole *arr stack would be overkill for my needs)
No need for virtualization (so no Proxmox, TrueNAS, or Unraid); a plain Debian install with Docker should suffice (or maybe I could use OpenMediaVault)
No closed OS: I’m not interested in Synology, QNAP, or similar. I want full control to install and customize my OS
Goals:
Low power consumption: ≤10 watts idle without HDDs would be ideal (this is my number-one priority)
Low noise
Compact size: space is limited, so it needs to be small (I also don’t need a huge case for just a couple of drives)
SSD (for OS and containers): Patriot P320 128GB NVMe PCIe Gen 3x4 (€15.99)
PSU: LEICKE PSU 19V, 4.74A, 90W (€19.99)
Case: Sharkoon QB ONE (€50)
Total: ~€257
Concerns: Will the 4-pin connector on the board be able to power two HDDs? ASRock includes a cable to power 2 HDDs in the package, so it should be fine, and I don’t plan on adding more drives
SSD (for OS and containers): Patriot P320 128GB NVMe PCIe Gen 3x4 (€15.99)
PSU: LEICKE PSU 19V, 4.74A, 90W (€19.99)
Case: ODROID H4+ Case Type 4 (€44.90)
Accessories: 2x SATA data and power cables (€14.00)
Total: ~€340
Concerns: I’m unsure about reliability and updates, and with 2 HDDs, it’s out of my budget
Prebuilt Option (AOOSTAR R1):
Specs: N100, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe
Total: ~€238
Concerns: Power consumption might be higher than the ASRock and ODROID boards; I’m unsure about its reliability and updates; I’ve read that it can get noisy and heat up
Storage:
For storage, I’m planning to use two 4 TB HDDs (Seagate IronWolf, ~€120 each) in a mirrored configuration. I’m considering ZFS for its compression, deduplication, snapshots, and bit rot protection. However, I’m unsure if I really need RAID since I’ll perform regular backups.
Questions:
Which of these options would you recommend?
Are there better hardware options within my budget that meet my power/noise/size goals?
Do you have other suggestions for hardware or software I might have overlooked?
Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated!
I believe you should buy second hand hardware for that. Can’t beat the price and you’ve tons of gamers and offices trying to get rid of perfectly good hardware for what you’re trying to do. I mean a 8th gen i5 CPU will most likely be idle or in low usage most of the time.
I would say to buy i5-8500T or more recent (because you can run a full machine on 8W on that). You can either go for a micro ATX motherboard with that and RAM second hand OR pick an HP Mini ProDesk with the same CPU, both options will be about 130€. Check this example.
The thing with the Minis from HP is that they come with everything, NVME, power supply, ram and ready to go. Most of those more recent machines come with 2x NVME + 1 SATA + USB-C.
If you’re comfortable with taking the board out of the case you can place it anywhere and add a M2 to SATA adapter on both NVME slots for about 22€ each and have like 12 SATA HDDs connected to it. If you don’t want mess with the hardware you can get a USB DAS for your disks, since it’s all USB-C you will not notice any performance impact.
Those machines will outperform your CPU pick by a lot while being cheaper and power efficient on idle.
+1 on this idea, going to toss in my recommendation for an AMD 5600g second hand. Its basically a laptop CPU with built in GPU that handles my jellyfin transcoding without issue and has a super low idle power rating if you pair it with a quality, small PSU.
A used i5-8500T or similar sounds pretty good, actually. Idk about Europe, but in the US you can get them second hand for like $30 on ebay. Seems like you can also find Passive coolers for that socket too on ebay, if you really want.
If you can find an ITX board that has the correct socket second hand, then you’d be good to go, and have options for expansion, if its got a pcie slot.
I’ve got a NAS built with used parts and its been fine for me so far. Its not as low power as yours, but the components were cheap enough that I could spend more on storage. And when its just idling, I don’t think it uses that much power (Never actually measured the power consumption at the plug. Its a Ryzen 3200g) but it sits at like 2% CPU usage most of the time with the host OS and 3 VMs running.
Thanks! Yes, I’ve considered second-hand hardware, especially mini PCs like the one you linked, for their low power consumption. The issue for me is that they typically only have one SATA port and no space for 3.5" HDDs (only 2.5"). As you mentioned, I could probably take the board out of the case, but can it be mounted in a standard ATX case? The board layout doesn’t seem to follow standard dimensions…
In fact, I already have a mini PC (an MSI Cubi 2 with an i3-7100) that I sometimes use. I’m sure it’s fairly power-efficient, but again, it only has room for one 2.5" HDD, which limits its usefulness for a NAS setup :(
Another concern I have with second-hand hardware is what happens if something breaks. Is there any warranty? With new hardware, I can simply send it back and get a replacement, which gives me more peace of mind.
There are A LOT of ways to convert the M2/NVME slots into SATA ports, some you can get hundreds of hard drives there if you need.
In fact, I already have a mini PC (an MSI Cubi 2 with an i3-7100) that I sometimes use. I’m sure it’s fairly power-efficient, but again, it only has room for one 2.5" HDD, which limits its usefulness for a NAS setup :(
what happens if something breaks. Is there any warranty?
If you exclude the Chinese brands (including Lenovo) it is very, very unlikely that a Mini HP or Dell will break in your hands anytime soon. Some even come with extended warranties from companies that bought them and you’ll be able to ask HP for help. But frankly I wouldn’t bother with this, those machines are good hardware designed for 24h7 operation and will not break easily.
Note that the adapter on the link does not actually use the USB protocol. It’s still PCIe sent over a USB 3.0 cable that is good enough for the job. But not actually USB, there are no signal / protocol conversions happening.
This is a decent setup if you want to leave the Mini PC intact, with the case and all because it allows you to route the PCIe to outside of the machine using a somewhat solid cable that you can run through a small hole OR the optional port slot (VGA on this machine):
The VGA card can be removed so you have a big hole to pass the “USB” cable through.
That’ll do the trick. Get yourself a powered USB hub and connect a bunch of SSDs to it, then jam the hub into your mini PC. You’ve now got yourself a NAS in all ways except looks.
If you go that route I’d want to make sure the cpu is at least somwewhat recent.
My first server was an old office PC I bought used as well, but I had real problems with it, because the CPU was lacking some X86 instructions which is why I could not run a specific service I wanted to as it used those.
(And if you want to run jellyfin in the near future you should make sure to buuy a cpu that can also do some hardware encoding/decoding as doing that in software on a low end CPU can make the experience somewhat sluggish.
Totally, but that won’t be a problem if you’re 8th+ gen right now. I’ve had experiences like you describe with a Core 2 Duo about two years ago, even SSH was taking ages to connect because the CPU lacked some modern instruction for ECDH.
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I believe you should buy second hand hardware for that. Can’t beat the price and you’ve tons of gamers and offices trying to get rid of perfectly good hardware for what you’re trying to do. I mean a 8th gen i5 CPU will most likely be idle or in low usage most of the time.
I would say to buy i5-8500T or more recent (because you can run a full machine on 8W on that). You can either go for a micro ATX motherboard with that and RAM second hand OR pick an HP Mini ProDesk with the same CPU, both options will be about 130€. Check this example.
The thing with the Minis from HP is that they come with everything, NVME, power supply, ram and ready to go. Most of those more recent machines come with 2x NVME + 1 SATA + USB-C.
If you’re comfortable with taking the board out of the case you can place it anywhere and add a M2 to SATA adapter on both NVME slots for about 22€ each and have like 12 SATA HDDs connected to it. If you don’t want mess with the hardware you can get a USB DAS for your disks, since it’s all USB-C you will not notice any performance impact.
Those machines will outperform your CPU pick by a lot while being cheaper and power efficient on idle.
+1 on this idea, going to toss in my recommendation for an AMD 5600g second hand. Its basically a laptop CPU with built in GPU that handles my jellyfin transcoding without issue and has a super low idle power rating if you pair it with a quality, small PSU.
Yeah, laptop CPUs are low power, after all they’re configured to run on battery with Windows. :)
This was great and thanks for your recommendation!!
A used i5-8500T or similar sounds pretty good, actually. Idk about Europe, but in the US you can get them second hand for like $30 on ebay. Seems like you can also find Passive coolers for that socket too on ebay, if you really want.
If you can find an ITX board that has the correct socket second hand, then you’d be good to go, and have options for expansion, if its got a pcie slot.
I’ve got a NAS built with used parts and its been fine for me so far. Its not as low power as yours, but the components were cheap enough that I could spend more on storage. And when its just idling, I don’t think it uses that much power (Never actually measured the power consumption at the plug. Its a Ryzen 3200g) but it sits at like 2% CPU usage most of the time with the host OS and 3 VMs running.
They’re selling around 40-50€ here just the CPU, with motherboard and RAM for about 100€ and mini pcs with those around 150€.
Thanks! Yes, I’ve considered second-hand hardware, especially mini PCs like the one you linked, for their low power consumption. The issue for me is that they typically only have one SATA port and no space for 3.5" HDDs (only 2.5"). As you mentioned, I could probably take the board out of the case, but can it be mounted in a standard ATX case? The board layout doesn’t seem to follow standard dimensions…
In fact, I already have a mini PC (an MSI Cubi 2 with an i3-7100) that I sometimes use. I’m sure it’s fairly power-efficient, but again, it only has room for one 2.5" HDD, which limits its usefulness for a NAS setup :(
Another concern I have with second-hand hardware is what happens if something breaks. Is there any warranty? With new hardware, I can simply send it back and get a replacement, which gives me more peace of mind.
They usually have M2/NVMe slots, those can be turned into SATA port easily and cheap in multiple ways:
There are A LOT of ways to convert the M2/NVME slots into SATA ports, some you can get hundreds of hard drives there if you need.
Again, that board has a M2 slot, just use it. OR you can use of this cards to expand that 1 sata port into multiple ones.
If you exclude the Chinese brands (including Lenovo) it is very, very unlikely that a Mini HP or Dell will break in your hands anytime soon. Some even come with extended warranties from companies that bought them and you’ll be able to ask HP for help. But frankly I wouldn’t bother with this, those machines are good hardware designed for 24h7 operation and will not break easily.
Exactly. And I’d rather go M.2 -> SATA instead of USB -> SATA.
Note that the adapter on the link does not actually use the USB protocol. It’s still PCIe sent over a USB 3.0 cable that is good enough for the job. But not actually USB, there are no signal / protocol conversions happening.
This is a decent setup if you want to leave the Mini PC intact, with the case and all because it allows you to route the PCIe to outside of the machine using a somewhat solid cable that you can run through a small hole OR the optional port slot (VGA on this machine):
The VGA card can be removed so you have a big hole to pass the “USB” cable through.
That’ll do the trick. Get yourself a powered USB hub and connect a bunch of SSDs to it, then jam the hub into your mini PC. You’ve now got yourself a NAS in all ways except looks.
If you go that route I’d want to make sure the cpu is at least somwewhat recent.
My first server was an old office PC I bought used as well, but I had real problems with it, because the CPU was lacking some X86 instructions which is why I could not run a specific service I wanted to as it used those. (And if you want to run jellyfin in the near future you should make sure to buuy a cpu that can also do some hardware encoding/decoding as doing that in software on a low end CPU can make the experience somewhat sluggish.
Totally, but that won’t be a problem if you’re 8th+ gen right now. I’ve had experiences like you describe with a Core 2 Duo about two years ago, even SSH was taking ages to connect because the CPU lacked some modern instruction for ECDH.