I’m considering setting up a home lab and truly self-hosting my own services. Unfortunately, my budget is limited to around $100-$150. I’m wondering if the HP Elitedesk mini PC is suitable for this purpose. I’m particularly looking at the HP Elitedesk 800 G3 or G5 models. Unfortunately, finding these devices in Dhaka has been challenging. So far, I’ve found a G3 on bikroy.com, but it comes with a 6th gen i7 CPU.

Edit: I ended up getting Elitedesk 800 G5 with i7 9th Gen CPU, 32 GB (Kingston) and 1 TB Nvme (a Chinese brand called Kingspec). I’ll get a new ssd later. The price was 35k BDT ($300 approx). The bios was locked. But I managed to unlock it by booting without cmos.

Next Post: https://mitexleo.one/@ml/115197417636648238

@selfhosted

#homelab #pc #selfhosting #selfhosted #linux #server #proxmox #hp #elitdesk

  • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.comEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    As said it should be fine unless pushing it with something like media files/jellyfin/plex/nextcloud. Nextcloud for example needs few resources but running anything nice would soon crawl. For the best advice a bit more of what you intend to self host would be nice

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      unless pushing it with something like media files/jellyfin/plex/nextcloud. Nextcloud for example needs few resources but running anything nice would soon crawl.

      Not really. The HP Elite 800 G3 mini and G4 mini make up 2/3 of my Proxmox nodes. The G3 currently hosts the VM that runs my entire media stack (Plex, *arrs, TMM, torrents/usenet, etc), and it’s not stressed at all

      • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        notice the bit about pushing it… say transcoding all the streams etc. I don’t know what or how it will be used… thus saying should be fine. Everyones mileage varies no talk about network either, far too many variables to consider thus saying it should be fine!

        • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          4·
          1 day ago

          notice the bit about pushing it… say transcoding all the streams etc.

          6th gen Intel CPUs support quicksync. This is a non-issue for most self-hosters.

          I don’t know what or how it will be used… thus saying should be fine.

          Here are some stats for my particular HP Elite 800 G3 Mini (i7-7700T/32GB RAM) over the last 18 months, running various VMs and LXCs with varying services (including the VM running my media stack from which my kids stream music and shows quite frequently):

          Peak CPU usage is never more than 50%, and the vast majority of memory usage is just cached. Actual memory usage by each VM or LXC is far lower. The IO delays…that was user error (my NAS was having issues at the time).

          Don’t get caught up in having a completely un-stressed machine. Too much overhead means wasted potential.

          Everyones mileage varies no talk about network either, far too many variables to consider thus saying it should be fine!

          Fair, but we’re talking about the actual machine on which the services will run - not the network. If the network is garbage, then the $150 machine isn’t going to matter a whole lot.

          • 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.comEnglish
            11·
            1 day ago

            Pretty pictures don’t always translate into another users experience though do they, but I appreciate you wanting to argue just because you can

            • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              3·
              1 day ago

              8th gen Intel igpu and it’s transcoding streams and supporting a very active immich stack. I have 12 containers and 8 VMs. It’s been awesome.

            • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              OP has a budget of $150. I doubt they are going to be running a full suite of self-hosted replacement services right off the bat. The machine in question is perfectly suitable for quite a lot of things.

      • koala@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        9 hours ago

        If you are going to run Jellyfin or some other media sharing, the key is if you need to transcode media (recompress because the playback device cannot handle it or not). Likely not, nowadays, but research that. If you need transcoding, research; you might get by with an old CPU, or maybe hardware transcoding support, but it’s difficult.

        Outside transcoding, for file sharing/streaming, every simultaneous client will require additional horsepower and disk transfer usage. If you are the sole client, then likely you can do with an old CPU. But if you and three people more in your household are going to be using the system at the same time, it might be a bit complex.

        One of my home servers is a 4gb of RAM, with a “Intel® Celeron® CPU G1610T @ 2.30GHz”. It’s very old and low end, but for file sharing it works quite well, but it rarely has more than a single simultaneous user.