I’m trying to start out self-hosting and was looking for some good servers. I have a budget of ~100 USD and am in the US. I was initially going to get some type of raspberry pi but they seem to always be sold out here
I’m trying to start out self-hosting and was looking for some good servers. I have a budget of ~100 USD and am in the US. I was initially going to get some type of raspberry pi but they seem to always be sold out here
I’d go with something like this Lenovo M900 for $80-$90 used. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and find one with a single 8GB stick, then you can get another for ~$20 and you’ve got a quad core x84-64 machine with 16GB of RAM for right around $100.
The downside would be power consumption compared to a Pi if you’re trying to fit in a severely power-constrained setup, but the M900 will draw around 11-13W idle and 55W under higher load. so it’s not bad my any means.
^ Lenovo tiny thinkcenters are the best thing ever. Heck, I use the older haswell-era M73s that you can get for $30-40 on ebay and they’re amazing. Only drawback is no m.2 and no PCIe expandability but if you’re on a budget and want a starter homelab you can literally cluster 3 of these things for ~$100
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is there a good way to set up storage for a mini pc for something like plex or jellyfin?
I believe the M900 has both a SATA port and a M.2 slot, so some options for internal storage.
You could also plug in a big spinning drive via USB 3. USB 3 can move data faster than a magnetic drive can pull it off the platters.
I have an m900 that i got free at work, and upgraded it with a 2TB 2.5" sata ssd… in raid 0. if it burns it burns, but i also dont have any important data on it. Can really recommend the tiny lenovo for plex/jellyfin setup for 2-5 people.