I’m moderately tech savvy, a little experience with most OS and comfortable with hardware. I’ve got some basic things working in Docker. I want to start self hosting my photo backup, Bitwarden, Jellyfish, Sonarr and Radarr, Pi hole, Home Assistant and replace Dropbox. But the more I dive into the hardware and setup the more muddled I’m finding myself.

I’m very concerned about power draw so the lower the consumption the better. I do want some parity, though I’m willing to I introduce that once it’s set up. I’m not particularly concerned with transcoding but I guess it’d be a nice bonus.

Is a QNAP alone valid? Or perhaps I’m better off with a Pi and my huge GDrive while I learn? Or a NUC with better transcoding capability? I want to access my data internally, stream content to a Chromecast with Google TV.

My instinct is both a NUC and a separate NAS but I’e love it if anyone has some insight.

Thanks!

  • nezbyte@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    A used Thinkcenter Tiny off eBay is cheaper than a NUC and has better performance than a Pi. HP and Dell have similar tiny PCs that are inexpensive used. A separate NAS would probably be best, but you could start with a USB 3 external drive and shuck it later.

    • ElkendersOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I have considered this but I imagine power draw would be much improved with a NUC.

      • andynbaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        7th gen i5 NUCs can be found on eBay for under $100 shipped with 16gb of ram and a small m2 drive. They’re not as powerful as a larger SFF chip, but at 15w TDP is pretty hard to beat. I have four of them now. I pick one up every time a find a good deal.

        8th gens are still really expensive.

        • ElkendersOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Thank you. I’ve seen a decent deal (£150) on an 8th gen i7 but only 8 gigs ram and a 256gig SSD. Thinking it might be a good option