Comment by sandreas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandreas | Hacker News Reader

I personally used an old NUC6i5 with 16GB Ram and 1TB SSD as my private "HomeServer" / "Media-PC" / "RemoteMachine" for a long time, mainly bought because it was (and still is) 5.9W idle power consumption while reasonable performance (way more than a raspberry PI at the time). I also spent the money on an Akasa Passive case[1], which made the device very expensive in total, but it was worth it at the time. It's still running as a backup.

BUT: I really think the times of the NUC are over. Media-PCs are getting less important (Netflix, etc.). With dedicated boxes like Apple-TV and TV Recording they hardly play a role any more and for home servers there are better alternatives.

I recently invested some money into a used Fujitsu D3417 + Xeon homeserver and it runs Proxmox at 9.3W Idle. The performance is just on another level than any NUC with the same price tag and because it is upgradable and supports ECC RAM, the only drawback is it's size.

I'm still questioning the industry, why they don't provide affordable ITX or smaller sized boards with enough space for ECC (!) RAM and two or more NVMe-Slots as low power low cost Micro-Server appliance. Newer AMD Ryzen does inofficially support ECC but the Idle Power consumption is pretty high. This could be a niche, I would definitely get one of these, if it was good quality (like the DELL, HP or Fujitsu Servers). These boards exist, but they are nearly impossible to get anywhere. An example would be the Gigabyte C246N-WU2, which does run at an unbelievable Idle consumption of less than 8W [2]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-dVdm3OjME

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFurC_HDlKM (German)

I have used the NUCs to integrate controllers into small robotic platforms and custom lab equipment. They are a good 'it just works' platform that you can scale performance v cost over time as needs vary (need image processing? drop in a core i7. just motion control? save money and go with an i3 or atom). Also they are more reliable and performant than RPi, and relative to the cost of the motion control systems, the NUC is a rounding error.

Notably the NUC has a standardized base plate mount that requires only two screws, and it has nice rubberized stand offs that isolate vibration. So, mechanical integration is super easy, and swapping out a NUC in the field is also very fast. In some cases it is easier to do a firmware upgrade by switching out the whole NUC than trying to walk a lab tech through punching a hole in the corporate firewall, or running an ethernet cord through the production floor, etc etc.

I use the VESA plate to mount on the back of a monitor (with an extension plate since there's a stand too). Completely out of view, almost silent, I can just flip the DP/HDMI inputs and go from "work" to "home" desktop (though full-screen VNC is plenty zippy and saves faffing with keyb/mouse). It's just a home (linux/Slackware) server for storage/streaming/tinkering but glad I spent a few extra € as it's rock solid.

My sheevaplug (!) sits unloved in a drawer since I got it :D

I would argue that media pcs and home servers are becoming _more_ not less important, precisely because Netflix, Disney+ et al have become such bad stewards of movies and shows, both in terms of deleting content, and no longer being "worth it" for the price. Anecdotally, I know more and more friends and coworkers who are moving to having their own media servers because they don't want to have to hunt through different services for their favourite shows or movies, or they've been burned by Amazon changing the streaming license of their "purchase."

I don't think piracy is a broadly popular method of watching media, not because it's wrong but because it's technically challenging and inconvenient. And if it started becoming popular, the industry would respond by either cutting prices or beefing up enforcement. Either way, the STB remains mainstream.

This is very geographically dependent. There are many places where piracy is the primary way, with most primary school children already knowing their way around a BitTorrent client and whatever the biggest tracker in the country is. With software like Jellyfin/Plex and the -arr suite, it only takes one tech-savvy relative to have the whole extended family and friends watching pirated media like genuinely easier Netflix.

Old (but not too old) Fujitsu mainboards are a great hack to build a computer with low power draw, especially in idle mode. They support relatively recent Intel sockets and 4 SATA ports out of the box, so really ideal for small-ish and very affordable file- and media servers. I‘ve seen in a German forum [1] specialized in this kind of thing that people reproducibly get 5-8W idle with such boards.

At least in the EU, you can get used Fujitsu towers with those power saving boards for cheap. Just take care that you pick one with the higher efficiency power supply (IIRC, that’s the E90+).

Hidden in that forum thread [1] are posts from members who bought a specialized board (€250 last time I looked) that takes idle consumption down to 2W. Can’t remember the name of the manufacturer so I can’t link to it, but if someone were interested, it‘s mentioned throughout the thread.

1: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/die-sparsamste... - someone claims they reached 4W idle with this Fujitsu board

I have an ASUS PN40 that idles at 1.8W (_at the wall_). This is with one SSD and LPDDR3 memory.

Yeah the small systems are often very efficient, but you can't really use them for file serving from HDDs. USB (and even eSATA) enclosures are not a suitable replacement for internal SATA ports. Their controllers & firmware are not stable enough for heavy concurrent use and often crash or become non-responsive.

Idling an old Xeon or a 12100 at 4W is also a bit more challenging than a 1.1Ghz Celeron.

For the record, the PN40 not only has 1 SATA internal port, it even has an NVME-capable M.2 slot. I make no claims of the power consumption of the latter since I never used it.

If you want a shitton of SATA ports you obviously have to go somewhere else but then even the power consumption of the idling SSDs will start to be troublesome (and when in use will likely necessitate another PSU).

I also disagree with the assessment of eSATA (since it is basically external SATA), and think the claims of problems with USB to SATA controllers are very exaggerated. They all have terrible power management though; if I had to use one, I'd just cut USB power entirely on idle, which would btw also help with any controller issues.

M.2 SSDs have almost zero idle power draw, if that‘s what you meant?

HDDs can spin down and will not draw much in that state. I think it‘s a reasonable assumption for a file server at home that it will spend most of time in spindown.

I have seen some problematic reports on external enclosures on Reddit, but maybe they do work fine in many cases.

May be almost zero, but it's not zero! I have never tried DRAM-less NVME SSDs, but I have some samsung SATA 840-870 ones (tried several on this range) that consume around 0.2W on the most idle state they support. Considering my budget was 2W, it is not negligible...

I have a PN51 running my TV (as a dumb screen) and it's wonderful. It has a fan but I've never heard it even right close up. I haven't measured the power draw but I've never felt it any hotter than hardly detectable heat.

I'd recommend looking at Kontron and OnLogic, products. They very much are targeted to industrial applications, but they effectively make exactly what you're describing. Low power machines with lots of I/O and expansion capability in a small form factor. We use a couple of their full system solutions for our lab infrastructure, but they also sell boards if that's what you're looking for: https://www.kontron.com/en/products/systems/c136842 https://www.onlogic.com/eu-en/computers/industrial/

The time for media PCs may be over, they may not. I have a Plex server and the NUC is a great form factor for that.

But, even leaving aside media PCs, the form factor is great. They're powerful enough for me to use happily as a desktop, and I love having a tiny PC that doesn't take up acres of desktop.

I'm not sure if I can totally agree with that. The form factor may be nice but, in my case the NUC has always been very noisy and hot until I decided to buy the akasa case. This is no wonder, because the small packed hardware cannot be cooled as efficient as bigger cases, even slightly bigger onces.

The NUC is also limited in extensability and even if the form factor as such is nice, they are slow compared to only slightly bigger sized Ryzen workstations (e.g. Minisforum X400 or ASRock DeskMini).

I'm also running a Plex server (as Proxmox Guest) and in my opinion servers do not need to be small or fanless in general, if you can place them somewhere in a room where noise and space are not this problematic (my server is in the kitchen ON the fridge... I consider the living room and the bedroom as quiet places)

The NUC is pretty good for very specific use cases (presentations, fairs, etc.) because they can easily be transported and are small and the hardware is ok, but for most other use cases, especially servers, there are definitely better systems.

Seems to me torrents are getting a big boost and people are fleeing from streaming. I see many buying alternatives to stream like "the old days" after they have cancelled Netflix etc. I'm one of them, canceling and adjusting for several families.

1L desktops are the new hotness for home labs. Intel and AMD offerings are very impressive and some are super low power but can throttle way up if you give them the proper oversized power bricks. small, expandable, low power and most importantly cheap.

Personally my M1 Mac mini replaced the idea of a home server NUC for me. My workstation is also my server now because I don't need to worry about power consumption on it.

While the hardware itself may be astounding, the operating system is not my preferred choice for a server... even if asahi linux may already work well.

I tried TrueNAS Scale, Proxmox, handcrafted debian, Terraform+Ansible scripts and with all the problems it may have, Proxmox is my choice for over a year now and I never regretted it.

I already used the ZFS rollback feature [1] twice to get back where I was and IT JUST WORKS... never had issues so far.

[1]: https://pilabor.com/series/proxmox/restore-virtual-machine-v...

Yeah, the Mac is definitely for lighter home server tasks. I tried in the past to run more complex stuff, and it wasn't worth the hassle of figuring out macOS's differences vs Linux. Had PowerEdges in the basement once for a startup, but nowadays the Mac is enough.

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