Hi friends. I’m a newbie in self-hosting, though I’ve been managing (virtual) linux servers at work for a couple of years. I’m completely ignorant on the hardware choices out there, hopefully you can point me to the right direction.

Here are my requisites:

  • Low power consumption, I plan to have it connected 24/7 and I’m kinda concerned on how much it will impact the electricity bill
  • Ethernet port, preferably gigabit but whatever
  • Graphical performance is not important as I don’t plan to connect it to any display. As long as I can ssh into it, I’m good.

Services I plan on installing, for starters:

  • casaOS
  • pi-hole, or equivalent
  • Home Assistant
  • Kitchen Owl (nice to have)
  • Paperless-ngx (nice to have)

I live in europe and my budget is around 80 euros or so. Thanks in advance!

  • jecht360@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    9 months ago

    Risking sounding like a broken record, I always suggest Tiny/Mini/Micro 1L form factor office PCs. Lenovo, Dell, and HP all create ultra small office PCs that make great low power servers. A Pi will use 5-9w at idle, while these PCs will use 11-13w idle. They also use more standard components such as NVME drives, 2.5" drives, and replaceable RAM. Easy to find under $100 USD used, I’m sure you can find them under 100 euro.

    • guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Bonus: there is a literally endless supply of used x86 SFF hardware from large institutions, so unlike SBC’s, there’s no special, weird supply chain managed by an English educational nonprofit that could just suddenly decide to not sell to the public for years at a time.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      English
      1·
      9 months ago

      Good point.

      The Pi Zero is 2w max… It’s downside is it draws 2w MAX. Power is power, only so much you can do in 2w. As you pointed out, the 4 and 5 can do more, because they can draw more, (or they draw more so can do more, it’s all related).

      The key seems to be ability to minimize the idle power while still capable of ramping up to something useful when you need it - like the micros you’ve listed.

  • stown@sedd.itEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    I just got a mini AMD box from CWWK off Amazon and I’m quite impressed. I even got a free CPU upgrade (ordered a 5600u but received 5835u)

  • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.comEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    At around 80 euros then for lowest power you should go Raspberry Pi, for most performance while still being low power an old business laptop is fine, and since you don’t need the screen you can buy one with a broken screen.

  • m12421k@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    A cheap android box + armbianOs is also an option if you’re looking for low power. I have a 7watt one that’s running 24/7 for the last few years.

  • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Hey fellow european!

    Tinytronics.nl -> Pi4 model B 8GB: 87€ and in stock. The 4GB model is 68€. They also have orange Pi for a higher budget.

    Kiwi-electronics.com -> Pi 4 model B, 4GB? 63€. They also have all the pi accessories you could want.

    If you are going to use paperless for important documents, and if you want to not lose data for sure, get a 1TB cheap HDD or something and a USB3.0 adapter. SD cards will eventually fail.

    Otherwise, get an old used laptop 2nd hand. I used an old HP probook G1 laptop for about a year for my server. It didn’t use much power at all.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    PSU Power Supply Unit
    PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
    RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
    SBC Single-Board Computer
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

    [Thread #367 for this sub, first seen 21st Dec 2023, 14:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Have a look at the ServeTheHome site and channel on youtube … he’s done a load of good reviews of AliExpress devices and some tiny/mini/micro devices (think thinclients)

    He covers power consumption and some interesting points (like which recent multi-Gb NICs are supported by pfSense / Proxmox / etc)

    Just watching those should at least help you decide what you need.

    I was going to build my own virt server and I ended up with a low power, silent, passively cooled box to run all my VMs in… for much cheap.

  • UnPassive@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    Try a used laptop. Cheap, power efficient, built in UPS, small. Can be quite powerful and some are even upgradable

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
    English
    11·
    9 months ago

    As a point of reference regarding power consumption:

    I’ve been running a desktop non-stop for the last ten years (built as a gaming rig) as a file/media server, so it’s probably the worst thing you can run this way, power-wise. Has an 800 watt power supply, running windows.

    I’ve done the math many times, costs me about $1/day in power at mostly idle.

    Just presenting a worst-case example as a guideline.

    I’ve recently spun up a Raspberry Pi Zero W for PiHole, DHCP, DNS, Tailscale, Joplin and Bitwarden. It’s maximum power draw is TWO WATTS. Haha

    Currently running a watt meter on the desktop, should have some decent actual numbers from it soon, but can’t imagine idle is any less than 50 watts.

    So there’s two extremes. Don’t be me (looks like you aren’t!)

    Edit: I wouldn’t recommend the Zero W for this, it’s underpowered. I’m already overloading it with just PiHole and Tailscale, honestly.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yeah same. I have several machines that whirrr all the time. The power cost and usage is fairly negligible. The real costs in the house are appliances. OP will save more energy by getting a more power efficient fridge or dishwasher than worry about a computer being on in the closet

    • Crispy_Mate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Pi Zero could be underpowered but the bigger pi’s sound like a perfect match. I would recommend looking into a used pi 3 or 4, because the pi 5 is new and always out of stock (at least in europe) so you pay around 150$.

  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caEnglish
    01·
    9 months ago

    A used Android pixel phone. You can root it and install Pideploy and run PiHole through it.

    I have an old Pixel 3a doing exactly this. The other services I don’t quite know if they have an Android implementation.

    Doesn’t suit your every use case, but I figured I’d share.

    • seatwiggy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      termux-root has a docker package. That still doesn’t cover everything but a lot of popular services have docker images

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Ooo learn something new every day. I’m going to have to try this out later. Thanks!