My use case is a homelab kubernetes cluster, so I want multiple nodes for redundancy, but I don’t want to use too much electricity or generate too much heat. But for the sake of other readers, let’s keep it general:
What’s a nice little computer for a homelab, with its own power supply, ethernet, and room for 2 internal disks?
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Bee-link and GMKtec make some tiny computers purposely designed to be home servers. I thankfully got a ME mini NAS before the LLM apocalypse and it is a beast that can expand up to 24TB. It comes with an Intel N150 that runs all my personal services and consumes almost no power at all. But they also make other smaller models (the ME mini is already minuscule for what it does) that can fit 2 M.2 disks and they all have their own power supply and ethernet connection. The only problem is that the prices have skyrocketed because RAM and solid state storage starvation.
They are still, somehow, cheaper than Raspberry’s post-price hikes while being more powerful.
Irregular answer since everyone already covered the good ones: old phones with sdcard slots.
Refurbished Lenovo Tiny, HP micro or Lenovo mini are the go to things for this. Available in plenty different configurations, modular and widely available due to getting decommissioned by the industry in big numbers after 2-3 years.
They idle around 6-7W
Here is a good comparison list of all the different Tinys out there.
I have an Intel NUC N100
@cpbsy I bought such a refurbished HP mini pc this year. There can 2 NVMe 2280 be used and with an additional caddy, a 2,5" device also can be added.
When the system is idle, it is using 8 watts.There are also other models available, but not all are providing sockets for a second NVMe device.
Also mini-pcs from Lenovo are often used, but there are only few models available, which have a socket for a second NVMe device.
But they normally have a caddy for a 2,5" device.8 watts. That’s Pi territory.
ARM SBC or NUC with an N150 processor
Edit: oh, 2 internal disks? What kind, nvme, 2.5" ssd, or 3.5" hdd?
I’ve heard it has to be specifically an Apple ARM CPU if you’re doing this for energy efficiency. Maybe things have improved, but probably not because all the resources go to LLMs.
Regular ARM CPUs are pretty efficient. What do you mean?
A mini PC is likely a good fit. Depending on the one you have they will have space for an extra nvme drive or a 2.5 inch data ssd.
You can load Proxmox and run as many VMs or lxc K8s workers.
I know Pi used to be the trendy answer, but I’ve been hearing about how their value/money isn’t what it used to be. What’s the latest advice?
