My old laptop for self hosting just croaked, and I’m thinking of buying a 2nd hand mini pc, but this time I want to do it proper. I want to optimize the electricity consumption and specs needed/ future upgreadability, considering how expensive everything is now.
My use case is just for self hosting files (infrequent access and reducing reliance to google drive), and occasional dev workload via ssh. I’m thinking of buying a used optiplex with at least i6 gen cpu (SFF or micro form factor), but I want to see if there are better options.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
If anyone could suggest me better options it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Optiplex etc. with an Intel 8th gen “T” chips seem to offer the best bang for the buck + energy efficiency on the second hand market right now.
The main issue with these thin clients is the lack of SATA ports and power connections for them if you want to add some larger 2.5” SSD/HDD storage. Usually it is only one, but you can also use the DVD drive slot with an adapter in the mid sized versions.
The mid size versions have 3 drive bays (2x 3.5", one 2.5") plus an optical bay, but only 3 SATA connectors (which was really odd to me). You can find dual SATA adaptors for the “WiFi” M.2 slot if you want to use an adaptor for a 2.5" drive on the optical bay. But if you want more than 4 drives, you’ll need to get creative mounting them.
You mean “mid” as in midi-tower? Because that sounds like the large version. Well maybe there is an even larger workstation version or so, but the normal medium sized Optiplex comes with one 3.5" SATA bay and one DVD drive.
Go for a n100 or even one with an Atom CPU. Get as much ram as you can afford…
I’m a home-lab newbie but I built a NAS & Jellyfin server with a Raspberry Pi 5 and it works great. I got a SATA hat for it and it has 5x 8TB HDDs installed with ZFS RAIDZ1 in a custom 3D printed case. It can stream 4K on my network just fine. If there are other tasks you want your server to do or if you want to stream to multiple devices simultaneously I’m sure other people would recommend something more powerful but I just wanted to add my 2 cents. I picked up another Pi to set up tail scale (work in progress) and yet another Pi (open-box discount) to set up Immich (near-future project). I wouldn’t expect one Pi to handle all of those things simultaneously but I haven’t tried it.
Can you link your guide for the PI NAS and Jellyfin server? It might be my only option given prices.
A pi 5 will cost way more than a second hand mini pc.
Lemmy has relatively good search, usually if you remember bits of the title that works?
In any case: Both n100/n150 and raspi are in the <10W range. Obviously raspi is lower, but also A LOT slower and much worse connectivity. As the price is roughly comparable, I’d go for the much more capable N100/N150. Only go the full ‘minipc’ route if you don’t mind the (probably) higher power usage, which can depend highly on model. Older (but cheap on eBay) models can be 25W on idle.
Depending on what you actually need, I’d setup a Sync thing or NextCloud or something and go from there.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit Plex Brand of media server package SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
[Thread #31 for this comm, first seen 28th Jun 2026, 16:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
After walking through CEX on the weekend I don’t know if you will beat second hand laptop pricing. The significantly higher availability of laptops seems to make them prices that just can’t be beaten.
Unless you can get away running a pi zero of course. Sorta tempted to get one but not sure how much I could get it to do. Would do data storage just fine, depending on how much space you need.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
I don’t think so. The Vercel link just redirects me to vendor HIPAA comparison stuff
Huh, you’re right. That sucks.
The GitHub with the data is linked in that post if you want to look through the csv file.
I have a Beelink Mini S that I got 4 or 5 years ago (N5095, 8GB RAM, 256GB SDD). It was $200 new at the time. It’s easily handling the hosting of 20-25 services.
For the little that you plan on doing with it, I think you could grab just about anything.
Compare the processors at Versus.com for a rough overview.
I have a FriendlyELEC NanoPi R4S with metal case, running Armbian with a couple of USB SSD drives, for file and website hosting mostly. Just my personal use: no heavy loads. It’s air cooled (no fan). It typically reports a temperature of about 35 centigrade. Up into the 40s if I increase the load (development, upgrades, indexing, etc.) I don’t know the actual power consumption, but the power adapter is only 15w. My original NanoPi R1 works fine for the same purpose and uses even less power - runs cooler. I got the R4S and an R2S Plus, so as to have spares and development/tinkering systems and to have a 64bit CPU, in case I wanted to run anything that requires it.
It’s not upgradeable but it’s fairly cheap and has worked well enough that I haven’t wanted to upgrade it for years, other than migrating from the R1 to the R4S, as mentioned. If by dev workload you mean running local LLMs or heavily loaded CI build system it probably wouldn’t be a good fit, but fine for compiling a package occasionally, local git and npm servers and similar. I don’t recall when I got the R1: some time before Covid. The R4S and R2S Plus have been running for about 5 years now.
There are many other SBCs supported by Armbian. You might find something better matched to your requirements.
I’ve been running an HP ProDesk 600 G4 mini (i5-8500T, 32 GB RAM) for a few years now and am very happy. I bought it with 8 or 16 GB RAM and a 256 GB M.2 for 140 €. It can fit one 2.5" SATA drive and two M.2 2280 drives. I have it running 24/7/365 with 2x2 TB M.2 SSDs and a 256 GB boot SSD and it usually uses around 7 Watts.
If you want to go the HP route, ProDesk 600 and EliteDesk 800 have two M.2 slots, while the ProDesk 400 only has one.
Alternatively, Lenovo and Dell also have similar formfactor PCs, but I don’t remember their names.
Performance wise, the 8th gen i5 is more than fine for TrueNAS and 10-15 docker containers.
Recently I decommissioned a Dell T320 and replaced it with a Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM all for right at the $200 mark. I’m running a total of 52 containers on it right now with load averages looking like 0.31, 0.51, 0.72. The Dell T320 running the same 52 containers cost me $40 USD per month to run. The Dell 7020 costs me $5-8 USD per month to run 24/7. If you wanted a wider tower, I set up a Dell 9020 for a friend of mine’s son who wanted to get into selfhosting at the age of 10. Similar running costs. I’ve got an Optiplex 3020 with 16 GB RAM and a 4 TB external drive running Proxmox quite well and costs probably $3 USD per month. I’m pretty well chuffed with the performance so far of the 7020, and in fact am eyeballing another one to replace a second Dell T320.
Have you considered a new gen? an 8th gen would offer better efficiency and performance and more feature like quick sync hardware decoding for most encoders out there. Srill, i’m impressed by the consumption difference.
I generally try to ride the DDR3 cap as far as equipment. IIRC Intel 8th gen Coffee Lake require DDR4. DDR3 is cheap. So there is a trade off yes, but you’re right, it would be more efficient. When I finally build me a new computer, I will go all the way to DDR5, or whatever is the latest and greatest at that time. The T320 is a great server, it just drinks some electricity. The money I save on electricity, I could pay for another 7020. LOL Thought about selling the T320 on ebay, but I doubt someone would want to pay what it would cost to ship a boat anchor. Maybe CraigsList, local pickup.
I’m now curious what’s services are you hosting. It’s hard for me to imagine self hosting more than 10 containers/ services lol
The easiest way for me to show you is just a screen shot of my dashboard:
spoiler
I’ve added a couple since that screen grab.
A lot of the SBCs or n150 pcs have limited RAM upgradeability.
You might look at the old HPE Proliant Microservers, like gen8 - gen 10. You can get them with 16GB ram included for $300. They’re low power and they use the cheaper ddr4 ram.
i bought used lenovo m900 tiny with i5-6500t, 12gb ddr4 ram for 100€, immich navidrome, no problems. It’s eating up 11w, when machine learning not running. There’s cpu benchmark web to compare cpus
M1 Mac Mini is quiet, fast, low power consumption and reasonably-priced used.
I’m hesitant with running Mac due to unclear Linux support. Also I’m broke
Asahi Linux completely supports all the M1 Mini hardware.
But it does look the prices on these went back up because people use them for OpenClaw. 🙄
While these points are valid, I feel for a homelab, one would want a headless system running *nix vs OS X.
Also, it doesn’t help that there is no bootcamp for ARM, least not that I’m aware. Because if that was the case, then yes running ARM64-based distros/software would be great. I’d actually love to see how the M1 runs ARM server software :)
I run Asahi Fedora Linux on this hardware. It was a straightforward install and has been problem-free since.
