Posted: 11/28/2025 4:40:42 PM EDT
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I've been setting up my Raspberry Pi 4 for some mission critical stuff like my WireGuard VPN that I use for remoting to my work machine while traveling etc., but have been setting up more and more things that I'm realizing the Pi is not really cut out for. On top of my VPN/Zero Tier/ Cloudflare infrastructure stuff, I've started with some media/storage stuff. I've set it up on a 2TB drive, and have already installed NextCloud and Plex... I think I want to move from Plex to JellyFin, and I want to install Immich so I can have a decent photo app on my iPhone (and others in my family can as well) without having to up my iCloud subscription data tier because my photo and video collection keeps growing. I want to keep the lightweight networking stuff on my Pi, but then get a mini PC that will handle all the multimedia/bulk storage/etc. I started looking at the N100 class of processors, but then thought that maybe I'd step up to the N150 because the price isn't THAT different, and to get 16GB of RAM. I'll have 2-3 people using it at the most, and it isn't going to be constant usage... just an as-needed thing when we need the files or want to look through them. A small SSD on it will be fine as I will have all my data/media on a separate drive so it's not intermingled with the OS drive. I don't really want anything that expensive, and I've been looking at some of the ~$200 or less models. However I've seen that a lot of these are come with WIn 11 bundled and there's been some malware embedded in them... I'll be reformatting the disk regardless and installing a Linux flavor on the machine anyways, but I'm a little concerned about embedded firmware. Also, since I travel for months at a time, I want at least reasonable reliability, and not something that will almost certainly die in a couple years as I KNOW it will happen when I'm gone. What should I be looking at? I was looking at brands like ACEMAGIC, but I'm not totally confident on the firmware malware potential of these plus the longevity of these devices. |
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Originally Posted By ske714: Look at Synology NAS boxes. They'll do all of those things and much more. A DS923+ is a good model, with plenty of processor. I can install Linux directly on a Synology NAS and use it that way, as a server? A 4-disk, $900 NAS is a far cry from the ~$200 mini PC I am looking towards. I don't have a household of people who are going to be concurrently streaming 4k transcoded movies all at once. This is primarily going to be the way people use the iOS photos app... "Hey, look at this video we took from our last trip..." find it, open it in the phone and watch it. We just want the media to be available from anywhere on our phones without relying on Apple iCloud infrastructure. |
| I did something similar with a DS224+ and two 12TB HDDs to replace a Dropbox subscription. The hard drives are the expensive part. I also just bought a one bay DS124 and will place it off site for nightly backups of my primary NAS. |
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Originally Posted By RaptorFuel: I did something similar with a DS224+ and two 12TB HDDs to replace a Dropbox subscription. The hard drives are the expensive part. I also just bought a one bay DS124 and will place it off site for nightly backups of my primary NAS. honestly I don't need a TON of storage... my current NextCloud setup is on a 2TB, USB-3 external drive connected to the Pi. I'm not going to be putting on a ton of movies on it either; mostly just rips of some fitness videos I can use while traveling. 2TB will be fine for my usage here; I'll likely get a less portable SATA 2.5 SSD drive, copy the media to it, and then take this 2TB drive with me while traveling so I can (again) conserve iCloud space... Also... I really just want something that will be an upsized Raspberry Pi in function. I want to have the flexibility to be able to do all kinds of things with it, like the Pi... not just have a few core features that are allowed to be done through a proprietary NAS "OS." I have an old DLINK NAS and they aren't updating any of the old firmware anymore, and it's been made all but obsolete over the years. Trying to avoid that kind of proprietary restriction again. |
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Originally Posted By ske714: Look at Synology NAS boxes. They'll do all of those things and much more. A DS923+ is a good model, with plenty of processor. I started with Qnap, now I have all Unifi gear. I self host all kinds of programs on RPi 4s and 5s and mini PCs. Heck, two of my mini PCs are crypto nodes. |
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Originally Posted By DDiggler: I can install Linux directly on a Synology NAS and use it that way, as a server? A 4-disk, $900 NAS is a far cry from the ~$200 mini PC I am looking towards. I don't have a household of people who are going to be concurrently streaming 4k transcoded movies all at once. This is primarily going to be the way people use the iOS photos app... "Hey, look at this video we took from our last trip..." find it, open it in the phone and watch it. We just want the media to be available from anywhere on our phones without relying on Apple iCloud infrastructure. Originally Posted By DDiggler: Originally Posted By ske714: Look at Synology NAS boxes. They'll do all of those things and much more. A DS923+ is a good model, with plenty of processor. I can install Linux directly on a Synology NAS and use it that way, as a server? A 4-disk, $900 NAS is a far cry from the ~$200 mini PC I am looking towards. I don't have a household of people who are going to be concurrently streaming 4k transcoded movies all at once. This is primarily going to be the way people use the iOS photos app... "Hey, look at this video we took from our last trip..." find it, open it in the phone and watch it. We just want the media to be available from anywhere on our phones without relying on Apple iCloud infrastructure. It's already linux based. They have apps for many things, and you can run just about anything else in docker. Yeah, pricey, but good stuff. |
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No matter if you go with a mini PC or a dedicated NAS, you will still have to add the cost for storage devices. Most mini PC's will only have room for 1 or 2 NVME drives, any more and you will have to go with external enclosures. A dedicated NAS will come with a Linux based NAS OS installed. Then you have the cost of storage to go in them. Each NAS OS has its positives and negatives. I am running a Terra-Master F4 SSD with 4 NVME drives in it. It runs Terra-Master's TOS 6.0 OS. It has the N95 CPU and 8 GB RAM. I did upgrade the RAM to 32 GB. I use it as a Time Machine backup for my MAC's and also backup my Windows computers to it. I just use it for backups and basic storage and it does fine. |
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| I use a Pi4 for my PiVPN and Pihole and it does well on those duties. For my Plex server, I'm using a MinisForum MS-01 with a Core i5-12500h. It seems like it was about $420 barebones, and I bought a 2TB NVME and 32 GB RAM. I got in mainly for the iGPU to do Plex transcoding and it does it very well. I also have a Unifi UNAS Pro to serve Plex videos and to be a general purpose file server. Planning NextCloud or something similar as the next project. |
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| I've been doing some more reading and it seems like I should also consider something like a used/refurbished Dell Optiplex micro computer (or similar from other brands); they seem to last a lot longer than these mini PCs? Something with an i7 and 16GB of RAM seems like it would be fairly futureproof for this kind of thing... |
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I have a few OptiPlex Micros that I keep around as utility machines, they're plenty snappy with NVMe drives. The only thing I don't like about them is the power supplies are bulky and cumbersome, but that's the tradeoff for no internal PSU. |
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Originally Posted By DDiggler: I've been doing some more reading and it seems like I should also consider something like a used/refurbished Dell Optiplex micro computer (or similar from other brands); they seem to last a lot longer than these mini PCs? Something with an i7 and 16GB of RAM seems like it would be fairly futureproof for this kind of thing... I've had good experiences with refurbished workstations as Hyper-V and proxmox hosts. Just toss in SSDs and they're great for the home lab. |
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I saw a video of a CNC machine being rebuilt using one of these I'd choose this over investing in a Pi5 |
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Originally Posted By DDiggler: I've been doing some more reading and it seems like I should also consider something like a used/refurbished Dell Optiplex micro computer (or similar from other brands); they seem to last a lot longer than these mini PCs? Something with an i7 and 16GB of RAM seems like it would be fairly futureproof for this kind of thing... or a SFF works too. id rather the smaller appliance personally |
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Originally Posted By Moondog: I saw a video of a CNC machine being rebuilt using one of these I'd choose this over investing in a Pi5 That’s what I was originally looking at, but after I started digging into it, the longevity and reliability just doesn’t seem to be there. |
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You can pickup the Dell Optiplex Micro computers fairly cheap, especially now that Windows 10 is pretty much dead. I picked up a refurb Optiplex Micro 3050 on amazon last year for a good price. I did install a NVME drive and upgrade the RAM to 32 GB. It runs well with W10 and does even better with Linux. A lot of the Dell Optiplex Micro's with W10 won't support W11 so they make good candidates for Linux. The downside is you can't install a graphics card in them. |
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Funny that I just went through some of this myself. I was hosting my own 3cx phone PBX that fed 2 of my LLCs and a bunch of family member's phones AND a mikrotik VPN router for wireguard AND a personal cloud drive server. It turned into a real job to feed the computers/machines, feed the UPS with batteries, have multiple ISP, etc. I had 5 minutes of downtine in 4.5 years that I hosted the setup, which is impressive. I went with a $10/mo Vultr instance to feed the PBX (FreePBX) with the $2/mo server backups. I went with the $5/mo Vultr for the Mikrotik CHR Cloud Hosted Router ($45 license) to feed my Mikrotik VPN routers. I went with dual Synology physical machines for backup (1 at home in AZ and 1 at my brother's house in FL). I also host his backup drive at my house. You have different stuff going on and I didnt do as much research with the Synology solution as it seemed easy and my brother was deep into those details vs me being into the phone side. TT |
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I have a few of these. They were about $170 when I got them. They have 2 HDMI ports, and I have the Gigabit ethernet ports bound together. Alternatively, one could build a nice little router or PiHole box. They have an extra NVME slot inside, so they are each at 4TB of storage. Finally, no external wall warts or power supply blocks. 120v cord into each of them. They have fans but are silent. Running linux on each, initially bought them for SLURM. Now they just run containers.  
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Get a small used office desktop with at least Intel 8th generation processor and it will work great for your use case and will be able to run windows 11 if you ever need it to. I have multiple mini HP 290 office desktops I bought for $100 each new during covid. One is running Ubuntu as a dedicated plex server and transcoder box, another one is my PfSense firewall with intel 4 port nic. 8th gen intel processors, can fit 64GB DDR4 RAM, one NVME and one 3.5" spinning sata drive. Has short height PCIe 16x and 1x. Here is the 10th gen intel version: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-hp-s01-pf1013w-owners-thread-and-review/9070 |
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M910q micro boxes for K8s - sata SSD for boot - NVME for storage - i7 cpu - 32GB ram - yank the fucky wifi card and install an intel i226-v eth card M720q for routing - opnsense - vpn - dns - ntp - 4x2.5Gbps or 2x10Gbps network - i5 cpu and 16GB ram (more than enough) Nextcloud is cute, but it lacks a solid mail server solution - either go with Zimbra/oss or something else on another box/container |
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Originally Posted By DDiggler: I've been doing some more reading and it seems like I should also consider something like a used/refurbished Dell Optiplex micro computer (or similar from other brands); they seem to last a lot longer than these mini PCs? Something with an i7 and 16GB of RAM seems like it would be fairly futureproof for this kind of thing... I'm typing this on a refurbished Optiplex. I have three of them, and they're rock solid. I bought them from Amazon. Just make sure they specify NEW hard drives. If you buy refurbished notebooks, make sure the batteries are new. Here's what I have. i7 32G ram 1TB SSD + 2TH HD $381 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3G5YT92 You can spend less and still get a solid machine. These are just a great deal. |
9 lives - 9 pellets... Coincidence?