I use my desktop PC for Jellyfin and torrenting, but I’m looking for something that I can keep on 24/7 that draws less power and run other self-hosted services on Linux. I would like to have at least 2x 14 TB 3.5" hard drives in or attached to it with the possibility of expanding in the future.
From my research, these seem to be some good options:
- Mini PC like this Beelink S12 Pro + USB hard drive enclosure. The price seems reasonable for the specs and low power consumption. Not sure if USB will limit transfer speeds.
- ODROID HC-4 or similar SBCs. I feel like these have much lower performance for not much price savings, and it’s harder to get software running up because of ARM. But it seems like they don’t use too much power.
- Used enterprise PCs/servers. I know they can be found cheap used, but I’m a little lost at comparing the performance and power draw to other options.
- DIY build. I’m interested in getting a Mini-ITX case like this Jonsbo N2 and getting parts for it, but it seems like it will be the most expensive option. It does seem like the most modular and upgradable.
- Classic NAS products like Synology. It seems like these are falling out of favor because they are pretty under powered for the price.
What does selfhosted think about these options, and what would you recommend?
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I have a DIY NAS… Not sure of specs any more. Some micro-atx board with a cheaper AMD CPU. All it’s for is an NFS share and I use almost no resources on it.
I have a bunch of PI4 8GB and lenovo m92p tinys that I use for the compute. Their storage is the DIY NAS.
If I was starting out and planned on growing m’y setup, id go option 4. Just do an all in one thing, run everything on it. When you run out of ram/CPU consider a pi or mini like I have. When you need more disk, add it into the NAS.
If you just want something simple option 1. USB will 100% limit transfer speed but what kind of speed do you actually need? What will you run?
Is your NAS in an old tower PC?
I think I had the misconception that USB was slower than SATA, but USB-C is actually just as fast. And anything USB 3.0+ should be faster than 1 gigabit ethernet I guess?
Theoretically, USBC 3.1 has 10Gbit/s from what I’m reading so it sounds like you’re right. My concern is the chipset on the MoBo, how many lanes it has, and what it supports. I haven’t looked into it but I bet this is the limiting factor. Especially if you’re adding a lot of USB devices.
Yep, just an old PC that I moved into a case with hotswap hard drive bays. I also bought a LSI 9300-8i to support the hard drives.
