Comment on Best "bang for your buck" NUC/Pi setup for Jellyfin/HomeAssistant/PiHole?
brandon@lemmy.world 1 day agoWhile N100 is great for what it is, especially at a $200 budget, but it can be limiting with its fairly small core/thread count if you expand beyond a handful of applications.
OP mentioned tinkering with multiple Linux flavors. A higher end cpu, with more cores and threads, would allow them to virtualize multiple instances on top of whatever other workloads they have and potentially not break a sweat while the N100 could struggle. While such and upgrade would be more expensive, price for performance will likely be significantly better if you can make use of it.
linkinkampf19@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
So I was spitballing there with the Linux stuff. Really I just wanna get something I can VNC into and be headless with a webUI. Something in the PopOS / Mint area if possible, but any other more specialized options could be nice. What would be a “next step up” from the n100 if you know? I’m seeing stuff in the 12th Gen arena as just that.
brandon@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It’s tricky to make a recommendation as pretty much all the home lab stuff that people typically run can be done so on a potato, which is why RPis are so popular.
An N100 would definitely be a step up from the pis and meet your stated needs. They are super popular, in a multitude of formfactors so should be able to find something you like. But you may get the itch to upgrade further if you expect to expand or experiment extensively. Like any hobby, it’s generally easy to justify to yourself that you need to get that “next cool/better/faster/prettier thing” so such an itch may be unavoidable no matter what you get.
Instead of worrying about performance, as pretty much any modern miniPC should outclass a Pi, take a look at the specific form factors that are available. Do they have the expansion, networking you need? Can you stick this thing somewhere out of the way and not worry about it taking too much space or making too much noise? Are you comfortable with their level of support/warranty? Expect garbage/non-existent support from most of the miniPC specialty brands out there, which includes minisforum which I recommended in another comment. If you outgrow it, are you comfortable with it being e-waste/have a means of repurposing it?
linkinkampf19@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Right on the money. I know that this’ll be a hobby I can grow for a while, just gotta find that balance of "is this good enough, or just one more device/peripheral/etc? Right now, I just wanna be able to shove it into my tiny network cabinet (the ones that are included with many new houses). This is what I’m working with currently:
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Certainly far from winning any pageants lol. That said, The n100 units, or comparable, are the perfect size to shove into this (sans the two Pis already in there). And yeah, warranty/support-wise, I’m cool with this being an “I’m on my own”, as I don’t even know how far I’ll take this. The e-waste bit, well… I don’t really throw anything out. Not a hoarder outside of the digital sense, and repurposing tech is something I’m able to do working for a school district with young tinkerer minds, so to eventually hand this stuff down to them even if just for a stockpile of tech to mess with, is my end goal.