1x Lenovo M90q (i5 10500T, 64 GB RAM, 256 GB + 1 TB NVMe, Google Coral USB, and 10GB SFP+ Asus XG-C100F in the PCIe slot) – 16W idle
1x Lenovo M920 (i5 8500T, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe, Google Coral USB, and Intel X710-DA2 in the PCIe slot) – 37W idle
And TrueNAS Scale on a custom build (4U rack):
i3 9100, 96 GB ECC RAM, Asus WS-C246M, 2x16TB + 2x12TB HDDs + 6x1TB SSDs, Intel X710-DA2 in the PCIe slot – 50W idle
note.
since I mainly use mechanical drives, I don’t really need 10GbE — I think 2.5GbE would be more than enough for my needs, and “downgrading” to that would also help reduce overall power consumption even further.
The issue is, I really don’t know where to start — there are just too many options out there, and it’s hard to pick the “best” one.
For now, I’d leave the NAS as it is and just focus on replacing the Proxmox nodes. I’m considering a few options:
Option A:
Minisforum MS-01 or A2. I’m leaning a bit toward the AMD version, but the Intel one has QuickSync, which is better for Jellyfin. That said, from what I’ve read, both have pretty high idle power consumption — around 40–50W, probably due to the onboard X710 NICs.
Option B:
A Minisforum ITX board with two 2U rack cases. I’d use one NVMe slot for the OS and the other either for VMs or with an NVMe-to-SATA adapter to add more SSDs. This setup gives me flexibility, and I’d also get a free PCIe slot to add a GPU for running local AI workloads. ***
Option C:
Mini PCs — I was looking at the Asus NUC Pro 14 or 15 with the Core Ultra 5 225H.
They should have very low idle power, offer plenty of performance and I could use Thunderbolt for Ceph.
Alternatively, I could consider some AMD-based (Ryzen AI etc, but again.. no QuickSync) mini PCs from Chinese brands, but I’m not sure how well they’d hold up running 24/7.
Another option could be getting newer Dell or Lenovo mini PCs, but aside from the higher price, they usually come with just Gigabit NICs.
Another interesting option could be the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra (it offers two PCIe slots, support for up to 128 GB of ECC memory) but I’m unsure about is power consumption.
*** AI Option:
Another idea is to get a Mac Mini and run LLMs on it — from what I’ve seen, Mac Minis have incredibly low power consumption and perform really well for AI tasks.
I am for the option C, starting with 1 Asus NUC (and slowly build the cluster) + a mini M4 for the AI, what do you think?
The best place to start would be to make a list of your needs.
Do you need more space? More processing power? More RAM?
What do you plan to use the home lab for?
Your hardware needs are driven by your goals, unless your goal is to tinker and learn as much as you can, in which case I recommend getting a couple more HP EliteDesks.
Ciao and thanks for the reply.
I don’t have any special needs, it is just because…how to call it… in Italy we say “è la scimmia” (literally, “it’s the monkey” or “I have the monkey” – I don’t know why ) - the state were you want to buy or upgrade something not because you need it but just because it would be cool to have a new thing or new features “to play”.
I don’t know if there is a similar terms in english to describe this “state”
…Anyway, jokes a part, I would like to reduce the number of running pc (so less maintenance ), get better performance but keeping similar consumptions.
Furthermore, I would like to do some “experiments” with ceph, proxmox cluster, and with thunderbolt networking, just to learn something new.
And finally - a moment of mental clarity -, I am using 10gb network just for nas and firewall, but with my mechanical drives and 4 people in the house, 2.5GB are more then enough.
I bought the x710 because it was “cool” (a previous “scimmia” ) and because I found them at very cheap price, but frankly are overkill for me, not even during backups are pushed to 100%.
Are cool just for the iperf3 or openspeedtest
With that said, both my options above, hits all the checkboxes so chose is very difficult..
what do you recommend? a solution with nuc or mini itx with mobile cpu like minisforum?
Absolutely! We want new toys to play with and experiment.
These I think tick all your boxes: cheap, low power consumption, good enough to tinker with Ceph and clustering. You can even put 2 SSDs in there, 1 of them NVMe for Proxmox and the other regular for Ceph. The only drawback is the 1GB network adapter but it seems you don’t need more.
Minisforum is another interesting vendor. You could go that route but it is more expensive than the HP EliteDesks, and I think also consumes more power depending on which model you go for. The biggest advantage some models come preinstalled with 2 network adapters and it works well with Proxmox.
Overall the cooling solution also feels slightly more noisier than the EliteDesks, but not much more.
Personally I would buy more EliteDesks because I love them, but either of these would tick all your boxes.
In American English, the idiom might be “because I have an itch” or “I have the urge”. This also loosely translates to “I have money burning a hole in my pocket” meaning you just have to spend money on some cool stuff.
) - the state were you want to buy or upgrade something not because you need it but just because it would be cool to have a new thing or new features “to play”.
), get better performance but keeping similar consumptions.
) and because I found them at very cheap price, but frankly are overkill for me, not even during backups are pushed to 100%.