Question: What are some alternatives to a Raspberry Pi good for a small home server?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨GreenShimada@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hi all,

I want to spin up a small home server. Nothing crazy, maybe 4 or 8GB ram at most. 1 Docker instance running a few privacy frontends (Invidious, Redlib, Xcancel, SearxNG, etc.) and split tunneling VPN connections for each one.

Obviously, a Raspberry Pi 4 or higher is the internet’s favorite choice, but I don’t need wireless connectivity, I just need a single HDMI and 2 USB ports to get everything set up, one ethernet port, and a dream in my heart.

Has anyone use alternatives like Le Potato or Orange Pi? I’m curious what their community support is like, and if there’s a FOSS-friendly standard.

Thanks!

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Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Used micro PC is often the best deal. Companies offload old SFF i5 and lower machines all the time. They’re all over eBay.

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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I used to be of the erroneous mind set that a server had to be some big honkin’, dim the lights, piece of equipment, but that’s not necessarily true now days with modern architecture. Doesn’t take a lot to get a lot back.
  
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  - Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I’m shocked with what I’ve been able to do with an old Dell SFF desktop.
    
    Upgraded to 48GB of ram it’s running ESXi hosting a couple Debian VMs, a DietPi VM, 3 Windows VMs, a massive data drive, idles under 20w and peaks at 80w when I’m doing video conversion.
    
    At this point I’m shopping for some old mini PCs to run the VMs as independent servers because their idle power is so low.
    
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  - Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Dude same. Back in the day I was dead set on getting older blades and a couple Dell 710 in a rack and “that’s what a real homelab is.”
    
    Now, I still got the rack because I think they look cool, but it’s all decommissioned workstations, a white box unRaid server, and micro/mini PCs; there’s not a single traditional server box in place.
    
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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah, I was looking earlier, and sort of didn’t know what to even look for, but then everyone here made suggestions of what to look for. I’m all over this!
  
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  - Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Idk if you ever wander over to Reddit, but there’s a poster in /r/homelabsales selling 7 Dell mini PC systems right now.
    
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- sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This is the way to Go!
  
  I have a HP Elitedesk 800 G4 Mini which is running everything (besides storage) in my Home Network. You can Look at the Tiny/Mini/Micro section at Serve the Home servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicr…
  
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Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
A larger sized used motherboard or even a new cheap one often has more capability if you can deal with something that is larger…

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zebidiah@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Unless you specifically need ultra low power draw, a minipc is always a better bang for your buck, the cheapest solution is the dusty old laptop sitting on the shelf at the back of your closet…

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exu@feditown.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Get a NUC or old laptop and install your distro of choice on it. Much less hassle than barely supported ARM boards with ancient kernels.

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cmbabul@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
For a first machine a used Mac mini, especially one that precedes the T2 chip(although that’s not a deal breaker) is probably the best bang for the buck, solid hardware that will get what most people really want from a server unless they want a full on homelab, and they are easy to find cheaply on eBay. Also comes with the advantage of being able to run OSX with fewer hoops if you had a specific use case for that(running blue bubbles in the background or syncing to iCloud… mostly just convenience stuff if you have a leg in that ecosystem could also make a potential slow migration away less irritating)

If you can find a cheap NUC first tell me where because they are great options

Lenovo think centers can be found refurbed for under $100 too and will also be available for a long time because those fuckers were in every bank, hospital/drs office, and all manner of non-tech related offices for years and years.

Or you could be like me and jump two feet in with a used enterprise server, I dunno if I’d recommend this but I do know a lot more than I did when I started and have tons power and capacity to expand. And I’ve gotten more than enough use out of them to justify the $300ish I paid for my Poweredges plus electric bills. But do your research it took me a year to find documents on how to bypass the idrac drive virtualization bullshit and my power draw significantly dropped afterwards

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HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It always starts small. I started with a 15 year old pre-ryzen AMD laptop, and an old external USB 4TB hard drive. NEW the laptop was $299.

A year later, I have a ruckus/brocade managed switch, a Lenovo M700 Tiny running home assistant and Jellyfin, while my main media/file server is a Xeon E3-1275v3 with 2 SSDs, and 6 8TiB SAS3 enterprise hard drives in a ZFS pool. And a Pi5 running adguard home as my DNS server.

And I’ve already used 60% of it. 🤣🤣

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opavader@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
radxa has very good sbc’s at the most economical pricing and great software support. only thing is they get sold out pretty quickly. something like X4 or rock 5B will be best for your needs. dragon q6a is also extremely efficient but they get sold out almost immediately after stock comes.

they sell through arace.tech so subscribe to them if for back in stock alerts

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Andonome@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I run a RockPro64 with Arch Arm. No need for a monitor - you just connect over SSH.

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anon_8675309@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Nanopi. I have a couple. They’re not bad.

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some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’ve owned a few devices like Orange Pi but really more as a curiosity that I never did much with. I have, however, seen discussions suggesting that when you move away from the RasPi ecosystem, support for various tooling gets more complicated because you’re in a much smaller pool of hardware and this makes them more effort to setup. I don’t know the validity of that, but it sounded plausible to me.

Just get a Pi. Just because you don’t need wifi doesn’t mean it won’t potentially be useful down the road.

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WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It probably isn’t going to cost less to get something without wifi.

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sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Lenovo thinkcentre tinys

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Fedegenerate@fedinsfw.app ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I went rpi4>n100> a couple n100s and that pi> the dxp4800, I think it’s a pentium, and those n100s. I think I’m ok here, I have networking, compute + local backup, and storage all in their own box.

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dihutenosa@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Get an old Android phone, possibly with a dead screen (bootloader must be unlocked). Flash PostmarketOS on it, or (if not supported) Termux. Its idle usage (with WiFi on, screen off) may be considerably less than 1w. It’ll have considerable amounts of CPU cores and RAM, more than a cheap VPS.

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happydoors@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Going directly against your ask: a raspberry pi 3b is cheap and has what you need. :)

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Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
There are companies dealing with used and refurbished hardware. There are loads of PCs around that are not bloated enough for Win11, but still make good home servers. Depending on specs and prices, buy more than one for extra RAM, a second SSD, and spare parts.

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- blargh513@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  An old laptop from about 13 years ago barely breaks a sweat running proxmox and a handful of containers and two vms.
  
  Waste not want not. Plus it comes with a keyboard, touchpad and monitor. Plus, built in ups. You might need to add a USB Ethernet dongle but you don’t have to.
  
  I bet just about anyone you know has their old laptop in a drawer somewhere. They’d probably give it to you.
  
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Monument@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I just bought a Mac mini for $50 from a local university’s surplus store. I plan to use it as spare hdd space for another device (it came with a 1tb drive), but even being older, it’s still very capable.
Perhaps a similar device could work for you?

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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yep, I forgot we have an older MBP that can still manage minimums for Docker. Already had redlib up on it.
  
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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  We have two very prominent universities in the area. Around graduation I discreetly dumpster dive their trash bins. You’d be surprised what I’ve found. Laptops, desktops usually small form factor, monitors, you name it.
  
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  - WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    you mean, unseparated from the rest of the trash?
    
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Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
This was just posted to selfhosted, and does a great job showing what RPi is competing with.

It’s a tool for seeing actual idle wattage draw for a lot of mini-PCs.

Many are in the single-digit idle power - the RPi claim to fame - but have a lot more capability than Pi, plus come in useful packages.

Just thought it would be a useful link for here.

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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Thanks!
  
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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Very good resource. Bookmarked.
  
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Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If you don’t mind some low specs, and are focused on lowest price, a potato pi runs for about $30 IIRC, and is plenty to do small stuff like an openvpn server.

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5in1k@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Dell 3060 Micro.

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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yet another good option. Just looked them up on Amazon. Going for around $130 USD.
  
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  - 5in1k@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I found a bunch of ddr4 and ssds in scrap so I ordered some bare ones to make a server. Two 3060’s and two 3070’s. With the 6 core chips.
    
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zergtoshi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
As others mentioned used SFF PCs, here’s my recommendation based on my own experience.

I bought several used Dell Wyse 5070. The 5070 was announced in May 2018 and used as thin client.
They’re tiny, silent (no fan) and you can fit a NVMe SSD via adapter (PCIe A/E key -> M key) in the WiFi card slot next to a SATA SSD. I picked the ones with Intel Celeron J4105 (Quad Core) with 1.5GHz, up to 2.5GHz burst and put 32 GB RAM in one of them (that was before prices went nuts).
Beware, only if you pick the right dual ranked RAM modules (e.g. Patriot PSD416G26662S), you can have a max. of 2x16 GB. To start your journey, 4 or 8 GB might just be enough and don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Now I have a PVE (Proxmox Virtual Environment) running with several virtual servers and lxc, one 5070 hosts a PBS (Proxmox Backup Server) and both devices are far from their limit. In case of hardware failure I have spare 5070s.
Each 5070 cost around $65 and runs at around 8 watts at average. Dunno about current prices though.

It fits my needs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it fits your needs as well?

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  8 watts… That’s RPi territory but with lots more actual horsepower when needed, in a useful package.
  
  I love the concept of the Pi, but this stuff is so hard to compete with.
  
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  - zergtoshi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    It can go higher than the 8 watts, though.
    The 8 watts are with rather low CPU load, but with 1 SATA SSD and 1 NVMe SSD.
    At full CPU load I expect it to be closer to 15 watts. With what the device is runningn high load happens rarely and not for long.
    
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irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I actually have one of these: Dell Optiplex 3020 Micro

Has a 16 GB RAM max. Doesn’t come with HDMI but you can utilize one of these VGA/HDMI or Display port /HDMI

Surprisingly snappy little machines. Drop in another 8 GB stick of RAM for $25 and you’re off to the races.

Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 maxed out to 32 gb RAM are pretty nice too and can be found on Amazon for around $125.

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- CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  The newer Dell Optiplex micro like the 5070 come with more modern hardware, HDMI and all that. I was fortunate to get a couple for free from my BIL who works in IT and was given them as E-waste.
  
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I usually try to stay within the upper ranks of DDR3 equipment. DDR4, while a better option, is far more pricey than DDR3.
    
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- Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Gonna second the dell optiplex. Been using one for my home server for a while now, and it’s been perfect.
  
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  - irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I have actually been rather pleasantly surprised with the 7020 SFF. Going in, I was like 'OK it’s a $117 USD. Not going to break the bank to test it out. So I now have 40+ containers running on the 720 and my load averages look like it’s not even turned on. LOL
    
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StrawberryPigtails@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Last I checked (roughly 2 years ago, preRAM price spike) SBCs weren’t the most cost effective option for self hosting anymore. I would actually look into used thin clients or desktops. Even new, the hardware is often less expensive and more capable than SBCs. Sometimes they’re also more power efficient.

As for community support for the SBCs other than RPi, for most of them it has been close to non existent. Some better than others but the RPi was the community favorite and got all the attention due to its low price at the time.

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B0rax@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Used Lenovo mini PCs are nice (m720q for example)

Or for example the Futro S740 if you do not need the power of the m720q

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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Scrounge an old laptop, maybe super cheap if the screen isn’t completely working. Plug in a monitor to deal with screen problems.

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- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Power demand on an old laptop might actually cost you more in the long run.
  
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  - isgleas@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    How many cents per month would you estimate? Would it break the bank?
    
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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Yeah, that’s my fallback idea. I would sort of prefer the ease of a single board option I can just shove behind the router, but this might be easier.
  
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  - sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Note that I have seen a lot of people make some really cool “rehousings” of their laptops to turn them into transparent boxes mounted to the wall, usually made of something like acrylic. They look awesome, but haven’t tried it myself since I just self-host using my laptop in its original chassis
    
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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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
ESXi	VMWare virtual machine hypervisor
NUC	Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVMe	Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
PCIe	Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
PoE	Power over Ethernet
RPi	Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
SATA	Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SBC	Single-Board Computer
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage
SSH	Secure Shell for remote terminal access
VPS	Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
ZFS	Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

[Thread #327 for this comm, first seen 2nd Jun 2026, 07:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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riimoh@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Also to consider are NUCs. I for one got a Firebat with N100 and 8 or 16 GB of RAM and it was already a few years ago cheaper than a RPi 4.

N100 CPU beats any SBC in every aspect except maybe power? Still very low consumption tho. This will leave you headroom for years of selfhosting, because once you get going, there is no coming back.

Nothing more valuable in privacy terms than keeping your photos off the cloud (immich), then data off the cloud (copyparty, nextcloud,…). It never stops and the n100 will support that no problem.

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- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  N100/N150 doesn’t use that much more power and going for x64 instead of ARM could be a pretty big benefit too. Depends on what you want of course.
  
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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Awesome idea, thanks! I want something that can spend 99% of the time just hiding behind other consoles, and this would work perfectly for that.
  
  Personally, I shuffle photos from my phone to my laptop and then backup manually, which is not awesome. Having my own cloud-based backups for that would be great. Might even get my partner to go for it, which is the hard sell.
  
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HelloRoot@lemy.lol ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I’m using soquartz compute modules on soquartz blades, because of the nvme slot and PoE. Just one cable for each is so nice in a tiny rack. They are running dietpi and docker swarm with dokploy.

I generally recommend the pine64 stuff, but shipping and tax might be high depending on where you live :/

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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Thanks - I’ll check them out.
  
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qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If you dont need an sbc or something arm based mini pcs/thin clients/laptops work well. I run redlib, yamtrack and a monero node on hp t630 w/ 16GB ram (bought before the rampocalypse for ~ $60) and a torrent seedbox/streaming nas on wyse 3040 (~$10). Here’s a great website about thin clients www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml

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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Thanks - I think a NUC/thin client will be how I end up going. I just didn’t even think about them in terms of meeting the criteria of “small thing I can leave running and not care about.” I think I still have an old laptop my partner used to use that would work, which might be my tester.
  
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  - Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I was looking at bee-link a while back, shame prices have gone through the roof on everything though.
    
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- determinist@kbin.earth ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I have a 16GB ram HP t630 running vaultwarden (bought for £50) and some other stuff and a HP ProDesk 400 G5 16GB ram (bought for £100) running jellyfin & immich. They're great. I also have a Wyse 3040 that I intend to run as pihole, just haven't got round to it yet.
  
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pro_user@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Have a look at DietPi. That is a single-board-computer optimized Linux distribution that, in contradiction to what the name might suggest, runs on (almost) all of the SBC’s out there. It has stripped away all the things you don’t need and only installs and loads what is needed to run the software you choose, resulting in a very lightweight but powerful operating system for these kinds of devices. It has its own software catalog with a broad selection of optimized software, but you can of course install anything you want. Ive been running this on a Raxda Rock4 without any problems, and would definitely suggest this even on a Raspberry over the regular Pi image.

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- SavinDWhales@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  +1 on dietpi
  
  Have it running on a HP t630 I got for <20€, as “the wifi stick is no longer detected”.
  
  …right.
  
  Also got a Wyse 5070 for about 50€ with 8gb ram. The HP is pulling a little less Watts, so it’s the pihole/unbound server for now
  
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- kindenough@kbin.earth ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Dietpi is a great suggestion.
  
  Running rpi4 + pihole on dietpi for years now. It is overkill but solid. Updates thru SSH...easy does it.
  
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- GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Will do, thanks!
  
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- john_t@piefed.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Plus one for Dietpi here. It really simplified installing all my services on a Pi Zero, and it’s available for most chinese SBC brands and x86 too. If I can find an used thin client for 60 euros with low shipping costs I’ll definitely use Dietpi.
  
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