I’m moderately tech savvy, a little experience with most OS and comfortable with hardware. I’ve got some basic things working in Docker. I want to start self hosting my photo backup, Bitwarden, Jellyfish, Sonarr and Radarr, Pi hole, Home Assistant and replace Dropbox. But the more I dive into the hardware and setup the more muddled I’m finding myself.
I’m very concerned about power draw so the lower the consumption the better. I do want some parity, though I’m willing to I introduce that once it’s set up. I’m not particularly concerned with transcoding but I guess it’d be a nice bonus.
Is a QNAP alone valid? Or perhaps I’m better off with a Pi and my huge GDrive while I learn? Or a NUC with better transcoding capability? I want to access my data internally, stream content to a Chromecast with Google TV.
My instinct is both a NUC and a separate NAS but I’e love it if anyone has some insight.
Thanks!
You must log in or register to comment.
Check out Serve the home’s TinyMiniMicro project: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC53fzn9608B-MT5KvuuHct5MiUDO8IF4&si=1Yx9e7TqLSUlYF3g
This is the route I went. SFF PC with I5 3rd gen, 8GB RAM and about 20 docker Containers running at the moment @ 10% - 15% CPU usage and 3GB memory.
Power consumption is around 15W. A bit more than a Raspi but much more potent and with a easy upgrade path.
So far I have absolutely no rerets. For most things self hosted the cpu is not that important. Even transcoding is no problem with the integrated iGPU.
If you have further questions I am happy to help.
You can get the power consumption down to 5W by using the smaller versions. My HP prodesk g3 800 mini draws 5W and is perfectly capable of running docker, Jellyfin, etc.
And it was only 100€, which is pretty awesome.
Ooo that is cheap! What gen proc do you use in yours?
It’s an i5 6500t, and yes, it was a pretty good deal (local guy).
It’s obviously an older chip, but it’s still very capable and the machine has an m.2 and sata ports, so adding storage shouldn’t be a problem.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLC53fzn9608B-MT5KvuuHct5MiUDO8IF4&si=1Yx9e7TqLSUlYF3g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
[Thread #194 for this sub, first seen 6th Oct 2023, 10:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
My solution for a power efficient setup was to split it up: all the services I use but don’t need all the time, like jellyfin for example, I host on my nas. I only turn that on when I need it.
The stuff that’s running all the time, like home assistant, addblocker, etc, I run on a raspberry pi.
Might not work for everyone, but I’m happy with it.
Out of the options you listed, I’d go with the NUC for performance and transcoding.
Get a power measuring device if you don’t have one and consider the real cost of buying something new if you already have something. For instance, I have an older gaming laptop I am considering repurposing for my home automation stuff. While idling it draws about 10w which is amazing to me and a number I never would have guessed. For me that works out to (24 hours * 10w * 365 days* 1000w/Kw ) 87kwh per year. I pay about 10 cents per kwh so say $10 a year. Buying something to save a little power will never work out.
My current home server is an intel NUC from 2013! It can’t do some of the things I would like to add on, but it is a great media server and downloader. Powerful hardware isn’t really a necessity.
If you can find a second hand PC with a Celeron, they’re pretty low draw, and it will mean you can open it up and add as many drives as it has SATA ports. We did the same, got an old PC for £30 and added drives and more RAM.
Honestly servers don’t need to be speced out of oblivion. I use a 10 year old desktop and added a 1TB ssd and it does 99% of what I want it too.
Most important thing for a server is probably the CPU and making sure it has as many cores as possible and maybe hyper threading because you’ll be running a lot if simultaneous services and users.
I’m a big raspi fan but I think the Pi 4 will be overpowered for your needs.
You mean underpowered?
Not the person you replied to, but the only thing on your list with real processing requirements is Jellyfish, if you do transcoding. My pihole uses like 0.3 CPU on a pi4, HA 0.1, zwave2mqtt less than that. You’re more likely to run into bandwidth issues with sonarr/radarr/dropbox, because pi’s just can’t push data to disks very fast, but if you’re doing downloads in the background, maybe that’s no a big deal.
