Here is the thing, I have 4 RPi’s of different generations (all the way from Zero W to 4B 4GB) that I use to host services at home for personal use.

Lately, I have realized I am running out of RAM to host more services, not to mention not enough switch ports to connect to.

Now I know the obvious solution is to get a more powerful setup (maybe a thin client) but electricity isn’t cheap and I am not particularly in the best shape financially speaking to shell out $300+ on a decent client to host my services.

Any suggestions?

  • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.deEnglish
    37·
    9 months ago

    Where I live, electricity is also very expensive. I monitor every watt.

    I asked the same question half a year ago, here’s what I’ve learnt: RPis tend to be less reliable and aren’t that energy efficient. They’re great for small appliances, but for servers (e.g. NAS) not as much.

    Get an used Thinclient/ mini PC. They cost something between 50-150€ and give you a huge performance boost, more ports, a x86 architecture, are better repairable (still often bad) and more.

    Mine uses about 10-15 W on normal use, and 20 rarely when my cloud is under heavy use.

    • admin@lemmy.mohammadodeh.comOPEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Just curious, why is an x86 architecture a sought after feature in your opinion? My understanding is that ARM is more “bang for your buck” in terms of computation effort to power draw.

      I say this because my M2 (ARM based) MacBook does all sorts of heavy lifting and still lasts me more than a day on a single charge compared to my old Intel MacBook running the same services doing the exact same stuff.

      Please correct me if I am wrong. I would really appreciate to learn more from people who have more knowledge than I am.

      • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.deEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        There’s a big shift happening right now, you’re right on that.
        Traditionally, ARM is not as capable in solving complex issues, but more efficient.

        That’s why it has always been used on smartphones for example. You want a lot of battery and don’t need to do highly complex stuff on that, that’s what you have your PC for.

        The big focus in the last years has always been to top the competitor in terms of performance, and only right now, people begin to question if the computing power they have right now isn’t enough and if they rather wouldn’t like to have a device that’s more efficient.
        The tradeoff is, you’re more limited to this specific architecture. Apple solved this by making a compatibility layer for x86 apps, but that of course comes with a performance hit.

        I’m no expert in that topic tho, so take all I said with a lil grain of salt.

        Right now, I think you’re better off with x86, because your server will definitely run on some sort of Linux, and we don’t have any compatibility layer or something like that yet.

        • admin@lemmy.mohammadodeh.comOPEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Thank you for your insight, I see your point.

          Why do you say they abandoned desktop computers though? Aren’t they still designing and selling iMacs? Aren’t those considered desktop computers?

  • maryjayjay@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    9 months ago

    I upgraded my Plex and *arr server (i3 nuc) with a beelink 12i N100 based mini pc and could not be happier. $167 with 512gb nvme and 16gb RAM. It pulls 6W peak power

    • admin@lemmy.mohammadodeh.comOPEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      Where do people find equipment this cheap? Ya’ll are mind blowing with your ability to score things for such low prices.

      Any links?

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Hardware transcoding is highly efficient. The downside is sometimes it introduces artifacting in low resolution live TV.

      • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        With Intel QSV enabled it should be able to transcode like 4-6 1080p streams IIRC. Quicksync is very impressive hardware acceleration.

      • maryjayjay@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        With hardware support enabled it can live transcode four 1080p streams, which my old NUC (5th Gen i3) could also do. The GPU on the NUC could not handle 4k, so it would fall back to using the CPU which would not keep up with a live stream.

        The N100 can transcode one 4k HDR with Atmos 7.1 audio and stream in real time. It was just a test, there was a bit of a stutter as it settled in, but I think that might be due to the drive enclosure being connected via USB, so it was storage bandwidth rather than CPU/GPU. The USB ports on the computer are 3.2 gen 2, but the enclosure is only 3.0 at 5Gb/s.

      • skittlebrau@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        It’s a 6W TDP CPU, but not 6W for power consumption.

        At full tilt it’ll be about 25-30W, but typically it’s around 10W for me.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Ah, that makes a lot more sense.

          Was wondering what magic was happening to get 6w peak.

          Still, 30w peak is pretty nice, especially if you’re idling at 10w.

    • JackSkellington@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Hi! Could you please indicate how you manage the system on the beelink? Base OS, how you deal with storage , containers or VMs?

      Thanks in advance!!!

      • maryjayjay@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Base os is Ubuntu, Plex Media server is installed via apt from Plex repo, *arr services (lidarr, sonarr, radarr, bazaar, sabnzbd) all run on containers which I manage in a docker compose file. Media storage is an external, 4 bay SATA enclosure attached via USB. 4 six terrabyte disk drives in raid 6 on lvm/md, plus a 4tb SSD which is stand alone storage, formatted as btrfs.

  • ramielrowe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

    I’ve heard good things about used/refurb HP (elite desk and pro desk) and Lenovo (m700 and m900) mini-pcs. A quick search shows they’re going for ~120-140$ for a quad core with 16 gigs of memory.

    • terraborra@lemmy.nzEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      That’s what I’ve literally just traded up to from a Pi. Prodesk 600 G3 comes standard with a 6 core i5 8500, has 4 full size ram slots, an m2 ssd slot and has a mount for 3.5” hdd, all drawing only 65w.

      There’s a low profile one as well but then you’re stuck with sodimm, no space for a full size hdd and no pci-e slots.

      I picked it up second hand for NZD 100 so I imagine it would be even cheaper in the states.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    Get a mini pc. If you can find a cheap intel NUC on ebay for example. Way more power in a compact form that doesn’t draw that much more power than a rpi… much less four of them.

    • Gooey0210@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Or even a thinkcentre, I got mine for less than $300 with 36gb ram, 1tb nvme ssd, and es i9

      It was even closer to $200, and I had a plan to make a cluster out of these, but one this thing is powerful enough to do like anything, so I dropped the idea

      Edit: also, about the power consumption, it’s very similar to rpi5 and at the same time can do so much stuff

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    Get a cheap SFF desktop, slap some cheap RAM in it and run KVM. It’ll be 10X better than a fleet of Pi’s.

  • magikmw@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    I had budget to try xeon d soc motherboard for a smal itx case. Put 64gb ecc ram into it but could hold 128gb. That server will be 8 yo this year. That particular supermicro mb was ment for some oem routerlike 64_86x with 10g ports and remote management. I’m not sure if intel or amd have any cpus in that segment anymore, but it’s very light on wattage if mostly idle/maintaining vms.

    One option I’m looking at is to get a dedicated hetzner server, even the auction and lowest grade ‘new’ offerings are pretty good for the price if you account for energy costs and upfront gear cost.

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    There’s the Orange Pi 5 Plus if you want something really energy efficient. It has 16GB of RAM, an 8 core CPU, dual 2.5G ethernet, and it can use an M.2 2280 SSD. It looks like there’s going to be a 32GB version, but it’s not available yet.

  • Big P@feddit.ukEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    Power to performance wise a pi isn’t actually that good. A thin client can run on less than 60W and offer far more performance

      • Gooey0210@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Even raspberry pi 4 doesn’t run on 3-4w, it’s probably for the older models and zeros

        Rpi4 is more like 5-6w, and 8-10w theoretically

        RPI5 is 12-15w theoretically

        Rpi5’s power supply is actually 27w, my thinkcentre’s power supply is 60w

        Rpi5 has a 2.4ghz 4cores

        My thinkcentre has 2.4-5ghz 8cores 16threads

        Also, arm is fun, but it’s a headache to selfhost a lot of stuff on it

        And really, I moved from RPI hosting to x86-64, I didn’t know some apps like jellyfin, or elk, or basically anything can open instantly. Even nextcloud is working pretty well

        And you can put an ssd inside, or even two, or even do some soldering a put 3 ssds inside

        I’m even starting on RAM which you can buy and replace

  • hperrin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    Your best option would probably be to buy a refurbished office PC that has at least 16 gb of RAM.

    Something like this:

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GCX4JKJ

    That way you get a bunch of memory in a decent system for cheap, and you’re only using up one port on your switch.

  • bastion@feddit.nlEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    If you don’t already use it, zram swap is great for providing a little bit extra oomph. If your server doesn’t have a lot of compressed data in memory, it can literally more than double your effective ram.

      • bastion@feddit.nlEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        Zram swap is basically this: Turn all of your free ram into a swapdisk. Compress all access to that swapdisk.

        So, it’s not using you storage, buy your memory. Most stuff in memory is usually highly uncompressed - so it compresses really well.

        Instead of getting the additional space from disk, it’s getting it from compression.

        • admin@lemmy.mohammadodeh.comOPEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Can you please explain to me the difference? How does a swapdisk compare to RAM? I don’t mind googling it but I highly doubt I’ll get a straightforward ELI5 style answer from there.

          I would really appreciate it if you can elaborate, if you have the time that is.

          Thank you.

          • bastion@feddit.nlEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            There are two types of computer memory that fundamentally matter on the consumer level:

            • memory, as in RAM, which is like short-term memory in people, or how much you can think about at once. It is blanked when the computer restarts. It is very fast.
            • drive storage, as in hdd or ssd space. This is like long-term memory or overall knowledge capacity, and persists across boots. It is comparatively slow.

            Solid state disk storage, and in particular some SD cards, can be vulnerable to excessive writes.

            Ram, however, is not impacted by the number of uses.

            A swap file works like this: When memory gets full, you move the least-used parts onto the swap file.

            A normal swapfile is on-disk. When memory gets close to full, the system moves some onto the (much much slower, like 10-1000x) on-disk swapfile.

            Zram swap creates a compressed swapfile out of your free memory. A file in linux does not have to be on a hard disk/ssd, it just has to look and quack like a file. When memory gets close to full, the system copies some onto the in-memory compressed file. This is very fast, but uses some cpu. It doesn’t touch your drive storage.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    3·
    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
    AP WiFi Access Point
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
    Plex Brand of media server package
    RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SBC Single-Board Computer
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    VPN Virtual Private Network

    10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

    [Thread #515 for this sub, first seen 15th Feb 2024, 04:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    I‘d just get an old computer. My server runs my whole homelab with 4 spinning disks, 2 ssds while having 10+ services. It takes 50 watts since it is pretty old but it works well. If I turned off the spinning disks it might be even lower.