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Should I use dedicated hardware? (feddit.it)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi everyone, Last month I finally managed to build my first SFF PC (Ryzen 7600 + AMD 6800). I'm also starting to learn about self-hosting and tinkering with it (the usual stuff: Jellyfin, pi-hole, nextcloud, VPN, torrenting etc.)

Thing is, of course, a server has to be always on, and I'm having trouble understanding if it can be reasonable to keep it always on or if it's too pricey and I should invest in a dedicated hardware.

My consideration: a Raspberry Pi seems like it's not enough powerfull after all. I've seen you can come up with an old i5 (4th to 6th gen) minipc with like 100/150 euros, but in not really sure it's gonna consume much less than my system. What do you suggest? What am I missing?

Thank you :)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Pi should not be the first choice unless you just wanna dip your toe in the water with limited investment or you are real experienced in the trade. While the hardware is powerful enough for many use cases, it is very limited in external connectivity which really hampers its potential as a NAS/multi-purpose server.

CPUs often get less efficient (in the sense of work done per watt) when they are pushed to their limits. Unless you are running the server at full load all the time, the power consumption of a typical x86 system is quite manageable (~30-50W) at idle to low usage. Newer hardware is surely more efficient as newer designs are relatively faster and often have more power conservation technologies built-in.