1y ago

[Need advice] My first home server

I need some advice on what hardware to buy for my home setup. I see a lot of posts talking about software, but not so much hardware. I would love to have a box I can buy and start setting up stuff.

A rack seems a bit expensive, my initial budget I feel is reasonable starting out is about $500-$800.

I’ve been looking at mini PCs, what are your thoughts on ASUS PN52? Just throwing that into the post to give a pin point of what I’m looking for.

I’m planning on hosting

Bitwarden
Nextcloud
Plex
Standard notes
Lemmy instance
Web server
Openresty

And need to be able to upgrade storage etc. for future proofing.

Thankful for all insights, tips, and suggestions!

33 comments

As someone who has a server rack with multiple servers, I would not recommend them to start with as they use up a ton of electricity. I'd recommend a small form factor computer (or a mid sized tower) to start with, it'll be marginally less powerful but for what you need it'll get the job done perfectly fine.
If you have an old desktop laying around, that's the perfect way to get started. Even if you only have some old parts, that'll cut down on your initial costs. For anything new I generally recommend looking around at places like https://logicalincrements.com to see what they recommend for CPUs and motherboards at different price points. For hard drives I use https://diskprices.com and also eBay. You generally want motherboards that support 4+ SATA connections or have PCIe slots for an expander in the future.

A lot of people start on used small form factor desktops like the ASUS PS52. Other common ones are the Lenovo M series tiny desktops, Dell Optiplex micro desktops or Intel NUCs. These can sometimes be found used for sub $100 a piece from businesses updating their fleets. They can struggle a bit doing stuff that needs some CPU grunt, like live plex transcoding, but are decent otherwise, especially considering the low power draw. You might want to consider spreading that software demand over two or three of them.
- Second this. Start with an old desktop and see where you land. it's a good starting place to see what services you like using/need. Then you can spec out a second machine to solve any pain points you have.
- live plex transcoding
  If you need this, the most cost-efficient way is probably to get an Intel CPU with an integrated GPU that supports QuickSync (all recent ones do) and pay for the lifetime Plex Pass. In the long run, it's cheaper than getting a beefier CPU, let alone a dedicated GPU, just for transcoding.
  
  That also works with Jellyfin by the way. You can always switch over to Plex later, if you decide you need it and are willing to spend the money.

I personally just use an old desktop (4th gen i7, yeah that old) and a NAS (mostly for bulk storage seperated from the server). The device you listed is probably more than enough to handle everything, unless you're sharing Nextcloud and/or Plex with a bunch of people.
Have you looked into an actual NAS rather than a mini-pc though? It'll give you more storage upgradeability over a mini-pc, and a quality NAS could probably host everything.
I would also consider buying used, especially first starting out. You can save some money buying a model year or two older hardware for decent savings.
- (4th gen i7, yeah that old)
  The i7-4770 and -90 hold their own amazingly well a decade later!
  
  Yeah, I'm amazed I haven't had a need to upgrade yet.
- I’ve been considering a NAS, but haven’t looked to much into it. Could it be an idea to have both? Do you have any NAS reccomendations?
  
  I assume you're not really experienced with storage servers? Then I would likely recommend a Synology NAS. They give you great software that you can easily configure without the need of deeper knowledge of the inner workings. I started with a Synology and didn't regret it. It just worked and gave me reliable storage so I could concentrate on the other parts of my homelab. It comes with a price though and you mostly pay for the software.
  If you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty or prefer to use an open source storage solution from the beginning, you might consider Unraid or TrueNAS. The latter is more "enterprisey", the former seems to be more beginner friendly (but I haven't used it personally).
  
  It absolutely is viable. I do so myself. There's pros and cons to this.
  The cost of hardware is more because you have more pieces, you probably need a decent shelf to hold everything (check the local thrift stores for old home theater stands, they work great), and it may add latency for some things where they interact together.
  The hardware modularity of it is really nice though. It's kinda nice not having to worry about losing all your data if you need to reinstall everything on the server. And it gives you the ability to update in smaller pieces rather than all at once.
  That being said, a NAS itself generally isn't all that good at transcoding Plex. Most entry level NAS's ($200-$300 range) can only transcode a few streams at a time. However you might not use transcoding all that much anyway if you store media on it in a playable format.
  I've personally only ever used Synology, and they're not bad, but they've been doing a few anticonsumer practices in more recent years that makes me want to get away from them. They're really easy to set up though, so it's not a bad option starting out.
  If you're going to go this route, I'd host Nextcloud on the NAS as well as your Plex media, then mount the share on your server so that your server can do transcoding while you're NAS does bulk storage. Everything else could be hosted on the server
  Considering you're starting from square one though, it may be better to just buy a beefier NAS, and then get a server as your needs expand. Especially if you don't plan on sharing Plex or Nextcloud with a bunch of people outside your home at this time.

Just an idea. You could try hosting and using these apps on a VPS from a cloud provider to find out what your needs are.
- I have been doing that for Plex and Web servers, but I want to expand it into my home, haha

I upgraded my gaming machine and used my old motherboard and cpu and loaded unraid on there, the i7 was great for plex transcoding and eventually i ran out of sata ports on my machine so I stuck a sata expander card in my one pcie slot, luckily the motherboard had two m.2 slots so I used that for cache. the case I used was a node304 and over time I added drives as I was running out of space. eventually I build a separate JBOD chassis to hold more drives
- How’s the m.2 cache work. I’ve never encountered it.
  
  It works great I keep my containers in the cache so they operate faster, and when moving files to my server it gets placed on the cache initially so the transfer is quick, then later it will migrate into the slower hard drives on it's own time

Pn52 is not a bad choice. Very upgradeable. Gigabit networking is probably all you’d need.
The heat may become a problem. But I dont run one so wouldn’t know.
Run proxmox on it. Your sweet 👍
What size drives are you thinking if you plan to host a plex server? Whatever you think, I’d recommend doubling it.
- Thanks, I was thinking 2TB, so 4TB then! I’m considering a RAID1 setup, so the budget would need to accomodate that
  
  Isn’t there only a single drive slot? (Not including the m.2’s) Don’t think Raid is an option for the pn52.

Not too shabby TBH. Still have a concern about the storage thought. Since PN52 can only have 2 SSDs and 1 HDD, RAID is out of questions.

HP EliteDesk 805 G8 💪

33 comments