💰 DON'T SPEND A TON on your first linux lab "server"

#techjobs #homelab #learning

[@FakeMichau]

It's just important to have a low idle power consumption

[@Solar_and_Security]

Been saying this a year. Such a fan of this set up. I will say these are perfect low power Proxmox HA cluster in addition to PXE booting.

[@one_step_sideways]

There are some interesting GenMachine mini-PCs with the Ryzen 7040 series engineering sample APUs. A Ryzen 5 7640HS ES version costs like $200 barebones. This mini-PC has very fast graphics supporting AMD HYPR-RX, AV1 encoding, and 6 fast Zen 4 cores, and we know how much Linux likes fast single-thread performance. Over the past 10 years both Intel and AMD have learned how to make ES silicon that just works and is much more stable than what the ES used to be.

[@soggamer6974]

Can recommend minisforum pc with double 10 gigabit port and intel71250h I think with discount it was 300$ with 32gb ram its truely overpowered

[@FakeMichau]

Those damn bots... Nothing you mentioned matters for Linux

[@one_step_sideways]

@@FakeMichau There's only so much you can do with a 12 year old dual-core ThinkPad X220. I want to at least have some hardware encoding support

[@xdevs23]

I can recommend the ODROID H4. It's fairly cheap for what it offers and it's x86 with a regular BIOS and you can run anything you're used to running on a regular PC. It also is very power efficient. At idle, it should be around 2-5 W.

[@lorem-pc98]

True ❤ I have a new Intel N100 16GB RAM 512 SSD 7-watt mini PC for $120, and it's the best solution for my mini lab. Same performance as Dell micro, and much better than Raspberry Pi at the same price.

[@xdevs23]

$120 for N100+16GB+512GB is pretty good. The N97 is better (it's what the ODROID H4 has) but you got a pretty good deal.

[@MrtrenchTrucker]

I actually took a similar approach. My first "lab" is a Minisforum octo core no GPU mini PC and a wifi 6e router. I'm running 2.5g Lan and a mobile hot spot. Eventually I can add another mini pc to the node even something as small as a Pi but for now, I am running allmost all the servers I need in Windows and will virtual box or Docker the rest. It's great for experiments and storing my data.

[@schlimmpf158]

I recently got a Fujitsu W530 for 80$ on ebay as a NAS which even came with a Quadro K2000 dedicated GPU, but I did have to upgrade to a Gigabit NIC

[@jodycwilliams]

Buy just about any SBC, save space, and do all of the same stuff. These machines sound great until you try to put 5-10 of them together. Then you quickly realize why RPi, Zimaboard, Asus Tinkeboards, etc are much better.

[@jeanpierresaldana5794]

Not really! If you hunt for deals you can buy them used for as low as 40 dolars. SBC is not a good investment right now in most cases because the market for used SBC is too small, not to mention the prices of buying new SBC.

[@jodycwilliams]

@@jeanpierresaldana5794 you missed my point entirely. SBCs take up 10% of the space. If you’re going to train yourself for a corporate or even high end enterprise job, you’re going to need that space. Your only better option is to pay for some VMs through a service like AWS. Also, 5-10 of these in the summer will warm up any room to an uncomfortable level.

[@d3stinYwOw]

Dell Wyse 5070 is a great starter ;)