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Pi or Nuc (self.homelab)

submitted 2 years ago by JasonWeen to c/[email protected]

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Hi I am currently struggling with deciding between Pis (all variants e.g. Orange Pi) and Nucs as I can't find any for a reasonable price. Do you guys have any recommandation for me? German/European Stores maybe? I am looking for the best efficency to performance ratio for a low price. Basically just small computing units that I can cluster ideally in a 1U Rackmount.

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[–] thirdBreakfast 1 points 1 year ago

I'm adding yet another vote for the little 1 litre x86 thin clients. I run the HP 800 Minis but lots of people also enjoy the tiny ThinkCentres. My use case is very similar to yours - JellyFin for home media plus a few other services. I run them in VM's under Proxmox. For transcoding, you can pass the Intel Quicksync into the VM (works without it, but is quicker to start up with it and doesn't peg the CPU).

These little ex-business PC's are really nicely made - upgrading anything the HP's is a delight. There's great technical manuals and they look good enough (and are quite enough) to have in your lounge or bedroom. Businesses tend to replace them at the three or four year mark so there's always plenty around. I also find them more convenient than a Pi - proper hard drive bay, SODIMM memory etc.