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!
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I have a 4 bay Synology and an HP G2 800 i7-6700, plus a POE switch, couple of cameras, omada WAP. The software load is mostly Jellyfin and Syncthing plus a BOINC LXC that pegs one core. Power consumption generally sits at around 55-65W (my APC UPS has a power readout) from memory the idle was pretty low - I think 24W although that might have been the previous 2 bay NAS.
I think your plan of a NUC and a NAS (I’d stick to 2 bay) is a good compromise for low power and easy of setup/management. I have my NAS configured to keep the rust spinning - I’m sure I’d save a bit of power by letting it spin down, but the delay when I starting some media in Jellyfin was annoying, and I suspect the disks will live longer moving anyway.
Thank you. I’m going to start with the nuc, get some stuff running then get the storage down the line.
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 LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PoE Power over Ethernet SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
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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.
Out of the options you listed, I’d go with the NUC for performance and transcoding.
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.
I’m a big raspi fan but I think the Pi 4 will be overpowered for your needs.
You mean underpowered?
Sorry, I did mean under powered.
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.
as it has SATA ports
More. PCIe SATA controllers are cheap (even though you’ll often hear “get a HBA and flash it”, it’s not absolutely necessary).
I currently have an HBA that breaks it into 8 DATA connections and was wondering if an 8 port SATA controller would be lower power usage and work as well. My HBA is a server one and rather old, it’s a Dell H310 flashed. Then again I am thinking of replacing the MB and upgrade to a newer CPU that is more energy efficient than my current Xeon E3-1270 just can’t seem to find the right one.
I’m far from an expert in HBAs and never used one myself. but it is my understanding that the major advantage is that you’re extremely unlikely to get a janky one whereas Sata controllers could be bad (they are often cheaply made non brand products). if they work either one is fine in a hone lab setting.
