I'd like to build a low power (ideally fanless) server for home automation, data logging, etc, (possibly) pihole, and kodi server, etc running Linux. I've used Rpi in the past, but the sd cards wear out/go bad and I inevitably have to rebuild. Is there a low power/cost way of having a SBC paired with an SSD, or an alternative solution that anyone could recommend?
Ask HN: Always on low power home server
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Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#2Modern pi4 can boot from other media. The Sd card problem is mostly a thing of the past.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#3The Rockchip SoCs are quite good.
Pine64 has several boards, here is one of them, https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/02/16/pine64-unveils-quart...
Either eMMC or M.2 or SSD should be fine.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#4I'd stick with a RasPi. There's a process to set a boot flag to allow booting from USB media. From there you can install Raspbian (or your other distro of choice) to any USB connected storage device. I've been using the same USB drive partitioned and formatted to 1/4th its capacity (to increase available blocks for wear leveling) for 5 straight years without any issues.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#5Slap an SSD in an external USB enclosure, connect it to a Pi 4 configured to boot from USB, and you're all set.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#6I use a Asrock J3355B for my little nas/homeserver it idles at 8W and "spikes" to 15W while decoding movies. It's a bit pricier as a raspi but it has a lot more features. 2 Sata Ports, PCIEX Slot up to 16gb ram etc but most important it is completely silent.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#7I'd again recommend a Raspberry Pi (ideally 4 with 4GB+ RAM), but with some modifications.
- You can choose an high endurance MicroSD card to maximize its life.
- You can delegate big file storage to something external (a HDD or SSD w/USB 3.0 connection). If you want something small, SanDisk Extreme Pro USB stick is a real SSD with USB-SATA bridge inside and 400MB/sec throughput.
- Armbian writes logs and swap to RAM in a compressed manner and will only commit logs back to disk during restart/shutdown. You can modify Raspbian to do the same I think. Armbian is not present for Raspberry Pi, my bad, sorry.
I'm using Armbian on a OrangePi Zero to run dnsmasq, qbittorrent (humble bundle downloads and ISOs), syncthing and other couple of services. I've delegated storage to an external USB 256GB drive and it's doing fine for now.
It's not as powerful to run Kodi and other multimedia stuff, but it's a plug and forget matchstick box which makes my life way easier.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#8Maybe a NUC 8i3 with an aftermarket fanless case?
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#9They're not low cost new, but there's a decent number of used Intel NUCs available on eBay and similar sites. They're standard PCs with low power components, so you can stick SSDs and other things into them easily. Since it's Intel platform it's also easier to power manage them with standard tools. Powertop can flip the graphics output, audio, etc. off independently and scale frequency.
Re: Ask HN: Always on low power home server
#10I'd again recommend a Raspberry Pi (ideally 4 with 4GB+ RAM), but with some modifications. - You can choose an high endurance MicroSD card to maximize its life. - You can delegate big file storage to something external (a HDD or SSD w/USB 3.0 connection). If you want something small, SanDisk Extreme Pro USB stick is a real SSD with USB-SATA bridge inside and 400MB/sec throughput. - Armbian writes logs and swap to RAM…
> You can choose an high endurance MicroSD card to maximize its life.
You can also use whatever cheap card just for bootup, then immediately change root to a `/` mounted from an SSD.