Hi :)
I’ve been playing around with a pi 4 for a few months now, but I want a dedicated home server now, since I want my pi to run HomeAssistantOS.
I’m looking for something that can store documents and photos (paperless and immich) and maybe run a small program like Ad guard. At first I just want to hookup an old SSD (250GB) and a HHD (1TB), but maybe I will buy a second one for RAID in the future. Power consumption at idle is really important for me (energy prices in Germany are really high).
As a beginner I find it very hard to find the right hardware, because everyone is recommending different things. (Slim-Clients, Intel Nuc, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS).
I hope someone can recommend me something that will work for me.
Look of a refurbished thinclient with a 6th or 7th gen Intel CPU with the “T” at the end (for example i5 6500T). Those are basically power optimized mobile CPUs for desktop PCs. Those are currently best value for money IMHO.
Alternatively use an old laptop, which is great for beginners, but storage extension will be very limited.
Old Laptop actually sounds interesting to me, very nice form factor for my “inside the bookshelf” approach, but probably a lot of tinkering.
How do thin clients compare to a pi 4? I’ve heard most of them are worse in computing power and efficiency in comparison to the Pi.