from qwestjest78@lemmy.ca to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 30 Apr 23:47
https://lemmy.ca/post/64167405
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.
#selfhosted
threaded - newest
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.
+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.
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 you could do most of that with a raspberry pi5, 8GB. With a whole kit, you can get it for under $250. I’m running 3 at my place: 1 for media (servarr stack, JF, Navidrome, Invidious), 1 for the Fediverse (Mastodon, Piefed, Peertube, WordPress), and 1 for anything else.
Edit: I also missed the part about truenas, but you can still run containers on any other OS just fine.
The newer raspberry pis have gone up in price so much that the limited port selection is off putting to me now. You could pick up an older thinkcentre and do so much more.
Why tho?
For $250 you can build a pretty solid system with lots of storage
I have a NAS for storage. The pi sips power, doesn’t make any sound, and runs what I need.
So a trick for the double drives is to pop in a low profile usb drive and install the os on that. Then you can use the ssd/hdd for other things.
So you leave the usb plugged in for boot and then you are good after that?
Yup! If you installed the os on it.
So you have one usb with the iso flashed to it and a second to install the os on. Use the first to install to the second.
Make sure the OS is good for that, or you use a very high endurance USB drive, or you use two drives in a mirror and are prepared to replace them. Most USB drives are not designed for constant use, like the log writes your OS will be doing.
Just about any of the Intel N series minipcs are often suggested for just Jellyfin. I haven’t looked at them too much yet.
I just use whatever trash and old computer parts I have lying around.
The key here is old hardware. I built a TrueNAS box out of an old Dell Optiplex 990. I got it from a friend for free but you can find one online for well under $200. Later you can upgrade the box bit-by-bit if you care to. I upgraded the case, motherboard, cooler, and power supply over time. It’s been a capable NAS for several years even though it’s using a 2nd gen Intel core i3.
Find something on craigslist or local pickup on ebay, check government/police surplus, or do some freecycling. At least in my area a lot of people leave their e-waste computers at Best Buy, often in the doorway, nobody cares if you come and pick them up. Even if they’re broken (and they’re often perfectly functional and sometimes surprisingly powerful) it likely only takes a few before you’ve got some functional combination of parts.
It’s likely not as much of a picker’s heaven anymore since I imagine the huge wave of windows-10-obsolete computers being thrown away for no reason has probably mostly subsided, but there is so much old and perfectly functional stuff out there it’s really unjustifiable to be buying something new especially at today’s modern prices.
I purchase a bunch of machines off government auction, patch then up, and pass them back out for very little. Anything with 4 cores and 8 GB memory should do it. If you can get something with DDR4, that’s a big step. Bonus points of it was made after 2018.
A mini PC could certainly work! If you’re willing to go ebay, I’d recommend any of these Lenovo Thinkcentre SFF PCs:
forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/lenovo-…
1-2x m.2 slots, 1x 2.5" slot, and some can accommodate a half-height PCI-E card in place of the 2.5" slot. Presumably, you’d want to go Intel for QSV
Yissss I got a bunch of tinys for 50USD each. I5/16GB DDR4/256GB NVMe. They run home theater computers and Linux servers AMAZINGLY. I would have bought more if they had more available.
Can’t help in regards to using Amazon, but some of the Lenovo Minis have an m.2 slot on the underside, as well as the 2.5 drive in the top. I think the M920q and some others have two m.2 slots.
If you want maximum jank, you can split the m.2 into 5 SATA ports, then leave the bottom panel off and to connect to drives in your drive bay. That’s what I’ve done. You’ll need a separate power supply for the drives, though.
not the OP but :)
I have an older mini pc with 2 * Nvme and 2* SSD slots but how do i connect HDD drives,
Everyone tells me I should not use USB 3 for that. I have no eSATA on the PC
What is the brand / model of the mini PC you’re using?
If you aren’t using both of the NVME slots, you can get an adapter to clip into those slots that has SATA ports on it. I’m using a SilverStone ECS07, I’ve also used a smaller one from IO Crest to give me two SATA ports on an SBC based media server that I was running for eight or so years before outgrowing it.
If you have 2x SATA SSD connections available, you should be able to connect 2.5 inch SATA HDDs to them without problems. 3.5 inch drives need 12 volt and 5 volt, whereas 2.5 inch drives get away with only needing 5V. It’s likely that your mini PC hasn’t ever thought about powering extra drives, so you may need to sort out a power supply for the extra drives. I have a tiny little power supply that I harvested out of an mITX case many years ago that I use to power the drives, and the power supply for the mini PC just powers the mini PC.
Depending on what you are doing with them, the drives can work just fine running through the USB ports, which can be faster than hard drives in most cases. I have my content - which is like 90% of the data space - on USB hard drives and the databases to manage them on the internal M.2 drive. Works fine for something like Immich.
I know USB drives work well enough for most people, but I had never-ending issues when I was first trying to set up my media server. All of my problems went away once I connected my drives internally. Well, not all of my problems, just my hard drive related ones. :)
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.
Don’t go with ancient hardware if you are wanting energy efficiency
It consumes less energy than the other server cpus from intel that are generally available.
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
Hit up local government auctions. Sometimes they sell 2-4 computers in a lot, sometimes they sell 157. I got 4 Lenovo mini computers for $34 each in an auction a while back. They only needed hard drives.
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.
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.
CWWK pocket NAS
Openmediavault might be an option also, if the drive thing is a problem with TrueNAS
I am truly sorry for your misfortune. I feel a bit bumed right now. Others with better knowledge than I have gave suggestions. That just slapped me in the face, because I know how I certainly would feel.
Set aside some for surge protection/UPS
Any used PC or laptop that can run Linux.
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.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
[Thread #266 for this comm, first seen 1st May 2026, 03:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Woot.com has lots of refurbs around that price.
It’s part of Amazon so you can use your Prime shipping.
I do what you are asking about literally with a 2014 Thinkpad. The only thing is I don’t use any “fancy” features. For instance, with Jellyfin I ensure that the data is in a commonly supported format to ensure there is no transcoding or remuxing performed by the server itself.
So, just find any computer made in the last 7 years, slap Linux on it, and I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Would a pi5 work?
He said “sub $300” \s
It would, but it does not have SATA. You can find much cheaper computers that do have it
They’re quite versatile computers for general purposes, but their i/o performance is dreadful. Mine all max out at about ten megabytes per second. That will not do, for server purposes.
Fortunately, there’s businesses all over that are chucking out all their old mini PCs since they won’t run Win11. I got an extremely decent one for £20 and it’s my new home server. Absolutely storms it, while just sipping at electricity.
I served 4k content with plex off a 4, while running pihole on it.
They say they have a drive enclosure, so if that’s network attached they may be good.
Any post-2015 laptop would work. Look around in your local recycling bins :D
Where you happy with the Lenovo thinkcentre? You can often find replacement motherboards for these. It will be cheaper than any of the alternatives here.
Thinkcentre Tiny, Dell Optiplex Micro, or HP ProDesk Mini. Prices have gone up the last few months but they’re still a solid value. Most sellers ship pretty quick these days.
Thats my setup. Second hand lenovo m900 tiny for 100€, nvme ssd 2tb for 200€. Running immich, navidrome, dawarich, opencloud without problems
Ask your local university facilities department about their overstock policy. The university of Arizona literally has a warehouse where you can peruse their old computers and furniture and buy at Craigslist prices.
Stop ordering from Amazon
“… order from here instead [insert alternative]”
There are good lists of alternatives out there. For Germany, I like this one: lmaa.space
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.
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.
There are companies selling off PCs that are “too small” for Win11, really cheap. More than sufficient for a NAS. You might even get a bunch of them, chose the best mainboard/case/PSU set, put the others in storage, and get all the RAM and HDD in one box.
I use Intel NUCs off eBay for this kind of stuff. A few years ago you could get one for ~$200 on eBay.