Pretty much what the title says, I was wondering, since I want to invest on self hosting applications and my raspberry pi 3 b+ can barely function. I don’t have enormous expectations, just docker containers, nextcloud, pihosted, jellyfin… Any further suggestions (regarding the hardware) will be much appreciated.
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Intel NUCs are known for that purpose, a lot of plex builds are based on the iGPU
+1 to this
Some models also have programmable LEDs in the front that you can use to display the status of the system or app/service
I hit the limit of my Raspberry Pi 4. It would periodically crash itself by overheating (Heatsink was hot to the touch) I now use a NUC. It runs excellently, and handles my home automation setup fine. Unless I start doing something extreme, I can see myself overloading it.
One of the less mentioned things with self hosting is running costs. A Pi is extremely cheap to run. A NUC is a bit more, but still well below a full blown PC. Servers can actually pull a significant load, even when idle.
You may get more bang for your buck by getting a comparable mini PC rather than a NUC. Some ThinkCentre Tiny machines are listed on eBay for less than $100 USD. HP and other manufacturers sell their own versions as well.
ThinkCentre Tiny machine
Or dell optiplex for a bargain.
Got myself a Dell 8gen 8GB 256GB SSD for 40€… Got a 6 core (8500?, It came with a “Pentium Gold” bi core) for 60€ and a 4TB HD for 70€… For example. I think it will handle a lot before needing an upgrade. It’s a smallish tower though, but sff versions exist too.
It’s as crazy how cheap those PCs are and how expensive Raspberries has become :-/
I agree, but what about power usage?
Yeah sure, it’s not the same.
They provide the best balance for efficiency. Not too powerful enough to be a workhorse and not to weak to run multiple simple applications/services. NUCs are great in that they come with hardware video acceleration tech that’s highly optimized for media transcoding.
Totally. My setup is on a NUC8i5BEH.
Handles 4K Plex like a dream, all the *arrs, multiple website services. I have about 50 or so containers and it doesn’t get close to full CPU usage.
Definitely! I’ve used them for years and they are super convenient. Especially in small space living. I have a small server setup in a closet that is a direct attached raid array with an m1 Mac and an Intel nuc on top.
In general I prefer the max because it can do a lot with very minimal heat generation but using a Mac mini as a server has a few downsides that you won’t run into with a nuc. Things like arm vs x86, no way to run the OS headless, cost, etc…
I’m running all my microservices on a couple of repurposed NUC5i5RYKs, running Ubuntu Server 22.04 (I know I know) and Docker. They’ve been absolutely rock steady thus far, though not quite as overkill as I like all my computers to be. But I got them in 2015 and they’ve held up more than admirably.
i3 are good enough for the things I wrote or should I got for i5/i7?
depends on how many services you plan on running, i think the i3 would be sufficient for what you listed, the i5 would give you room to grow.
the i7’s usually aren’t worth it for servers since they are just a clock speed increase.
I have a 2015 NUC I use as my server with next cloud, immich, jellyfin, gitlab and more. Mostly, I wish I put more ram in and could have two internal drives, but otherwise I love the form factor.
