I have been using some OrangePi5plus boards to run docker on my network for a number of images and it works great with a 2-3W power load. Basically set it up then forget it.
However, some images do not have an ARM equivalent so would need an x86 thing. Does anybody have suggestions on a cheap, low power equivalent x86 board for this sort of thing?
I have looked at a few, but not sure if a dual core celeron would be ok. The arm chips are running 8 cores.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Talung
Odroid H3/H3+, Zima blade/board, any of the cheap mini pcs on amazon or wherever, used laptops off of ebay or wherever, or the n100 ITX or mATX boards that are out there. Doubt any of those are going to be 2-3W though.
I’m running a bunch of stuff off of a laptop with a 7200U, personally. But it is limited if, say, jellyfin is reindexing or whatever.
The real question, though – what are you intending to run, and how many users? As those will be the biggest considerations about how much is enough compute.
Things I am planning to run are nginx servers, pihole, nginx proxy etc. nothing too heavy. I have a Proxmox box with an nvidia card to handle all the heavy lifting stuff like NAS, Emby/Jellyfin etc.
I like having those stuff on a separate server so it won’t take the network down when I reboot or work on the other server. These are really setup and forget servers… no real fiddling. Essentially, this will be a backup for my current OrangePi5-plus, with the addition of being able to run x86 only dockers if needed.
Lower power over speed is better, but not too sure if Dual core is enough nowadays. Trying to get a few options together to see if it is worth it going to x86 for those devices.