I have a refurbished Lenovo Thinkcentre that I was running Truenas off of. Everything was working great, but it got hit with a power surge and after lots of trouble shooting it appears the motherboard is fried and I don’t trust my ability to soder and fix it.
No now I need to upgrade my setup. Wondering what is a good sub $300 computer I can order that will run Jellyfin, Immich, and a few light services off of? With Truenas you seem to need two SSDs. One to boot and one to run apps, so it seems like a mini PC will not work.
I have a seperate HDD drive bay with a few hdd’s in it full of shows and picture. Just need a PC to run my services.
I would prefer something I can order off Amazon or can be shipped quickly so I can get back up and running again.
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Any post-2015 laptop would work. Look around in your local recycling bins :D
Not much right now due to LLM training hogging all of the memory across the industry. Best bet is lightly used.
For a server like this 4GB of DDR4 is enough. And that is cheap still.
Not with TrueNAS, ZFS is a RAM hog. They suggest 8gb minimum, and you really don’t want the minimum AND adding more stuff on top. That said 16gb isn’t too painful.
Possibly, but it’s going to have issues. Immich can run on 4GB if you disable machine learning features for image recognition and such. And Jellyfin can run on a minimal system with 4GB if you have a graphics card, but with integrated graphics likely to be in a sub-$300 system the recommend 8GB. And graphics cards are still expensive even after the crypto craze has settled because LLMs benefit but also because of the artificial memory shortages they’ve created. Running both might work if you set a lot of virtual memory and never have them operating at the same time so it’s not swapping constantly. And that’s not leaving room for the other stuff. I’d say you could squeak by with 16GB, but that’s going to be most of the budget even for low-end, off brand sticks that are available right now.
My last build and current have been a Thinkstation and a z series workstation, both used from ex-gov auctions, were decently priced, will run everything you wanna throw at them.
They do come at the cost of increased power draw, but since I’ve put in solar I’m not worried about that.
You actually can use a minipc. Minisforum has their NAB series and those have a slot in their internals for an SSD and they have an NVME slot in the motherboard. I found a NAB9 with an NVME, SSD, and 16GB of ram for around $310. So I would look for used NAB6s (cheaper than NAB9) on EBay. You should find some for under 300 with the Data SSD and NVME.
It won’t be on Amazon, but I found a ton of older generation Mac minis available on Craigslist in my area. I picked one up for $50 and installed Ubuntu server. Thing’s been running like a champ for 2 years.
Edit: should have fully read your post. No idea about installing truenas on it. I’d assume most would be single ssd machines.
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Not that old. Pretty sure mine is an intel i5.
+1 on Mac mini as well. I just checked OfferUp in my area and M1-M5 are insanely expensive ($500+, M1 coming out about 6 years ago) but really good machines especially for their size and decent on power consumption too.
But downside of a M series is either you run macOS or Asahi Linux and nothing else yet.
So go for the Intel Mac Minis which are much cheaper and can run nearly any Linux distro with little to no issues as you would on a Windows PC. I’m seeing $50 range in my area as well. Older are good because RAM can be upgraded on some of them, but not all. Would be wise to do research on whichever seems right.
But downside of a M series is either you run macOS or Asahi Linux and nothing else yet.
I’m OOTL; what is it about Apple Silicon Macs that apparently make them such trouble to support? If one distro can manage it, what’s stopping that code from being upstreamed to the mainline kernel etc.?
A word of warning on Linux on Mac though. Oftentimes there can be weird quirks with power management and suspend/hibernate. For a server though I guess that point is moot.
You can go far below $300 with very little practical performance compromise, but I wouldn’t even look on Amazon with memory prices being what they are lately. Get an old DDR3 era Optiplex desktop on eBay, throw a $25 Quadro P400 in it for transcoding, and transfer your existing SSDs over. Tons of eBay listings have 2-4 day shipping. With DDR3 you can easily get 16GB of RAM for like $30 if it doesn’t have enough already. Avoiding DDR4/DDR5 will save a ton of money so it’s essential to buy used.
The SSDs and hard drives for the array are by far the most expensive part. I’ve been using an underclocked and undervolted Ryzen 1700 in my server for 6 years now and have zero complaints around CPU performance. I did eventually need more than 16GB of RAM last year, but the only outright failures I’ve had are on the various component’s fans.
If you want a NAS on the cheap my preference is just get any cheap “normal” PC, a case with a good amount of HDD bays. Move the drives into the PC, and you have all the expand ability you could dream of. You can find plenty of DDR4 machines for cheap now. Then as ram prices come down you can go up to 128gb of ram as long as your board has 4 slots.
Anything on craigslist/FB marketplace will work.
This is the ticket. I got an enormous case in trade with a hoarder buddy, used mobo/cpu on ebay, new cheapo PSU, etc
Still just have 3 drives in but space for like 10 of them once I install the 2x cd bay hdd holder that fits a few more drives.
I use a nucbox mini pc and two usb ext hdds to run a jellyfin server and a samba file server. Works great. Im using Lubuntu – i dont exactly recommend it, but it works fine enough. Any lite Linux distro would probably work great. Here’s a picture of my janky “server rack” setup:
If you want a lot of cores, there are xeon kits on aliexpress and other websites, xeon e5-2650 v4 or v3 has a lot of cores and consume very few energy, mainly the v4 (comparing to other server cpus), it has a lot of pci express lanes, etc.
Consume very few energy
Don’t go with ancient hardware if you are wanting energy efficiency
mainly the v4 (comparing to other server cpus)
It consumes less energy than the other server cpus from intel that are generally available.
The CPU may not use too much power, but the chipset and all the supporting circuitry will. Supporting 4/8channel memory aint free. And RAM can use a ton of power too.
Except the hardware itself is really old which means that the performance will be much lower and thus the CPU usage will be higher. The older systems also have much slower memory and bus speeds.
You would be much better buying a more modern consumer CPU since the performance boost will mean that the CPU utilization will be lower. Most workloads including Jellyfin do not benefit from tons of slow CPU cores. Things will work better the higher CPU and ram frequently you have.
Server CPUs are a poor choice outside of very specific applications
My E5-2667 v4 (8 cores, higher frequency) using almost nothing of energy while watching some asmr on freetube and responding:
Edit: it has a higher tdp than the 2650 v4, and has 16gb of ddr4 ram
11W is actually a lot lower than what I was expecting. It isn’t crazy efficient but it isn’t bad.
Are you sure it supports DDR4? The Intel spec page says it has a clock of around 2.5GHz with DDR3 memory
From dmidecode, DDR4:
Edit: Broadwell supports both DDR3 and DDR4, with some caveats
Handle 0x0073, DMI type 17, 40 bytes Memory Device Array Handle: 0x0070 Error Information Handle: Not Provided Total Width: 72 bits Data Width: 72 bits Size: 8 GiB Form Factor: DIMM Set: None Locator: DIMM_B1 Bank Locator: NODE 1 Type: DDR4 Type Detail: Synchronous Speed: 2667 MT/s Manufacturer: Undefined Serial Number: A64010B5 Asset Tag: DIMM_B1_AssetTag Part Number: Rank: 1 Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s Minimum Voltage: 1.14 V Maximum Voltage: 1.26 V Configured Voltage: 1.2 V Handle 0x0076, DMI type 17, 40 bytes Memory Device Array Handle: 0x0070 Error Information Handle: Not Provided Total Width: 72 bits Data Width: 72 bits Size: 8 GiB Form Factor: DIMM Set: None Locator: DIMM_D1 Bank Locator: NODE 1 Type: DDR4 Type Detail: Synchronous Speed: 2667 MT/s Manufacturer: Undefined Serial Number: A6401009 Asset Tag: DIMM_D1_AssetTag Part Number: Rank: 1 Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s Minimum Voltage: 1.14 V Maximum Voltage: 1.26 V Configured Voltage: 1.2 V
I would pickup a old workstation of of a site like eBay. Last time I was shopping around they were pretty cheap but that was pretty insanity pricing
Yep. Assuming you’re in the US, searching eBay for “Dell optiplex” is the way to go.
Those are mostly used by companies that upgrade their entire fleet in one go so they sell the old ones for cheap in great condition.
Openmediavault might be an option also, if the drive thing is a problem with TrueNAS
A big fan of the HP elite desk line. Specifically the mini form factor. Also the Intel version for quick sync.
iGPU for low power draw, but can still handle a transcode or two for Jellyfin.
Cheap as a refurbish on eBay.
My server is currently sitting at 1.5 years of uptime, hosting Jellyfin, minecraft, adguard, and a while suitr of other tools!
I usually pick up the cheapest non-chromebook laptop I can find and put Linux on it.
There are a couple key advantages here:
- It’s very cheap.
- Battery Backup included.
- Monitor and keyboard included.
- Power efficient by design.
- Available all the time from any vendor.
- You can take it with you, update your server on the couch and slap it back on the rack.
- Virtually any configuration you want in candy colors.
- Did I mention these are very cheap?
It can be a bit tricky to find one with Ethernet and two SSDs is kinda exotic (especially because you could get two whole laptops for the cost of some NAS enclosures) but there are over 3000 different models under $300 on Amazon, I’m sure you can find something good.
The battery backup is a more of a liability than a benefit imo, will just turn into a spicy pillow eventually. Especially considering any power loss will hit your router/network too rendering the server’s battery moot. The only thing a laptop battery really protects against is accidental temporary unplugging.
I don’t prefer this approach either, but if you do, a lot of commercial models (e.g. thinkpads) can be set to keep the battery at a given percent Max. Set it to only charge to 80% instead of full, and safely shutdown at like 30% and the battery will be far more stable long term. Also set ntfy alarms to your phone on the thermal sensors so you know right away if a fan gets clogged.
Not sure, the battery doesn’t really get cycled, it doesn’t get hot, I have a few which are going strong after 10+ years (the useful life of the hardware).
It’s not a hypothetical for me.
Batteries are more problematic sitting at full charge than when they are empty. You’re also paying money for features you don’t use (battery, screen, keyboard) and have less ability to upgrade, repair, or add storage.
By all means if you have an old spare laptop lying around use it as a server, I usually take the battery out though.
Ok bro, you’re wrong and laptops haven’t come with removable batteries since before OP was born (probably).
Of course, I also took the lead acid batteries out of my ancient laptops before I e-wasted them and went down to the sock-hop and dinosaur ride.
Ok “bro” damn you’re right and you sure showed my unc self! What an idiot I am!
Pick any laptop model you like and search for “how to remove battery” or look up the model on ifixit. Show me a single one where the battery cannot be removed. I’ll wait.
You’re arguing that something I’ve been doing for over a decade can’t be done.
Why? Look at my perspective. On one hand, I have 10+years of lived experience doing this thing, on the other hand there’s internet guy who says it can’t be done?
Just compare a mini-pc to a entry level laptop with the same specifications from any manufacturer.
An Asus NUC with no disk or ram and an Intel 250 (celeron) uses 65W of power and starts around $300. It has 2 cores at 1.8ghz and costs go up from there.
From the same manufacturer at the same time, I can find over 300 laptop SKUs at the below $300 price point to choose from including the entry level zenbook 14, which, in addition to being complete (having ram is nice) packs a significantly more powerful processor and only uses 45W.
I never said it couldn’t be done, hell, I’ve done it myself. Try being a human and asking me what my actual argument or suggested approach is, try re-reading what I actually said rather than assuming it is X just so you can dunk on it.
Max TDP is completely irrelevant, that is about cooling capacity which completely sucks in a laptop, hence the chip limit. The relevant factor for a server is idle power draw at the wall outlet.
For my servers I get second hand dell / hp / mini pcs for peanuts. Sips power, still work fine, still going strong, upgradeable storage etc. Second hand laptops of the same era are now useless ewaste.
I always used my retired PCs and parts but then my kids all wanted gaming rigs so spare PCs and parts do not exist in my world anymore and they tended to be too big, noisy and inefficient.
I would go for used ex-corporate desktop mini PCs from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo. Perhaps don’t go for the smallest ones if you want to be able to get into them and add stuff. They tend to have reasonably good idle power and noise and its common to find ones supporting two nvme ssds. Intel cpu with quicksync for jellyfin video decode if you aren’t adding discrete gpu - check supported codecs. Codec support varies across generations I think.
I would stay well away from laptops: bad thermals, power limits, limited expandability and SBCs like RPi which have poor io for servers.
I picked up an old HP Elitedesk off ebay a few years ago. I added a few TB of SSD and another stick of DDR4 when that stuff was cheap. It supports two nvme ssds as well as space for sata drives. Apart from media storage I can’t see any compelling reason to want to upgrade it.
