this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
16 points (90.0% liked)

Selfhosted

39959 readers
511 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
ruud
Loki
CannaVet
devve
HybridSarcasm
[email protected]
16
What do folks think about these N5105s? (www.aliexpress.us)
submitted 1 year ago by damnthefilibuster to c/selfhosted
46 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been eyeing these devices for some time now. The price point is... delicious!

I saw some opensource-ish project one day that mentioned that they are building an OS around Plex and other media servers and using these N5105s and selling the package for USD500ish (I think).

So I went hunting for the hardware and found it on Aliexpress for that cheap (sub USD200).

Does anyone have experience running these? How hard is it to get Ubuntu running on them? I dislike that they ship with Windows 11. Would be a few bucks cheaper if they shipped with Ubuntu or no OS, right?

Also, what about running docker on them? Can they support your usual homelab stuff? Portainer, Pi-hole, *arr softwares, a dashboard, etc.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I bought a N5100 from AliExpress and I use it to run my -arr apps and Plex, and so far it has behaved really good. It's fanless in an all-metal case and it gets a bit hot, but nothing you wouldn't put your hand over. Weirdly, before I installed Debian in it, the BIOS and UEFI console made the CPU so hot I was worried it would not work without a fan, but after the OS took over, it's working without any issue. I installed 16gb of ram in it and two SSDs, and the power consumption is so low I'm really amazed.

Edit: I might add, I bought it barebones, so I missed the W11 license, but I was never planning to use it anyway.

[–] damnthefilibuster 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait, how did Debian fix the bios??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It probably didn't. What's probably happening is that when Debian starts, it loads power management, while being in the BIOS/UEFI still has everything at max.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I believe that the OS puts the CPU in a different state, that's all. while the BIOS and the UEFI shell had it boosting all the time or something like that