Minilab advice

[terrible-wasabi]

Hi all! I’d like to start my first mini homelab, and am looking for advice.

Use case: Proxmox server with services like paperless-ngx, jellyfin, audiobookshelf, home assistant, coder, gitea/forgejo, openmediavault, possibly also some *arrs, pfsense, adguard.

Hard constraints:
- Idle power draw needs to be <20W, ideally it’s less than 10W.
- Quiet, suitable for a living room in which guests may sleep occasionally.
- Small footprint, i.e. SFF PC or smaller
- At least 2.5 GbE (will be placed next to a 10 GiB/s fiber router)
- Should be easy to get repair parts if something breaks, no noname manufacturer
- Obtainable in Germany or Switzerland

Soft constraints:
- Price, thought about 300 EUR but can be less/more if it makes sense

Nice to have:
- Possibility to connect a GPU, I have a Titan X laying around. In order not to increase the idle power draw too much, this should be on demand. I imagine getting a used eGPU housing and connecting it via Thunderbolt or USB would be be best.
- Upgradable, e.g., start with 16 GB ram and have the option to go up to 64.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

 

[louie1961]

This is the route I went. You might need to go with an older generation unit given your budget, Mine is the G9 version with the i5-12500T processor and it draws 12 watts with the 10gbe optional NIC and two nvme SSDs installed. I am very happy with it.

 

[terrible-wasabi]

Thanks! I had started to check out the tiny Lenovos — this got me wondering, are there major differences between HP, Dell, Lenovo in this form factor regime to be aware of, or does it just come down to the specific models?

 

[louie1961]

Watch the reviews that Patrick has on the server the home youtube channel. There are differences. I specifically went HP because I wanted at least 2 NVMe slots so I could mirror the boot drive for Proxmox, and I wanted to be able to upgrade the NIC

 

[terrible-wasabi]

What a fun rabbit hole this sent me down -- thanks again for your advice!

The g9 mini indeed seems like a very nice unit, similar to the tiny m90q gen3/4. While searching for second hand versions of these I came across a very cheap second hand Intel NUC 13 Core i7 (NUC13ANHi7; sth review) and just couldn't resist. A bit of a bummer that it doesn't have dual NVMe Gen4. On the upside, there are two Thunderbold 4 ports (e.g., eGPU, 10GB SFP+), completely passive cases (akasa).

Guess next up is learning about Proxmox, and brtfs/zfs.