I’ve been eyeing these devices for some time now. The price point is… delicious!
I saw some opensource-ish project one day that mentioned that they are building an OS around Plex and other media servers and using these N5105s and selling the package for USD500ish (I think).
So I went hunting for the hardware and found it on Aliexpress for that cheap (sub USD200).
Does anyone have experience running these? How hard is it to get Ubuntu running on them? I dislike that they ship with Windows 11. Would be a few bucks cheaper if they shipped with Ubuntu or no OS, right?
Also, what about running docker on them? Can they support your usual homelab stuff? Portainer, Pi-hole, *arr softwares, a dashboard, etc.
I use a similar one of these (different io panel and case) for OPNSense and it’s been a delight. Not sure how well it would handle Plex but if you don’t need to transcode the files it should be fine. I bought one without ram, os, and storage for $150 last year. That listing isn’t available anymore.
You bought it from Aliexpress too?
Yes, the seller was Topton Computer Store. No complaints from me on the purchase/process!