Pretty much what the title says, I was wondering, since I want to invest on self hosting applications and my raspberry pi 3 b+ can barely function. I don’t have enormous expectations, just docker containers, nextcloud, pihosted, jellyfin… Any further suggestions (regarding the hardware) will be much appreciated.
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Intel NUCs are known for that purpose, a lot of plex builds are based on the iGPU
+1 to this
Some models also have programmable LEDs in the front that you can use to display the status of the system or app/service
You may get more bang for your buck by getting a comparable mini PC rather than a NUC. Some ThinkCentre Tiny machines are listed on eBay for less than $100 USD. HP and other manufacturers sell their own versions as well.
ThinkCentre Tiny machine
Or dell optiplex for a bargain.
Got myself a Dell 8gen 8GB 256GB SSD for 40€… Got a 6 core (8500?, It came with a “Pentium Gold” bi core) for 60€ and a 4TB HD for 70€… For example. I think it will handle a lot before needing an upgrade. It’s a smallish tower though, but sff versions exist too.
It’s as crazy how cheap those PCs are and how expensive Raspberries has become :-/
I agree, but what about power usage?
Yeah sure, it’s not the same.
I hit the limit of my Raspberry Pi 4. It would periodically crash itself by overheating (Heatsink was hot to the touch) I now use a NUC. It runs excellently, and handles my home automation setup fine. Unless I start doing something extreme, I can see myself overloading it.
One of the less mentioned things with self hosting is running costs. A Pi is extremely cheap to run. A NUC is a bit more, but still well below a full blown PC. Servers can actually pull a significant load, even when idle.
Very similar, but usually dramatically cheaper… Look into the Lenovo Tiny line of PCs, you can get a used model with a surprising amount of power for a lot less than you’d see in a comparable NUC and in my experience, they’re usually hardier machines.
If you’re buying and want it cheap this is 100% the way to go. I got an M900 to go with my NUC and it only cost $60 for one with an i7 vs $200 for a similar NUC
They provide the best balance for efficiency. Not too powerful enough to be a workhorse and not to weak to run multiple simple applications/services. NUCs are great in that they come with hardware video acceleration tech that’s highly optimized for media transcoding.
Totally. My setup is on a NUC8i5BEH.
Handles 4K Plex like a dream, all the *arrs, multiple website services. I have about 50 or so containers and it doesn’t get close to full CPU usage.
I have a 2015 NUC I use as my server with next cloud, immich, jellyfin, gitlab and more. Mostly, I wish I put more ram in and could have two internal drives, but otherwise I love the form factor.
Definitely! I’ve used them for years and they are super convenient. Especially in small space living. I have a small server setup in a closet that is a direct attached raid array with an m1 Mac and an Intel nuc on top.
In general I prefer the max because it can do a lot with very minimal heat generation but using a Mac mini as a server has a few downsides that you won’t run into with a nuc. Things like arm vs x86, no way to run the OS headless, cost, etc…
i3 are good enough for the things I wrote or should I got for i5/i7?
depends on how many services you plan on running, i think the i3 would be sufficient for what you listed, the i5 would give you room to grow.
the i7’s usually aren’t worth it for servers since they are just a clock speed increase.
I’m running all my microservices on a couple of repurposed NUC5i5RYKs, running Ubuntu Server 22.04 (I know I know) and Docker. They’ve been absolutely rock steady thus far, though not quite as overkill as I like all my computers to be. But I got them in 2015 and they’ve held up more than admirably.
