Honora Niwlcraft5d ago

I'm looking for recommendations for inexpensive but reliable ARM / fanless small server at the lowest cost possible. The software on it will be debian/ Yunohost (a git forge, nextcloud, some internal docomentation, etc).

Min-specs: 4-8GB RAM.
Budget: Hopefully under $250, or something I can find in the used market.
I was told rasberry pi's are not as reliable, is there better?

#askfedi #yunohost #selhosting

Show threadrfnix5d ago

@NiwlCraft are mini-ITX motherboards with soldered CPUs an option? I have an old but solid Asrock one I bought 10+ years ago with a mini-ITX case and the total roughly matched your budget.

(I am fairly satisfied with it: even though it's not very powerful it's more than good enough for a server. I'm using it fanless ; temperature maxes out at ~50°C under heavy load and typically hovers between 30-40°C idle. It's currently idling around 17W with 2 HDDs and a SSD so power consumption is not ideal but... it's Intel so I imagine you could get lower numbers on a low-power ARM chip.)

Show threadHonora Niwlcraft
@rfnix Yeah over time the power consumption does add up a bit. I will look into those though.
May 11 at 11:53amWeb
Show threadrfnix5d ago
@NiwlCraft the power used by SSDs and HDDs is significant on my setup: when both HDDs are out of powersave mode it typically jumpts to at least 25W even without heavy CPU usage. I imagine you could get lower power usage with a SD card or somesuch, maybe, but I'm not familiar with their power consumption - and they're probably at bit less reliable.