this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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Help with home server plan (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Danitos@reddthat.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi :)

I'm planning on setting up my home server, and I'm feeling a bit lost.

I currently have a Jellyfin, SSH and Backrest server running on my PC, but want to get some dedicated hardware for it, and increase the services hosted to VPN, Immich, maybe Nextcloud, etc.

The problem is that I have no idea for what kind of hardware to aim for. I don't know whether I should aim for Rasperri, or MiniPC, or a dedicated rag, or any other thing. My country doesn't have a big second-hand market for server stuff, but I that's also a possibility.

Some context on my needs:

  • I run 1440p videos on Jellifyn, so my guess is I need H.265 support. Other than that, I think any CPU will do, and don't need a very fast one. Same goes for RAM, maybe 8 GB is enough

  • I feel like I do need at least 2 hard drives (1 for my files, another for backups)

  • The ability of upgrade with better hardware would be appreciated, maybe another hard drive or some extra ram.

  • Preferably, a rather low-energy consumption drive. Maybe 10 W idle? No idea on this front neither.

  • Budget is around $200 USD, excluding hard drives. I can pay extra for drives, or get them later on as I start playing around and scale up.

  • What Linux distro should I use? For security, I want to run everything with Dockers, so I guess it doesn't matter? I'm mildly fluent in Linux, experience with Arch and Debian based.

Thanks in advance :)

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[–] sunoc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nice project!

Given the tight budget, here is what I would do, especially if you are not too constraint by space and don't mind a few extra watts of power consumption. The Raspberry Pi are getting expensive, and the 200USD will barely get you a RPi5 nowadays. You said there is no market for you for second hand sever hw, but I'm guessing it should not be too hard to get used office desktop PCs.

  • Get two of these. Maybe Optiplex or Thinkstation. You can probably get something decent <50USD each.
  • Get two small SATA SSDs for the OS (128 - 256GB), around 30USD each.
  • Get your storage drives. You should get 3 of them so you can have ZFS raid redundancy.
  • On one machine, install TrueNAS and your storage drives. Default RAM is probably enough.
  • On the other one, upgrade the RAM to 8 or 16 GB (~50USD), install your favorite Linux distro, and you can run your services, accessing the storage with NFS!

To me it feels safer (against my own mess-up) to separate the storage and the services, plus this setup is fairly upgradable. You'll probably have space to add more storage drives, even maybe a cache SSD; increase the RAM; add a third machine etc.

Of course it's just one idea, maybe other another layout might fit your use-case better, idk.

Good luck!

[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for the response. I have a question

Given the tight budget

I can increase the budget, but I though that $200USD would be enough to get me starter, given that the 200 don't include the drives. If I were to increase it, what would you recommend?

[–] sunoc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe trying with some Raspberry Pis for your services (takes up less space, low power) and building a dedicated machine for the NAS, as suggested by @hodgepodgin@lemmy.zip, but that's a whole different budget.

Otherwise, maybe going for some mini-pcs, more recent second-hand PCs (stronger CPU for video encoding) or just more RAM and more disks.

I guess the final price will depend on what exact machine you can get your hands on.