My use case is a homelab kubernetes cluster, so I want multiple nodes for redundancy, but I don’t want to use too much electricity or generate too much heat. But for the sake of other readers, let’s keep it general:
What’s a nice little computer for a homelab, with its own power supply, ethernet, and room for 2 internal disks?
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If you have a friend in IT, see if they can grab you some old workstations when they’re decommissioned. I have several small form-factor Dell Precision workstations that fit your use case perfectly, all hand-me-downs from IT friends.
I AM a friend in IT. In my experience, retired workstations are not energy efficient. Otherwise I agree.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer k8s Kubernetes container management package
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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Refurbished Lenovo Tiny, HP micro or Lenovo mini are the go to things for this. Available in plenty different configurations, modular and widely available due to getting decommissioned by the industry in big numbers after 2-3 years.
They idle around 6-7W
Thanks; this is the advice I was looking for.
This is the way. I have an HP ProDesk 600 G4 with an i5-8500T, and it has been sipping 7 W for years now. Just be aware, most of these boxes only have one 2.5" SATA and one M.2 2280 bay. For HP, the ProDesk 600 and EliteDesk 800 have another M.2 2280 slot. Also be aware, you need a special internal cable for that SATA bay, so if you buy one of these make sure it has that cable in it already.
Here is a good comparison list of all the different Tinys out there.
Amazing reference friend! Definitely bookmarking it and maybe mirroring it locally (I hate when repos go private or disappear).
@B0rax Cool, I wish, I had seen it earlier this year, when I wanted to get the differences between some HP and Lenovo models.
Especially, how much NVMe sockets are available.
Is the two-disk requirement for capacity, redundancy, or keeping workloads separate? I’m exploring an N150 home-server concept and trying to understand where a compact box becomes too limiting. Storage seems like a decision worth getting right before choosing the enclosure.
Exactly. If you’re running kubernetes, you probably want etcd to have its own disk. And if you don’t have a NAS, then you’re looking at extra disk to hold your data. The data disk should probably be separate from the OS disk.
You can usually take the guts out and rehome them if necessary.
Bee-link and GMKtec make some tiny computers purposely designed to be home servers. I thankfully got a ME mini NAS before the LLM apocalypse and it is a beast that can expand up to 24TB. It comes with an Intel N150 that runs all my personal services and consumes almost no power at all. But they also make other smaller models (the ME mini is already minuscule for what it does) that can fit 2 M.2 disks and they all have their own power supply and ethernet connection. The only problem is that the prices have skyrocketed because RAM and solid state storage starvation.
They are still, somehow, cheaper than Raspberry’s post-price hikes while being more powerful.
Thanks. I have some experience with BeeLink, and they seem solid.
+1 to beelink but be careful of sketchy resellers. Their website has a direct link to their actual 1st party Amazon storefront that can be tricky to pin down.
I have a fleet of 5 n100/n150 beelinks running k8s that works perfectly well for a super low power homelab. I also replaced the stock m.2 ssds with patriot low power ones but I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze on that with current pricing.
Irregular answer since everyone already covered the good ones: old phones with sdcard slots.
Be careful with old phone batteries if you’re going to leave it somewhere plugged in for months
Is there a sort of guide for this? I have a cracked old phone i’ve been looking for a use for.
You can go as easy as using termux, or as hard as using postmarketos. Plenty of guides online.
I did this. Made my phone solar powered too. It was a fun project. I would recommend using a phone that will auto turn on when power comes back.
I exclusively run dell micros. 250gb ssd for proxmox and image/template. Nvme for ct/vm. 1gbe built in and a spot for a 2.5gbe nic (A+E i think?). 65w psu.
M6 mac mini on sale right now is kind of hard to beat. The m6 is a beast of a processor and the included 2.5Gbe is nice. The disks would need to go into a cheap Tb4 enclosure.
ARM SBC or NUC with an N150 processor
Edit: oh, 2 internal disks? What kind, nvme, 2.5" ssd, or 3.5" hdd?
I’ve heard it has to be specifically an Apple ARM CPU if you’re doing this for energy efficiency. Maybe things have improved, but probably not because all the resources go to LLMs.
Regular ARM CPUs are pretty efficient. What do you mean?
They’re not the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FICjyf-e8k
Sure, but have you looked at the price/performance/watt ratio? Macs cost significantly more than x86 or ARM mini PCs and SBCs. And lots of the performance is gobbled up by MacOS itself. It’s not like it’s easy to install headless Asahi Linux and have everything working well.
If you buy a used M1/M2/M3 Mac that might be a good investment to use with Asahi Linux but Thunderbolt and other neat features won’t work.
Any board with an rk3588 or CIX chip should be fine.
A mini PC is likely a good fit. Depending on the one you have they will have space for an extra nvme drive or a 2.5 inch data ssd.
You can load Proxmox and run as many VMs or lxc K8s workers.
@cpbsy I bought such a refurbished HP mini pc this year. There can 2 NVMe 2280 be used and with an additional caddy, a 2,5" device also can be added.
When the system is idle, it is using 8 watts.There are also other models available, but not all are providing sockets for a second NVMe device.
Also mini-pcs from Lenovo are often used, but there are only few models available, which have a socket for a second NVMe device.
But they normally have a caddy for a 2,5" device.8 watts. That’s Pi territory.
I know Pi used to be the trendy answer, but I’ve been hearing about how their value/money isn’t what it used to be. What’s the latest advice?
I have an Intel NUC N100
