I dived into the selfhosting rabbit hole once again and again I am stuck at the hardware part. I’d like to start small-ish to make it realisable. I thought about a NAS (Openmediavault probably). First I wanted to do it on a Raspberry Pi with an external hard-drive but then I read USB connected drives are unreliable and so on. Mini PCs are too small to house internal drives so should I go with a (refurbished) business PC from ebay and add some drives to it?But they usually come with Windows 10, which I wouldn’t need but makes them more expensive. I also have at least one old PC case laying around but no mainboard or CPU for it, if that info might be important. Thank you in advance for helping a noob out!
Edit: What I want to achieve: I would like a NAS and (separated) a server with some small services (pi-hole or adguard, syncthing, jellyfin (getting the data from the NAS), and so on). I thought about running the small services with docker on a RPi 4 and the NAS on a refurbished business PC with SATA drives in the case (I checked ebay and there are mainboards with 4 SATA III connectors and PCI so I could even add more SATA connectors). In a second moment a backup server (maybe with borg) would be a good idea but I could also do manual backups with an external USB HDD for the time being.
I would recommend getting a “forever” case like the Node 304. You won’t regret the purchase and you can use for any future upgrades. It stores 8 (correction, 6) 3.5 drives, so you can add on as you grow.
Find a used a motherboard like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235546915389?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=GP45S9r5R6-&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=uaLd2h3oTQO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
With a cheap GE (low power version) AMD processor and 16/32gb ram and whatever nvme ssd you can scrounge.
It will cost you maybe $100 over some alternatives, but you can use it for years and keep upgrading as you go.
Most Dell and OEM parts won’t work on standard cases, FYI.
The Define series of cases from Fractal are also an excellent option. I have 9 HDD and a 5.25" optical drive in mine (Define R6) with room to spare and the whole thing is silent.
Seconded, I use a Define 7 and it’s fantastic. Best big black box I’ve ever owned.
This case looks good but is a bit out of my budget for now. But to understand this properly, the Node 304 fits a micro-atx mainboard? Which this one from gigabyte is, right?
This was very helpful, thank you! I would have spent money for nothing!
Correct. Micro-ATX is the smaller version of the larger ATX and still larger EATX (extended atx). Your old case probably fits micro atx if it’s not OEM. You can populate it with a mb, cpu, ram, ssd, and power supply (don’t need more than 500w for your use case) and eventually move to a nicer case like that Node if/when you fall in love with the hobby. My Rpis are collecting dust since switching to a low power server.
It’s a whole different experience when general advice applies to your hardware vs the Rpi ecosystem. Many more options. In 2024, ATX offers no real benefit over the smaller form factor beyond better heat management for high power builds with spaced out components.
And a correction: node 304 supports 6HD, the 804 supports 8
Sounds good, I will check how much that would cost and consider it. There are probably plenty of resources going over low power cpu right? Thank you!
They’re basically the same as regular, but the wattage rating (usually called tdp) is lower.