Except what you're talking about are usff desktops being used as servers. While the exact specifics mentioned in this thread may be old, a lot of the principles are general and still apply. As far as being a sticky, it's a good thread on the subject, so that's a ymmv since only the site staff can make what they deem sticky or not.
The truth about CPU power consumption
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Its not just USFF, also SFF home servers are very efficient and allow 3 pcie slots including wifi A+E, a few ssd's and nvme drive. My dell 400 g7 with an i5-10500, 64gb RAM with a few SSD's pulls around 7w from the wall when handling all the home background tasks, thats the same as an USFF but far more flexible. When performance is needed that can rocket up into the 60w area if for example im building/indexing a 10M record ldap instance. I suppose the question is, what is a home server these days? I class them as a silent, very efficient machine that handles background tasks for a home, including plex, firewall maybe, nas, automation and a sand pit for learning. If you require more than this, then it is a proper server thats needed, but thats a different story and a totally different price point.
I think that is a good question, and the answer will vary wildly depending on who answers.
From a manufacturer standpoint, there is no such thing as a 'home server' or has only sparsely been produced (unlike a 'home computer' which is its own category). Manufacturers simply make servers, typically rack mount, to go into racks in data centers. The whole idea of replicating this set up in the home is only possible because of the deep discounts these servers undergo after they retire from the data center (many times far cheaper than a desktop of similar specs). And hence this was the original driver behind homelabbing because the possibilities just opened up when the hardware became available.
Fast forward a couple of decades and now desktops also have many similar capabilities as full blown servers in terms of workload, while lacking in some common 'server' features such as out of band management, 10Gb, SAS, etc. So while they can do the job, to me desktops are desktops, and not servers even if they are performing the same role. My old Dell lga775 desktop repurposed as a NAS isn't a NAS by design, but by usage--the hardware is still classed as a desktop computer by the manufacturer. It is this flexibility in the PC architecture to fit many roles that has allowed it to flourish though, and that extends to desktops, servers, and everything in between.
So to me the definition if something is a server or not is not by the role or function it plays, but by the original hardware definition when made. So many routers that are really supermicro 1U servers are really servers to me and not routers, desktops are desktops, and the only real servers is a real hardware server. ymmv.
Interesting, i'm definitely in the server/client mindset, independent of the hardware. My first 'home server' was a SparcStation 20, many many years ago for learning SunOS when my career went from telecoms to IT. As time went on I moved to traditional servers as you say, DL380's, gen8 then Gen9, then to an ML150gen9...... then I realised I could do what im doing on a consumer PC both silently and efficiently. I leave the the rack servers to our data centres these days.
And then there are a lot of us that use server-grade hardware as a "desktop".
I'm retiring my current X9SRA-based desktop, and I was trying to think of a use for the hardware as some sort of server. Since it has two x16 slots, I was thinking something that needs GPUs.
I think a lot of today's workloads have shifted towards desktop use in the homelab simply because of the power costs, but to me there's no substitute for the real hardware if you need the same experience as in the data center.
Haha, I do that.
Especially when it was far more bang for the buck vs a desktop and I RDP into all my desktops from a thin client anyways.
Efficiency is all about power/watt, Many people have waaay more compute than they need, myself included. My expertise is in accelerated workflow scaling. My homelab is pretty heavy iron. My nas, is weak and old because it doesn't need more... it is slated for replacement but is handling its job for now.
I have an old ML310e Gen8 v2 with just a i5-4570TE in it. It was efficient when it was stood up, but an i3 n300 would be far more powerful than it for a fraction of the power. The problem is, these new atom solutions lack pcie lanes.
It is part of my infrastructure, my homelab is.... epyc, with both nvidia and amd accelerators.
I like SFF things, but I also love offline management. I wish there was a smaller scale SM cloud box with desktop chips and ipmi.
I have an old ML310e Gen8 v2 with just a i5-4570TE in it. It was efficient when it was stood up, but an i3 n300 would be far more powerful than it for a fraction of the power. The problem is, these new atom solutions lack pcie lanes.
It is part of my infrastructure, my homelab is.... epyc, with both nvidia and amd accelerators.
I like SFF things, but I also love offline management. I wish there was a smaller scale SM cloud box with desktop chips and ipmi.
You can always get an IP KVM box to give you that out of band management. Then you could use almost any box that has the compute and lanes and power requirements you need.