I am looking to get into self hosting, for setting up a simple plex + nextcloud server. However I also would like to buy a nice desktop pc soon which I would like to access at at least two locations, I think I should be able to combine this with a home server but I unsure what the best way to do this/what are the right software tools for this. The situation currently is: I have a television in my living room on which me and my partner regularly game (for now using an hdmi cable and a shitty laptop) and we have a study room where we work and play games involving a keyboard (currently also on laptop). I would like to be able to access the compute of the desktop in both locations, for this I see two options:

  1. Setup a small mini pc that is also connected to the tv, use it to always run nextcloud + plex, set the main pc in the study and use steam link to forward just games to the tv.
  2. Put the pc in the living room connected to the tv and use it as a home server, and setup a small pc in the study connected to the monitors and other peripherals. Then connect to the main pc with a different tool.

Option 1 seems more simple but a bit limited, while option 2 should give a more powerful home server but also increase power draw (I have been thinking if there could be a good solution to this using wake-on-lan when it is not in use) but also needing a more refined way of connecting the two pcs. For sharing the computational power I have found steamlink, a remote desktop (like anydesk/teamviewer), and I have some experience with using SSH which is nice for coding but doesn’t seem to work well for anything graphical. Any advice or insight what would be a good way to set this up would be appreciated!

  • @just_another_person
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    42 months ago

    You don’t mention what you want Nextcloud for specifically, but it sounds like you really just want a NAS for the most part. Off the shelf brands like Synology and Qnap are great, or you can get/build a box to host FreeNAS or TrueNAS.

    This streamlines what you intend to do and skips some extra steps.

  • youmaynotknow
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    2 months ago

    I would get a cheap MinisForum/Beelink mini-pc with an i5 and install Yunohost, or Casaos, or Cosmos or something like that, really easy to install, use and maintain.

    To access the PC, just add a Wireguard server to your mini-pc server, set wireguard client on the PC, AND and you’re ready.

    I got this one for around US$360 and added a SATA 4TB SSD to it, running all my services out of it and have yet to see it hit 50W.

    MINISFORUM Mini PC NAB6 Lite Intel Core i5-12600H,12 Cores 16 Threads,up to 4.7GHz 32GB RAM DDR4 512GB PCIe4.0 SSD Dual 2.5 G RJ45 LAN Mini Desktop Computer,2 x HDMI,7 x USB Port,WiFi 6,BT5.2 https://a.co/d/a5BzT7t