Looking for low power devices for selfhosting

3 years ago by pathief to c/selfhosted

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 70 points 3 years ago

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guitarsarereal 19 points 3 years ago

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TheHolm 1 point 3 years ago

could you please elaborate? what is SFF hardware?

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WaterWaiver 3 points 3 years ago

SFF = Small Form Factor. It's smaller than traditional ATX computers but can still take the same RAM, processors and disks. Motherboards and power supplies tend to be nonstandard however. Idle power consumptions are usually very good.

USFF = Ultra Small Form Factor. Typically a laptop chipset + CPU in a small box with an external power supply. Somewhat comparable with SBCs like Raspberry Pis. Very good idle power consumption, but less powerful than SFF (and/or louder due to smaller cooler) and often don't have space for standard disks.

SBC = Single Board Computer.

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guitarsarereal 1 point 3 years ago

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BearOfaTime 2 points 3 years 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.

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Appoxo 2 points 3 years ago

We buy the HP Pro/Elitedesk 1L pcs as backup servers and attach storage.
Works pretty good and they are pretty cheap with the power they can provide.

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UnPassive 31 points 3 years ago

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

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BearOfaTime 8 points 3 years ago

Dammit, I have a few of those, you're killing my excuse to buy a new toy!

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kernelle 3 points 3 years ago

Let me help you with that: what if you need more power? or what if you need something smaller due to size constraints or maybe what if the old battery can't handle 24/7?. Pick one!

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Atemu 3 points 3 years ago

Even has a KVM for emergency access ;)

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ares35 2 points 3 years ago

absolutely this.

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BearOfaTime 12 points 3 years 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.

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dogma11 4 points 3 years ago

Throwing in my own data, I have a small server rack at home that runs a brocade icx4630 switch and dell r720, idles around 250w. My desktop setup, monitors, amp, computer itself etc idles around 200w.

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BearOfaTime 4 points 3 years ago

Oof. Maybe my power is worse than I thought!

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rambos 3 points 3 years ago

Adding my data as well:

My server is diy desktop pc - mbo MSI Z270-A PRO with celeron G3930 and 16GB RAM, 3x SSD on 550W PSU, idles at 23W. After adding another 3.5" HDD consuption went up to 34W. 34W in Ctoatia is around 34€ a year.

Some SFF PCs are at 10-15W. SBCs like rpi should be below 10 W, but dont think you can get anything new for 80€

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scrubbles 4 points 3 years 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

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Crispy_Mate 1 point 3 years 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$.

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SeeJayEmm 1 point 3 years ago

Libre Computer "Le Potatoe" is a inexpensive solid performing SBC.

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PieMePlenty 9 points 3 years ago

Look into a NUC on ebay. I was able to snag a new 11th Gen i3 for 200 eur. Power draw is about 7w with a headless Debian. Running a media server, nextcloud, pihole, an arr stack and I'm planning to add home assistant and a zigbee bridge which I now run on a pi.

If you aren't planning to run to much on it a rpi4or5 will actually be enough and these things can draw 15 on absolute max load.

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BearOfaTime 3 points 3 years ago

Wow, 7w. And has real horsepower unlike RPi.

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PieMePlenty 3 points 3 years ago

Im really impressed with the thing. Cpu idles at 30C as well. Very similar to rpi4 with 5 times the performance.

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jaykay 8 points 3 years ago

I have an Intel NUC I got on eBay for £50. It’s running 30 containers, 10W draw

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MSgtRedFox 7 points 3 years ago

Lenovo m900 tiny. Low cost and power.

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CalicoJack 3 points 3 years ago

They're also surprisingly easy to upgrade for their size. Swapped RAM, CPU, and hard drive in about 15 minutes total on one of mine.

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tristan 2 points 3 years ago

I second Lenovo tiny. I have 3 x m920q with a gigabit switch and total combined power draw is about 53w

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Valmond 2 points 3 years ago

Think centre tiny gang rise up :-) !

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Dran_Arcana 6 points 3 years ago

A raspberry pi or orange pi could definitely run all of those things at very low power consumption.

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aku 5 points 3 years ago

@pathief I think what you are looking for is intel n100 since it only uses like 6-watt TDP, but before jumping to that, you should look at Heaven video. If you only want to run for a year or two, maybe the older CPU is much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PisIPpbMkTc

I hope you found what you are looking for.

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PipedLinkBot 1 point 3 years ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=PisIPpbMkTc

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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krash 1 point 3 years ago

This. I did extensive research and will get myself a n100 or n200 for my on-prem server. Itcaps out at 16 GB ram, but I'll survive. N305 has 3x the power consumption as n200 at around 15W. Asrock even has a mITX mobo for the n100. And its fanless!

RPI5 would be the other obvious choice, but it's impossible to get a hold of.

Edit: Also, check out this thread: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/2340730

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Bitswap 4 points 3 years ago

Any Intel NUC(the small 4x4 ones) 8th gen or forward will fit the bill.

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Kalcifer 3 points 3 years ago

HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Mini (or equivalent)? You can get them for pretty cheap on eBay.

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JustEnoughDucks 3 points 3 years 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.

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testfactor 3 points 3 years ago

Not to state the obvious one, but there's always the Raspberry Pi.

The supply has gotten better on those, so you can probably pick one up in your price range, and the power draw is super minimal.

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rambos 3 points 3 years ago

In my country pi4 8GB ram with PSU 130€ and then you need SD card and/or SSD

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pathief 3 points 3 years ago

Raspberry Pi was my first choice, but apparently I can't even back order it :/

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x3i 4 points 3 years ago

Alternatively, there are also some options from pine64.com, maybe scroll through there! Same for odroid.nl

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guitarsarereal 1 point 3 years ago

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guitarsarereal 1 point 3 years ago

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pathief 1 point 3 years ago

That reminds me, I do own a pine64 device! It was the first thing I got on Kickstarter.

It's a Pine A64, with 2gb RAM. I wonder if it has enough power to run all those things. It's a budget device from 8 years ago, probably gonna have a hard time but I'll give it a try if I manage to find it!

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x3i 1 point 3 years ago

Very nice! I am running an HC4 (I think; the toaster) now since last month and so far, it's running much better than I thought! So yes, check that one first, then see if you have to upgrade and if you do, go for aarch64 or traditional x64 but not 32 bit arm

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AA5B 3 points 3 years ago

If it’s been a while since you checked, it’s worth checking again. RPi has been becoming more available over the last month or two, and I was able to get one of the new RPi 5!

Someone put together a great locator tool

https://rpilocator.com/

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superbirra 1 point 3 years ago

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m12421k 3 points 3 years 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.

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Cyber 3 points 3 years 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.

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PerogiBoi 2 points 3 years 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.

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seatwiggy 3 points 3 years ago

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

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PerogiBoi 1 point 3 years ago

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

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ninjan 2 points 3 years 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.

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Presi300 2 points 3 years ago

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unsaid0415 2 points 3 years ago

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roofuskit 2 points 3 years ago

A refurbished elite desk sff PC works great.

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Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug 1 point 3 years ago

Just got one for $100 on r/hardwareswap (yes I still visit reddit, but I can't give up hardwareswap) a couple weeks ago

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roofuskit 1 point 3 years ago

You can get them on eBay and Amazon for that much.

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Kuinox 1 point 3 years ago

I just bought a cheap Intel i3 10100T that have a TDP of 35W.
There is a bios option to reduce that to 25W.
Thoses are not sold to end users and must be purchased through craiglist or equivalent.

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Nickall01 2 points 3 years ago

TDP is not related to power consumption, it's related to dissipation.

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Kuinox 3 points 3 years ago

The thermal dissipation is directly linked to the amount of power consumed.

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Atemu 2 points 3 years ago

It's not and it's insane. TDP is a fucky "metric".

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Valmond 2 points 3 years ago

TDP is like the maximum so not very reliable when figuring out general power consumption. Stuff hooked up to the internet and not used very often, but always on, needs a low base consumption.

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Decronym 1 point 3 years 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

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

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

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Corgana 1 point 3 years ago

+1 for CasaOS! The simplest and best I've tried.

Lots of good suggestions here already but nobodys mentioned the Asrock A300 DeskMini. Low power consumption and you could probably find one for pretty cheap.

Obviously an old laptop you don't use anymore is a great and affordable choice too. Comes with a built-in battery backup!

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stown 1 point 3 years 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 5825u)

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alvaro 1 point 3 years ago

@pathief@lemmy.world maybe an old raspberry pi would work for you?

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alvaro 1 point 3 years ago