I need to keep power usage in mind and don’t want to spend more than 500€ on hardware. Power is roughly 0.35ct/kwh in Germany

I like the small square machines (former NUC). But I don’t have any overview which ones are worth the price.

For data storage I am thinking about a NAS, but it would need at least two HDDs for redundancy, otherwise it’s not better than an external HDD that I have. Also it does have its own power draw, which isn’t insignificant (10w->~300€/10years).

Capabilities of the machine don’t matter too much, I will see what I can do with the hardware I get.

Is there a sweet spot, a device that everyone buys or cheapest brand or best package or whatever?

  • JASN_DE@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    But what do you want to do with the machine? More towards services, more towards storage? Because both RAM and storage are expensive at the moment and will rather get more expensive.

    One option would be to buy used, e.g. a DDR4-based system. It’s still not going to be pretty.

    • sexy_peach@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      1·
      12 days ago

      I thought maybe have the nextcloud in a nicer shape (more performance, more reliable storage) so I can share it with friends and family without being afraid that I’m the one losing their pictures. That’s the start, not really sure what follows.

      • JASN_DE@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        12 days ago

        Yeah, that’s fair. I currently run a Ryzen 5700g-based system with 32GB RAM, 3 SSDs for system, docker and additional docker storage, also 2x8TB HDD for media storage and backups. The whole thing “idles” at about 37 watts and currently handles Nextcloud, Opencloud, Immich and Jellyfin, along about 40 other smaller containers. Unless something’s really active, the machine is at about 5% load.

        So as long as you don’t need to do too many things at the same time (initial Immich scan is a bitch), even a relatively low-powered system can get you a lot.

        As the other commented mentioned, each spinning disk will add quite an additional baseload, 5W at least each.