I’ve never done any sort of home networking or self-hosting of any kind but thanks to Jellyfin and Mastodon I’ve become interested in the idea. As I understand it, physical servers (“bare metal” correct?) are PCs intended for data storing and hosting services instead of being used as a daily driver like my desktop. From my (admittedly) limited research, dedicated servers are a bit expensive. However, it seems that you can convert an old PC and even laptop into a server (examples here and here). But should I use that or are there dedicated servers at “affordable” price points. Since is this is first experience with self-hosting, which would be a better route to take?
Let’s put it this way, I’m hosting about 30 Docker containers including a full Servarr stack, Jellyfin, and Mastodon on an old Dell workstation intended for office work.
If you aren’t worried about power costs, yes, go for it.
I calculated the energy cost of running a 100w PC 24/7 for 2 years, covers the cost of a new mini PC + 2 years of its own energy cost. So I just bought a NUC which draws 7-8W. Less noisy too. Laptops usually draw less than desktops though so you may be good there.
Anything you need to buy is more expensive than anything you already have.
Especially if youre worried about power costs.
Reuse wha you have, replace when you need to.
My server is always my old desktop hardware. It’s a 4th-gen i5 with 16GB RAM and it’s keeping up fine. I have thrown quite a lot of work at it too. If you avoid containers, you can serve 20 services off it no problem.
I too, was worried about power costs. Every time I do the maths, the new hardware will be obsolete by the time I make the money back in savings. If you’re concerned about environmental impact, the initial manufacture of hardware does more damage than running it over its lifetime.
Dedicated (1U rackmount) servers are always loud and power-hungry. I they idle at 130w and sound like a hairdryer that’s been left on.
Find secondhand on Facebook marketplace. Dive into an e-waste bin if you have to.
Old PC’s and especially laptops (make sure to consider removing the battery though) make great homeservers. You can run dozens of services on old hardware.
Leave the battery in and you have a free UPS. Perhaps set it capped at 80% charge to increase its lifespan.
My home server is made of literal garbage.
Yeah, any relatively modern used PC will be more than enough
I use my previous desktop and a rando openbox thinclient I picked up at Bestbuy for like $250 in a proxmox cluster. The desktop does the heavy lifting on stuff like jellyfin transcoding, immich ML, or just general fucking about with things that require a more powerful GPU (got a 3080ti in there)
The thinclient handles all the lighter stuff that needs to be constantly available, like my traefik instance, dns/dhcp server, etc
My home media server is an old nuc mini pc i5 16Gb RAM with attached usb storage running on a Linux distro, runs Jellyfin and a few other applications for the household.
In short yes, an old pc will work fine.
These also have the advantage of being nice and quiet, which if you are going to have it in your house rather than a hot garage or whatever can be nice.
I bought a NAS, later realised that it supported Plex and Jellyfin but it was often too slow to do the transcoding. I still use it for storage but there were no real upgrade options. It was cheaper to get an old NUC, rather than replace the NAS with a high spec one to be able to run Jellyfin properly.I’m doing a very similar thing with an old Dell thin client. I did inherit a large server from a company that was upgrading, but I’ve been thinking about downsizing a lot lately so now I use a few small computers on a 10 inch rack.
the best server is one that you already have
I started with handmedowns donated to my by someone from mastodon that was getting rid of junk computers. All tiny think stations.
There are advantages to getting server-grade hardware. It’s designed to run 24/7, often supports more hard drives, ram sticks, processors, etc, and often is designed to make it very quick to replace things when they break.
You can find used servers on sites like EBay for reasonable prices. They typically come from businesses selling their old hardware after an upgrade.
However, for simple home use cases, an old regular desktop PC will be just fine. Run it until it breaks!
Yes, but if you care about power efficiency then they really aren’t a great option. Most professional server hardware that you can get for a decent price uses significantly more power than an old mini computer or a cheap N100 PC. I own a proliant but rarely power it on due to the fact that I could rent an similarly performant VPS for 2x the power bill. Besides that many server CPU’s don’t have integrated GPU’s and will require additional hardware if you want to run something like Jellyfin.
LabGopher extracts information from active eBay listings to help you easily find the right hardware for your needs.
Any normal computer can become a “server”, its all based on the software.
Most enterprise server hardware is expensive because its designed around demanding workloads where uptime and redundancy is important. For a goober wanting to start a Minecraft and Jellyfin server, any old PC will work.
For home labbers office PC’s is the best way to do it. I have two machines right now that are repurposed office machines. They usually work well as office machines generally focus on having a decent CPU and plenty of memory without wasting money on a high end GPU, and can be had used for very cheap (or even free if you make friends that work in IT). And unless you’re running a lot of game servers or want a 4k streaming box, even a mediocre PC from 2012 is powerful enough to do a lot of stuff on.Totally agree, I’ll add that I run jellyfin, the *arrs, an admittedly low throughout ripping/encoding setup, and a few other containers on a single optiplex micro 7060 and there’s a lot of room leftover. I very much appreciate the laptop processor in it because it usually sits idle for 16 hours a day.
You don’t need more than an old desktop with a low powered i3/i5 and a free drive bays to build your first NAS. Just install TrueNAS and get going.
Do it. Jump in. Just start with whatever you can assemble.
It’s a great way to keep your room warm.Heck yeah! Old desktops or laptops are how most of us got started.
Things to consider:
- Power- this will be on 24/7 probably. That adds up
- Speed- not just CPU, but RAM, disk access and network interface can limit how much data you want to move.
- Noise- fans can suck (pun intended). Laptops tend to run quieter
I’m sort of looking to upgrade and N100 or N150’s are looking good. Jellyfin can do transcoding so that takes a little grunt. This box would work well for me. It’s not a storage solution, but can run docker and a handful of services.
While laptop batteries may not have aged well, especially if they’re left discharged, one other nice perk is that laptops effectively have an integrated UPS.
Some laptops (Thinkpads in particular) are capable of limiting the battery level via a Linux application called
tlpso it doesn’t go pop when plugged in 24/7.
adding on to Noise, if you do end up in a situation where you’re considering buying refurbished enterprise hard disks, know that they are louder than normal consumer drives, esp if you have 4 of them running at once in a NAS
I wanted to echo this by saying that my lab stated as 4 bay Qnap NAS and evolved into repurposed consumer hardware as my interests and needs changed. My current server is an Optiplex that I bought for being small, quiet, and hanging lots of cores and my NAS is just my old gaming PC build with an HBA card (for extra SATA lanes) stuffed into a fancy case. A server is any computer that you say is a server (ideally one with functional network connectivity).
I’ve been running a plex server on an old desktop bought in 2016. Mostly streaming movies and tv shows to my family. I have a 2 TB SSD and a spare 2TB HDD. I was thinking about getting a mini PC to swap out the larger desktop. Could I get a larg HDD and ad it in an enclosure to the Mini PC to handle the media volume?
Could I get a larg HDD and ad it in an enclosure to the Mini PC to handle the media volume?
Like an external USB drive? Absolutely.
