Hi :)
I’ve been playing around with a pi 4 for a few months now, but I want a dedicated home server now, since I want my pi to run HomeAssistantOS.
I’m looking for something that can store documents and photos (paperless and immich) and maybe run a small program like Ad guard. At first I just want to hookup an old SSD (250GB) and a HHD (1TB), but maybe I will buy a second one for RAID in the future. Power consumption at idle is really important for me (energy prices in Germany are really high).
As a beginner I find it very hard to find the right hardware, because everyone is recommending different things. (Slim-Clients, Intel Nuc, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS).
I hope someone can recommend me something that will work for me.
Look of a refurbished thinclient with a 6th or 7th gen Intel CPU with the “T” at the end (for example i5 6500T). Those are basically power optimized mobile CPUs for desktop PCs. Those are currently best value for money IMHO.
Alternatively use an old laptop, which is great for beginners, but storage extension will be very limited.
Old Laptop actually sounds interesting to me, very nice form factor for my “inside the bookshelf” approach, but probably a lot of tinkering.
How do thin clients compare to a pi 4? I’ve heard most of them are worse in computing power and efficiency in comparison to the Pi.
Up to RPi4 the power efficiency was a lot better, but performance wise you really struggled due to lack of options to connect faster storage. With the RPi5 becoming more power hungry (but also more performant) it is less clear cut, and price wise a refurbished x86 pc isn’t really more expensive either.
All in all I would say the benefits of using standard x86 outweigh the slightly higher power use these days. RPis are still good if you need the specific hardware GPIO etc. that is has though. But for self-hosting go for x86 and be mindful of peak loads (these CPUs become much more power hungry on higher clock-speeds, especially turbo-boost).
Efficiency? Worse. Power? Way more.
Big thing is going from usb 3.0 or really weak microsd to sata ssd or especially m.2 nvme.
Pi4 has a72s which are weak, like clock for clock on par with sandylake or even nehalem, and they aren’t clocked near as high.
Pi5 is closer to broadwell, maybe Sky-lake, which is starting to hit tolerable performance.