Comment on Recommended mini pc for a homelab?
irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Recently I decommissioned a Dell T320 and replaced it with a Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM all for right at the $200 mark. I’m running a total of 52 containers on it right now with load averages looking like 0.31, 0.51, 0.72. The Dell T320 running the same 52 containers cost me $40 USD per month to run. The Dell 7020 costs me $5-8 USD per month to run 24/7. If you wanted a wider tower, I set up a Dell 9020 for a friend of mine’s son who wanted to get into selfhosting at the age of 10. Similar running costs. I’ve got an Optiplex 3020 with 16 GB RAM and a 4 TB external drive running Proxmox quite well and costs probably $3 USD per month. I’m pretty well chuffed with the performance so far of the 7020, and in fact am eyeballing another one to replace a second Dell T320.
I honestly need to learn your ways and sell the rack of stuff in my basement. Right now I’ve got an old R720XD with 12 spinning metal drives and 2 SSDs, then another old Intel box the local government used for VOIP (I’ve only got 7 spinng rust and 1 SSD in there), then the R610 that I use for homeassistant and a few VMs…
I’ve also got a smaller desktop for jellyfin/Plex and an old MicroServer (gen8) for a firewall…
I could 100% save some power I just need to learn what I actually need.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago Well, it all started way back when, with a misunderstanding in my mind about what a homelab is. Back then, in my mind a server was this big, honkin’, brutal piece of equipment. Over the years I came to realize that all that rack stuff, while cheap upfront on the used market, was costing me some serious bucks in energy consumption + the added load on the AC, even when electricity in my locale is relatively cheap. Since I already was invested, I didn’t want to redo everything and start from scratch. Then the ‘mini-racks’ started to be a thing with Lenovo’s and such. I saw that others were doing what I wanted to do with much less. So, now days, it doesn’t take much of a computer to run docker containers, Proxmox, etc. Far more energy efficient, doesn’t generate so much heat load, and significantly more quiet.
In the near future, my goal is to miniaturize my lab, and then build me a $4k AI machine. Out of the frying pan into the fire yes, but I haven’t had new equipment in well over 15+ years. I’ve always had used or refurb’s. I think it’s about time to treat myself.
16mhz@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago Have you considered a new gen? an 8th gen would offer better efficiency and performance and more feature like quick sync hardware decoding for most encoders out there. Srill, i’m impressed by the consumption difference.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago I generally try to ride the DDR3 cap as far as equipment. IIRC Intel 8th gen Coffee Lake require DDR4. DDR3 is cheap. So there is a trade off yes, but you’re right, it would be more efficient. When I finally build me a new computer, I will go all the way to DDR5, or whatever is the latest and greatest at that time. The T320 is a great server, it just drinks some electricity. The money I save on electricity, I could pay for another 7020. LOL Thought about selling the T320 on ebay, but I doubt someone would want to pay what it would cost to ship a boat anchor. Maybe CraigsList, local pickup.
FukOui@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I’m now curious what’s services are you hosting. It’s hard for me to imagine hosting more than 10 containers/ services lol
The easiest way for me to show you is just a screen shot of my dashboard:
spoiler
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I’ve added a couple since that screen grab.
FukOui@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Woah cool. This looks neater and more organized than subdomain based routing on my reverse proxy.
What dashboard software are you using?
Homarr