Hello,
I’m a casual user trying to delve into homeserver stuff, are there any entry level recommendations for hardware and software?
I have a few ideas I’d like to run, mainly jellyfin, possibly pihole in it too, and pivpn.
I will be wanting to stream said jellyfin content to friends as well, do I need anything beefy? Are those beelink Wendel has been talking about sufficient?
I could be looking into old hardware but I’m also looking for efficient as it can be…
Thank you
I have a N100 based beelink that is running proxmox with Plex and Home Assistant on it without issue; it was also hosting a LXC with the 'arr apps and my unifi controller.
Jellyfin should run fine along with a number of services.
Alternatively look at the Mini-micro SFF’s like the HP Elitedesk 800 G4 with either a i5-8500 or i7-8700. You can pick those up cheap and have a good amount of power with minimal power draw.
Entry-level PCs do the job. Small form factor builds are popular too…good ITX builds aren’t unheard of. Using your old PC collecting dust in the basement usually works too.
Get more memory than you are used to and have PCIe slots, extra NIC and SATA ports for upgrade.
Unless your apps need a GPU, you don’t need one. iGPU or IPMI is preferred.
My favorite build right now involve a 7900 non-X in an InWin Chopin build as such. Here are the details, best of all is this setup even support ECC RAM (although this particular config is not ECC, but swap the RAM and you are golden). Roughly $1k, not too shabby.
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 7900 | $409.00 |
| CPU Cooler | Noctua NH-L9A-AM5 | $44.95 |
| Motherboard | Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI | $324.99 |
| Memory | Patriot Viper Black 2x16 GB DDR5-6000 CL36 | $77.99 |
| Storage | TEAMGROUP MP34 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 | $39.99 |
| Case | In Win Chopin MAX 200W | $128.19 |
| Total | $1025.11 |
If you do not care about ECC, you could save $75 and buy the Gigabyte Aorus Ultra instead. And if you do not care particularly about performance, you simply want a few cores, then get the 7600 for another $200 price reduction. RAM, you could shave another $10 on a 16GB kit or go for a $10 cheaper 500 GB drive, neither are really worth it, but you could.
Wait, $750 still too expensive? Ok, exchanging components for a core i9 13100 + Gigabyte Aorus 760I Pro + 32GB of DDR4 RAM will land you on $600 total for the package. That is the cheapest entry level you can have, 4 cores, 8 threads and awesome in general. 
This is far from a entry level build. that amd cpu is also quite inefficient, motherboard is too expensive for this price range, power supply is underpowered (or the cpu just can’t really go harder).
Entry level would be a N100 board, one of the mini pc’s or a low power build based on a 12400 cpu, older intel or the actually efficient 5700 APU’s. (second hand computer would be one of the better choices)
Yes, but a NUC costs around $400 and are not made to run 24/7 (a couple of my friends made that mistake… Even a Pi is more reliable sadly), the 13100 build cost $600, but at that price point 25% more give you the better AM5 platform, and 80% more gives you 3x the performance. Then again, you might not need said performance. Which is why I give options.
You sure about that?
Sure, it doesn’t beat a RPi, but under 100W at peak and 20 at idle is still pretty performant if you ask me. Though, if power draw is that important, why not just a Mac Mini?
I have run multiple NUC and NUC clone machines 24/7 for a few years without issue. The Beelink N100 one I recently picked up was around $150 with 16GB ram and a 500gb NVME and it runs proxmox without any issues.
People way overestimate the power they need to run most of the stuff they run in their home labs especially if you can offload stuff like transcoding to an iGPU.
Not disagreeing with you, if $150 is all it takes today then it is fine, great to have options. Just have had bad experiences with NUCs, but then again me and my friends tend to run docker and virtualize a lot…
If all you need is a mail server a Raspberry Pi is often more than enough.
Yeah, it all depends on what you are going to do with it. I have a EPYC 7402P homelab server and it is COMPLETE overkill but fun to play with.
The little N100 box is running Proxmox 8 with Home Assistant in a VM, plex in an LXC with the iGPU shared with it. It also is running an LXC with docker running all the normal *arr stuff, nzb client, heimdall and portainer along with another LXC with my unifi controller. I threw in a 480gb ssd I had sitting around for my “linux iso” download processing.
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