Hi friends. I’m a newbie in self-hosting, though I’ve been managing (virtual) linux servers at work for a couple of years. I’m completely ignorant on the hardware choices out there, hopefully you can point me to the right direction.

Here are my requisites:

  • Low power consumption, I plan to have it connected 24/7 and I’m kinda concerned on how much it will impact the electricity bill
  • Ethernet port, preferably gigabit but whatever
  • Graphical performance is not important as I don’t plan to connect it to any display. As long as I can ssh into it, I’m good.

Services I plan on installing, for starters:

  • casaOS
  • pi-hole, or equivalent
  • Home Assistant
  • Kitchen Owl (nice to have)
  • Paperless-ngx (nice to have)

I live in europe and my budget is around 80 euros or so. Thanks in advance!

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
    51·
    11 months ago

    As a point of reference regarding power consumption:

    I’ve been running a desktop non-stop for the last ten years (built as a gaming rig) as a file/media server, so it’s probably the worst thing you can run this way, power-wise. Has an 800 watt power supply, running windows.

    I’ve done the math many times, costs me about $1/day in power at mostly idle.

    Just presenting a worst-case example as a guideline.

    I’ve recently spun up a Raspberry Pi Zero W for PiHole, DHCP, DNS, Tailscale, Joplin and Bitwarden. It’s maximum power draw is TWO WATTS. Haha

    Currently running a watt meter on the desktop, should have some decent actual numbers from it soon, but can’t imagine idle is any less than 50 watts.

    So there’s two extremes. Don’t be me (looks like you aren’t!)

    Edit: I wouldn’t recommend the Zero W for this, it’s underpowered. I’m already overloading it with just PiHole and Tailscale, honestly.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Yeah same. I have several machines that whirrr all the time. The power cost and usage is fairly negligible. The real costs in the house are appliances. OP will save more energy by getting a more power efficient fridge or dishwasher than worry about a computer being on in the closet

  • Presi300@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    My whole “homelab” is made of either things I literally found in the trash, hand-me downs and 2nd part stuff I got for extremely cheap. It’s no speed deamon, but it’s got 8cores, 16GB ram and gigabit… What I’m trying to say is, that is most likely also an option for you and there is no reason to buy the latest and greatest of hardware for running simple things like pi-hole. As for the electricity bill, unless you’re running something computationally intensive 24/7 or just a ton of hard drives, I wouldn’t worry about it.

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Have a look at the ServeTheHome site and channel on youtube … he’s done a load of good reviews of AliExpress devices and some tiny/mini/micro devices (think thinclients)

    He covers power consumption and some interesting points (like which recent multi-Gb NICs are supported by pfSense / Proxmox / etc)

    Just watching those should at least help you decide what you need.

    I was going to build my own virt server and I ended up with a low power, silent, passively cooled box to run all my VMs in… for much cheap.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    PSU Power Supply Unit
    PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
    RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
    SBC Single-Board Computer
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

    7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

    [Thread #367 for this sub, first seen 21st Dec 2023, 14:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    +1 for CasaOS! The simplest and best I’ve tried.

    Lots of good suggestions here already but nobodys mentioned the Asrock A300 DeskMini. Low power consumption and you could probably find one for pretty cheap.

    Obviously an old laptop you don’t use anymore is a great and affordable choice too. Comes with a built-in battery backup!

  • UnPassive@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Try a used laptop. Cheap, power efficient, built in UPS, small. Can be quite powerful and some are even upgradable