6 ms·

Me too, it's been a lot of years since I bothered with a home lab, but just recently I put NixOS on a triad of Intel NUCs work was throwing away. They're fanles

Me too, it's been a lot of years since I bothered with a home lab, but just recently I put NixOS on a triad of Intel NUCs work was throwing away. They're fanless, quiet and decent enough for Linux with their 16GB memory and 8 cores. Way better than a RasberryPi. Now I can do some experiments I wanted to do, but not use VMs on my laptop. Feels more real when I can see a little stack of servers I can pull the power on. All are running tailscale so I can get to them from anywhere and run some simple tests. Example: I wanted to play with a quorum of FoundationDB nodes and see how things can fail. Also I'll run k3s and do some experimenting with that. Can I use minicube on my laptop? Sure, but this is more fun.

samsquire 4y ago
I use an Intel NUC as a desktop. It's powerful enough for 6 virtual ubuntu machines (probably more) and running ceph and postgres nodes with Vagrant (not that I use them all the time, more for development) Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz, 1608 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s) 32GB RAM 1TB SSD https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/188811/intel-nuc-10-performance-kit-nuc10i7fnh.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/188811/... IntelliJ and Windows 11 runs fine.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I had this setup and then wanted more so got a Ghost Canyon one. It's not really a Nuc as its about 8x the size, but carries the badge. It'll fit a full PCI card and then you can go wild. It really is great.
mdasen 4y ago
For people that aren't getting free boxes from work, you can usually find used micro/tiny form factor Intel machines for around $120. That's more than a Raspberry Pi, but you can get a Core i5-6500T with 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and it'll use around 10 watts at idle (and top out around 50 watts). You'll get an M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x slot and a bay for a 2.5" SATA drive and support for up to 32GB of memory. You can put Proxmox on them if you want to run a bunch of VMs or use Windows or any of the many Linux distros that support x64 rather than dealing with less known hardware. While 10 watts is more than the 1-2 watts of a Raspberry Pi, it comes out to around $13/year for me leaving it on 24/7. A normal desktop idling at 50-100 watts would cost me $65-130/year so it is a big difference. In fact, if you're leaving a normal desktop on 24/7 as a home server, it might make financial sense to grab a micro/tiny machine. If it costs you $120 and saves you $50-120/year in electricity, that seems like it would be worthwhile. They're not fanless, but they are very quiet compared to most desktops. I ended up going this route because Raspberry Pis are so hard to come by these days. A Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM will cost $75 and then you'll need to supply your own storage (MicroSD), buy a case if you want to protect it, and a USB cable and power adapter (though you probably have that sitting around). Between the Raspberry Pi and MicroSD card, it's basically $100 and way less powerful than a Core i5-6500T (which should be 3x faster) and you're using a MicroSD card rather than a nice PCIe flash drive. Plus, if you want, you can load the micro/tiny machine up with 32GB of RAM for not that much ($40 to get it to 24GB, $70 to get it to 32GB) and you can make that decision in the future. Plus, for a lot of purposes, standard x64 hardware can be nice. Plus, you can actually get your hands on a micro/tiny form factor PC while I haven't seen Raspberry Pis in stock in a long time. One could easily disagree, though. The operating costs are likely to be an additional $10-11/year and one could get a 1GB RAM Raspberry Pi for $35 (if they had them in stock) and get a small MicroSD and maybe only spend $40-45 instead of $120, but it feels like the utility of a $45 machine with 1GB RAM is a lot more limited and I'd (personally) rather spend the money on something I know I can use.
- koprulusector 4y ago
  > A Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM will cost $75 Do you have a link to where I can buy a Raspberry Pi 4B (8GB) for under $150? The cheapest I can find through Amazon was $202. I bought one before the pandemic (~2019) at Microcenter for, if I recall correctly, $90? Seriously, if you know where to find one, please share!
  - nicolas314 4y ago
    Keep watching https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/ or follow them on twitter
  - m01 4y ago
    IIRC the approved resellers do not sell them over RRP, which you can find via the official website - when they have them in stock. Opinions my own.

samsquire 4y ago

I use an Intel NUC as a desktop. It's powerful enough for 6 virtual ubuntu machines (probably more) and running ceph and postgres nodes with Vagrant (not that I use them all the time, more for development) Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz, 1608 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s) 32GB RAM 1TB SSD https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/188811/intel-nuc-10-performance-kit-nuc10i7fnh.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/188811/... IntelliJ and Windows 11 runs fine.

lostlogin 4y ago
I had this setup and then wanted more so got a Ghost Canyon one. It's not really a Nuc as its about 8x the size, but carries the badge. It'll fit a full PCI card and then you can go wild. It really is great.

mdasen 4y ago

For people that aren't getting free boxes from work, you can usually find used micro/tiny form factor Intel machines for around $120. That's more than a Raspberry Pi, but you can get a Core i5-6500T with 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and it'll use around 10 watts at idle (and top out around 50 watts). You'll get an M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x slot and a bay for a 2.5" SATA drive and support for up to 32GB of memory. You can put Proxmox on them if you want to run a bunch of VMs or use Windows or any of the many Linux distros that support x64 rather than dealing with less known hardware. While 10 watts is more than the 1-2 watts of a Raspberry Pi, it comes out to around $13/year for me leaving it on 24/7. A normal desktop idling at 50-100 watts would cost me $65-130/year so it is a big difference. In fact, if you're leaving a normal desktop on 24/7 as a home server, it might make financial sense to grab a micro/tiny machine. If it costs you $120 and saves you $50-120/year in electricity, that seems like it would be worthwhile. They're not fanless, but they are very quiet compared to most desktops. I ended up going this route because Raspberry Pis are so hard to come by these days. A Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM will cost $75 and then you'll need to supply your own storage (MicroSD), buy a case if you want to protect it, and a USB cable and power adapter (though you probably have that sitting around). Between the Raspberry Pi and MicroSD card, it's basically $100 and way less powerful than a Core i5-6500T (which should be 3x faster) and you're using a MicroSD card rather than a nice PCIe flash drive. Plus, if you want, you can load the micro/tiny machine up with 32GB of RAM for not that much ($40 to get it to 24GB, $70 to get it to 32GB) and you can make that decision in the future. Plus, for a lot of purposes, standard x64 hardware can be nice. Plus, you can actually get your hands on a micro/tiny form factor PC while I haven't seen Raspberry Pis in stock in a long time. One could easily disagree, though. The operating costs are likely to be an additional $10-11/year and one could get a 1GB RAM Raspberry Pi for $35 (if they had them in stock) and get a small MicroSD and maybe only spend $40-45 instead of $120, but it feels like the utility of a $45 machine with 1GB RAM is a lot more limited and I'd (personally) rather spend the money on something I know I can use.

koprulusector 4y ago
> A Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM will cost $75 Do you have a link to where I can buy a Raspberry Pi 4B (8GB) for under $150? The cheapest I can find through Amazon was $202. I bought one before the pandemic (~2019) at Microcenter for, if I recall correctly, $90? Seriously, if you know where to find one, please share!
- nicolas314 4y ago
  Keep watching https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/ or follow them on twitter
- m01 4y ago
  IIRC the approved resellers do not sell them over RRP, which you can find via the official website - when they have them in stock. Opinions my own.