My old laptop for self hosting just croaked, and I’m thinking of buying a 2nd hand mini pc, but this time I want to do it proper. I want to optimize the electricity consumption and specs needed/ future upgreadability, considering how expensive everything is now.
My use case is just for self hosting files (infrequent access and reducing reliance to google drive), and occasional dev workload via ssh. I’m thinking of buying a used optiplex with at least i6 gen cpu (SFF or micro form factor), but I want to see if there are better options.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
If anyone could suggest me better options it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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After walking through CEX on the weekend I don’t know if you will beat second hand laptop pricing. The significantly higher availability of laptops seems to make them prices that just can’t be beaten.
Unless you can get away running a pi zero of course. Sorta tempted to get one but not sure how much I could get it to do. Would do data storage just fine, depending on how much space you need.
If you want something that fits the SFF cube shape so you can throw it next to a TV or desk for video output, you can probably go for the SYS-A22GA-NBRT.
Easy to upgrade CPU & RAM later down the line if you start doing more stuff with it, plus space for dedicated GPU if you ever want to do heavy media server stuff.
Would avoid pi due to the underperformance for the price. Plus best bang for buck usable storage will always be HDDs. SD cards are nice but you have to disable journaling to keep the writes low as to not wear down usable blocks.
look at used XPS line laptops. they have USBC TB3 that can have a ceiling of 40gbps throughput.
this means you can have a newish gen i7 with 32-64gb of ram with a hub for your networking and storage with a 40gbps bandwidth for it to pipe through. most of that will be available to you since you’re not using it for video out.
keep in mind, Thunderbolt cables/hubs are graded and length of the cable will wreck your bandwidth ceiling. shorter is better. shielded is better.
I once had two XPS laptops networked over TB3 and was getting 10gbe on a 6ft cable. shorten it to a 10inch cable and it would have been likely 40gbe.
they do get warm, make sure you have good airflow and a decent pre-filter and you shouldn’t have any problems.
the standalone laptops will usually run on 100-115w but using a TB15 dock you’re looking at 125-270w. the TB15s are finicky on Linux so you might be better off using a TB3 rated pocket hub with power passthru.
good luck.
I’m a home-lab newbie but I built a NAS & Jellyfin server with a Raspberry Pi 5 and it works great. I got a SATA hat for it and it has 5x 8TB HDDs installed with ZFS RAIDZ1 in a custom 3D printed case. It can stream 4K on my network just fine. If there are other tasks you want your server to do or if you want to stream to multiple devices simultaneously I’m sure other people would recommend something more powerful but I just wanted to add my 2 cents. I picked up another Pi to set up tail scale (work in progress) and yet another Pi (open-box discount) to set up Immich (near-future project). I wouldn’t expect one Pi to handle all of those things simultaneously but I haven’t tried it.
M1 Mac Mini is quiet, fast, low power consumption and reasonably-priced used.
I’m hesitant with running Mac due to unclear Linux support. Also I’m broke
While these points are valid, I feel for a homelab, one would want a headless system running *nix vs OS X.
Also, it doesn’t help that there is no bootcamp for ARM, least not that I’m aware. Because if that was the case, then yes running ARM64-based distros/software would be great. I’d actually love to see how the M1 runs ARM server software :)
Optiplex etc. with an Intel 8th gen “T” chips seem to offer the best bang for the buck + energy efficiency on the second hand market right now.
The main issue with these thin clients is the lack of SATA ports and power connections for them if you want to add some larger 2.5” SSD/HDD storage. Usually it is only one, but you can also use the DVD drive slot with an adapter in the mid sized versions.
I have an Optiplex that at one point I had 4 2.5" drives in, had to use some duct tape and glue, but it worked fine.
The mid size versions have 3 drive bays (2x 3.5", one 2.5") plus an optical bay, but only 3 SATA connectors (which was really odd to me). You can find dual SATA adaptors for the “WiFi” M.2 slot if you want to use an adaptor for a 2.5" drive on the optical bay. But if you want more than 4 drives, you’ll need to get creative mounting them.
You mean “mid” as in midi-tower? Because that sounds like the large version. Well maybe there is an even larger workstation version or so, but the normal medium sized Optiplex comes with one 3.5" SATA bay and one DVD drive.
Still didn’t test mine, but I’m planning on using this for two extra (dying) disks for my Jellyfin files in my server: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005009770143040.html
How will you power the drives?
And from what I have heard, these m2 to SATA adapters have over-heating issues.
Like I said, still didn’t test mine, so can’t even confirm if it works at all, much less if it overheats :/
You can power the drives using a standard PC power supply. You can also use a switch like this one to power them: https://ebay.io/m/jRSozI
Sure, but the point of getting a mini-pc is usually not that you have an open case with a second ATX PSU sitting on top to power some extra hardrives.
Because you can buy something like this Sata drive enclosure: https://a.co/d/004sj6TS, and power it with a small ATX power supply.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
[Thread #31 for this comm, first seen 28th Jun 2026, 16:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
Recently I decommissioned a Dell T320 and replaced it with a Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM all for right at the $200 mark. I’m running a total of 52 containers on it right now with load averages looking like 0.31, 0.51, 0.72. The Dell T320 running the same 52 containers cost me $40 USD per month to run. The Dell 7020 costs me $5-8 USD per month to run 24/7. If you wanted a wider tower, I set up a Dell 9020 for a friend of mine’s son who wanted to get into selfhosting at the age of 10. Similar running costs. I’ve got an Optiplex 3020 mini with 16 GB RAM and a 4 TB external drive running Proxmox quite well and costs probably $3 USD per month. I’m pretty well chuffed with the performance so far of the 7020, and in fact am eyeballing another one to replace a second Dell T320.
Have you considered a new gen? an 8th gen would offer better efficiency and performance and more feature like quick sync hardware decoding for most encoders out there. Srill, i’m impressed by the consumption difference.
I generally try to ride the DDR3 cap as far as equipment. IIRC Intel 8th gen Coffee Lake require DDR4. DDR3 is cheap. So there is a trade off yes, but you’re right, it would be more efficient. When I finally build me a new computer, I will go all the way to DDR5, or whatever is the latest and greatest at that time. The T320 is a great server, it just drinks some electricity. The money I save on electricity, I could pay for another 7020. LOL Thought about selling the T320 on ebay, but I doubt someone would want to pay what it would cost to ship a boat anchor. Maybe CraigsList, local pickup.
I’m now curious what’s services are you hosting. It’s hard for me to imagine self hosting more than 10 containers/ services lol
The easiest way for me to show you is just a screen shot of my dashboard:
spoiler
I’ve added a couple since that screen grab.
Woah cool. This looks neater and more organized than hostname based routing on my reverse proxy.
What dashboard software are you using?
You can’t really optimize for both power efficiency AND upgradability while choosing second hand USFF computers. Sort of have to pick a priority. I realized that electricity is relatively cheap where I am, and so older thinkstations with i5 or i7s are a great frugal option. Not so in, say, Europe.
CWWK “Pocket NAS”
Whatever you end up buying, and I speak from bitter experience here, swap the SSD that it comes with it. Consumer SSDs in micro systems do NOT have the write cycles required for 24/7 docker activity.
Now I run a couple of Micron 7450 Max server SSDs. Live and learn.
The log volume is dependent on which services are running and how they are tuned.
I looked at all the old thin clients and didn’t like their power consumption to performance ratio. Ended up buying a cheap mini pc with an n100 and it’s been amazing. CPU is max 15w, but mostly only 1 or 2w. Whole mini pc with an nvme draws only a few w most of the time. I bought it before all the craziness for £80, had it maybe 18 months now and no complaints. It’s been rock solid.
Go for a n100 or even one with an Atom CPU. Get as much ram as you can afford…
Depending on what you are doing that may not be a good idea. The N100 is way overpriced and the Atom is very old and thus has limited I/O speeds and awful performance.
I would get a Intel 6-8 gen i5 and then if you can afford it I would get some SSDs for data storage.
Keep in mind hardware prices are astronomic right now so you are unlikely to get a good deal
An i7 doesn’t really use much more power for bursty usage, as it gets back to sleep states faster. Same issue with ssds vs HDDs, per GB, there’s not much difference in power consumption, only when you look at per drive does it matter.
That hasn’t been my experience especially with SSDs vs HDDS
SSDs have no moving parts so they will always use less power since there is no motor
Of course. But when you have a storage requirement and it can be met with fewer HDDs than SSDs, the difference becomes less and less.
Regarding strictly cpu/power consumption ratio I guess the mac mini is pretty good.
