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I'm thinking of a beefy mini-PC + USB-C 8+ hard drive enclosure. I feel like I rarely upgraded anything except GPU and storage. And GPU's are not needed for a

I'm thinking of a beefy mini-PC + USB-C 8+ hard drive enclosure. I feel like I rarely upgraded anything except GPU and storage. And GPU's are not needed for a server. Enclosure means easy storage upgrade and I can always reattach the enclosure to another machine quickly. Might even install OS on the enclosure, then the whole setup will survive compute upgrades until the predominant architecture changes.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
Exactly this. I don't even have a nice multi-drive enclosure, just a small swarm of toaster-style dual-drive holders. They're absurdly cheap. (Alas one of the recent purchases was maybe too cheap: wont let me adjust the various drive spin down/power savings settings. But this is a first for me, and they've all been very cheap). Unfortunately a lot of the mini-PCs skimp on USB ports. AMD's FL1 form-factor mobile "socket" has 4x 10Gbps + 1x 40Gbps USB-C ports on the SoC, but many of the designs often only have ~2x usb3 class ports and rarely the USB4 port at all. I'd really appreciate these mini-PC's exposing more of the chip's usb! Definitely something to shop for. With USB4, there's also the added benefit of having host-to-host interfaces: it's short range but 40Gbps host-to-host is real nice to have (in practice it's often half or less this speed alas). Upgradability is over-rated, when costs are low. A Minisforum 795S7 can be had for $400, and has dual ("only" PCIe 4.0) SSD slots and a 16-core 7945HX Zen4. It's mobile-on-desktop (MoDT): I can't ever replace the CPU, but I suspect this crazy cheap system is going to have a long long life before I feel the need to upgrade it. Replacing it whole when the time comes seems not a concern. RAM and SSD are separate and can be moved out if desired.
j45 1y ago
I tend to want to keep storage (NAS) separate from compute and databases, in the form of I never want to touch or think about this so I can spend my time on other things. Having a couple of pre-built nas' from QNAP or Synology can go a long way to getting one's feet wet to learn what they offer that we sometimes learn the hard way about.
dontlaugh 1y ago
There's some with both hard drive bays and fairly powerful CPUs. Aoostar and Ugreen make varying sizes.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  The point here is exactly allowing to upgrade compute independently of storage.
  - dontlaugh 1y ago
    I considered that, but it doesn't make sense price-wise. You can get the storage bays for very little along with your compute, certainly cheaper than separate hard drive enclosures.
    - lostmsu 1y ago
      The Aoostar top one actually looks pretty good for what it provides (sus really, $700 for a NAS with 2x2.5G E and 2x10 SFP). But still, the compute options are very limited.
      - dontlaugh 1y ago
        I just ordered the Ryzen 4 bay Aoostar one the other day to replace my HP microserver gen8. We’ll see when it arrives whether it was sus.
      - dontlaugh 1y ago
        I received the WTR PRO yesterday and moved my Unraid install to it. Seems entirely reasonable so far, everything works well. It’s much quieter and lower power than the HP micro server gen8 it’s replacing.
  - mrheosuper 1y ago
    There are a lot of NAS case you can find in China(Taobao), they are cheap(usually $40 for case with 4 hotswappable 3.4 drive. They use mini ITX motherboard and flex 1U PSU

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

Exactly this. I don't even have a nice multi-drive enclosure, just a small swarm of toaster-style dual-drive holders. They're absurdly cheap. (Alas one of the recent purchases was maybe too cheap: wont let me adjust the various drive spin down/power savings settings. But this is a first for me, and they've all been very cheap). Unfortunately a lot of the mini-PCs skimp on USB ports. AMD's FL1 form-factor mobile "socket" has 4x 10Gbps + 1x 40Gbps USB-C ports on the SoC, but many of the designs often only have ~2x usb3 class ports and rarely the USB4 port at all. I'd really appreciate these mini-PC's exposing more of the chip's usb! Definitely something to shop for. With USB4, there's also the added benefit of having host-to-host interfaces: it's short range but 40Gbps host-to-host is real nice to have (in practice it's often half or less this speed alas). Upgradability is over-rated, when costs are low. A Minisforum 795S7 can be had for $400, and has dual ("only" PCIe 4.0) SSD slots and a 16-core 7945HX Zen4. It's mobile-on-desktop (MoDT): I can't ever replace the CPU, but I suspect this crazy cheap system is going to have a long long life before I feel the need to upgrade it. Replacing it whole when the time comes seems not a concern. RAM and SSD are separate and can be moved out if desired.

j45 1y ago

I tend to want to keep storage (NAS) separate from compute and databases, in the form of I never want to touch or think about this so I can spend my time on other things. Having a couple of pre-built nas' from QNAP or Synology can go a long way to getting one's feet wet to learn what they offer that we sometimes learn the hard way about.

dontlaugh 1y ago

There's some with both hard drive bays and fairly powerful CPUs. Aoostar and Ugreen make varying sizes.

lostmsu 1y ago
The point here is exactly allowing to upgrade compute independently of storage.
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  I considered that, but it doesn't make sense price-wise. You can get the storage bays for very little along with your compute, certainly cheaper than separate hard drive enclosures.
  - lostmsu 1y ago
    The Aoostar top one actually looks pretty good for what it provides (sus really, $700 for a NAS with 2x2.5G E and 2x10 SFP). But still, the compute options are very limited.
    - dontlaugh 1y ago
      I just ordered the Ryzen 4 bay Aoostar one the other day to replace my HP microserver gen8. We’ll see when it arrives whether it was sus.
    - dontlaugh 1y ago
      I received the WTR PRO yesterday and moved my Unraid install to it. Seems entirely reasonable so far, everything works well. It’s much quieter and lower power than the HP micro server gen8 it’s replacing.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  There are a lot of NAS case you can find in China(Taobao), they are cheap(usually $40 for case with 4 hotswappable 3.4 drive. They use mini ITX motherboard and flex 1U PSU