Hey folks. I’ve been running a media and torrenting server off an Odroid HC2 running OpenMediaVault 6 on Armbian. It’s been doing pretty great, and I have it set to run docker containers for qBittorrent, ProtonVPN, the *arrs, etc.
The problem I’m running into is that the HC2 has an arm32 CPU that is not supported by most apps, so I’m stuck running old images. I want to upgrade to a newer mini PC/SBC that is more future-friendly. I’d like it to be capable of running Plex streaming at 4K, Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr, etc. as well as other apps as docker containers. I might repurpose the HC2 to just run self-hosted NextDNS.
Here are my questions:
- What mini PCs or SBCs would you recommend? I’m leaning strongly towards a mini PC over an SBC because it would be more powerful, I don’t need specialized software for it, recovery and backups are much easier, etc. I’m not too concerned about power usage unless it’s extravagant.
- Which OS would you recommend as a media server?
- What is the simplest way to transfer my server over with minimal fuss? I use private trackers, so I’ll have to very carefully stand up the new server and transfer over torrents, etc. in one fell swoop. I’m guessing I should just be able to install the apps and then transfer over the configurations and media files and change permissions, etc.
- Anything else I need to consider?
Thanks!
The main concern with using a PC would be size, noise, heat, etc. If I can build something with a tiny form factor and minimal fuss, that could totally work.
You can get pretty sleek mini-pc in the price but, there performance is sub-par compared to the price they are asking for.
While itx for factor is very expensive, m-atx is cheaper and there are quite few sleek cases for them.
If you are looking for prebuilt mini pc, asustor flashtor is pretty sleek if you only want m.2 storage.
I want to support my existing HDDs as well as M.2s, so the Asustor is out. m-atx is interesting, I like that it’s flexible for ongoing upgrades.