This TINY Server Can Run An Entire HomeLab (almost)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year everyone 🌲☃️🎁

[@zyghom]

And to you too! And please: KEEP the marvelous job in 2024! For all of us ;-) And for your satisfaction ;-)

[@samo9288]

For your 6th pillar (NAS), you could use an external 4 bay HDD enclosure (like an ICY BOX IB-3740-C31) It support 10Gbps USB-C and you get realworld transfer speeds in excess of 800MBps. That's what I use for a very low power NAS/Home server setup

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Absolutely good idea!

[@bschalker]

I am using the icybox as well on my proxmox server with truenas scale as a vm. USB passed throught. However i am reaching speeds of about 250 MB/s with RAID/Z1 with 4 x 4TB WD Red Plus. If you are reaching 800 MB/s may I ask, did you put SSDs in the Icy Box?

[@samo9288]

@@bschalker Yes, the 800MB/s was with 2 SSDs (to make sure the enclosure was working properly). For normal use, I'm only running 2 x 12TB drives in a ZFS mirror

[@wrozwad]

Great option but not in my case where I have only space for 2U rack (3,5" 88,9 mm). Any ideas for low power 2U home lab & NAS server?

[@autohmae]

If you want to be even more efficient with your firewall in this set up: OpenWRT as LXC container uses a LOT less memory. You could probably put home assistant in a container as well. You also don't need a VM for Docker, you can do: Docker nested containers in LXC as well. So all in all, if you wanted, you can do without VMs entirely.

[@pedrozapl]

I believe that there is nothing more powerful and cheaper (for today) than Lenovo M720q + 2 TB NVMe + 64GB RAM + CPU i7 9700T I have built that for 400$ and it's working on 65W power supply

[@kingneutron1]

Brother, if this vid was monetized you would absolutely get my $2. Excellent review!

[@__aceofspades]

I dont need this, but I NEED this.

[@josecarlosvalero4176]

Thanks for the content, very informative as always. I would very much love an in depth video on you firewall setup❤

[@Scheeringa1]

Gotta love Quicksync transcoding! Awesome little product and Merry Christmas!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Merry Christmas ⛄🎁

[@joes_drone]

I bought the R1 a few months back after seeing your previous video. I'm very impressed with the R1 as it has pfsense running as my firewall, OpenMediaVault connected to an 8TB usb drive as my NAS, Home Assistant is also running with 3 x cameras on frigate and I also have Plex running for my media. So far it's done me proud, I'm currently pondering whether to pass the GPU to HA to help the IP cameras and even maybe remove my Plex Ubuntu server and run Plex as the HA add-on.. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not . I also run my pfsense using 2 x NICs as vmxnet3 cards but after seeing this video.. I'm wondering if I should pass 2 NICs through to pfsense instead? Thank you for another great video and here's wishing you and everyone else a very happy Christmas.

[@denvera1g1]

I really cannot wait for plug-n-play over the air TV guide and recording for Jellyfin, i'd drop plex tomorrow just because of how unstable plex has been, on windows, linux, and TrueNAS.

[@denvera1g1]

10:50 the transcoding performance may be handled by the GPU, if you overload the GPU, or if Intel arbetrarily limits the number of GPU transcodes, you will see a significant increase in CPU usage once it runs one on the GPU. I have a 3700x on a motherboard with built in graphics that are just there to get display out(its a server motherboard, and does not support 3D acceleration or video transcoding), 4x4K transcodes will bring the 3700x to its knees, i'd use a 5700G, but then i lose ECC support, and the PCIe slots are all taken up by TV tuners.

[@MrLumagone]

Any chance you came across a tutorial on how to get the igpu passthrough to a vm to work?

[@MichelKroon]

Thanks for this review! Really usefull. I always love your content and recommend your channel to my colleagues also running HomeAssistant.

[@Sorrentino_Gianni]

I’d like to ask for a deepdive onto Jellyfin transcoding config, I’m having some trouble on myinstance with resource consumption with random spikes at 100% load for apparently no reason.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! What hardware are you running on out of interest?

[@Sorrentino_Gianni]

@@EverythingSmartHome Intel core i7 4790, 8GB of ram, Nvidia Geforce 940MX, 3 sata disks. It’s an old tower I repurpose as home server.

[@jamegrabham9992]

Happy Holidays Lewis...Merry Christmas... and thank you for all your videos, it helps me alot...I picked up up 2 Beelink SER5 Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 7 5800H(up to 4.4GHz) 8C/16T, Mini Computer 16GB DDR4 RAM 500GB NVME SSD at the being of this year for $400 Cdn...I use Proxmox on both, with HA vm, and other vm's...This is so much cheaper to run than my old IBM X3500 and Dell T310 server...I still use the Unified firewall and a QNAP NAS...I currently backup my current HA vm to another Proxmox machine, and switching from one HA to another is "seemless", even with MQTT broker add-on...I will look at this machine because of all the different NIC's but...I currently use my managed Unified switch for that...have a Great Holiday...🙃

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Merry Christmas to you too, thank you so much for the kind words and support and glad to hear you are enjoying the Beelink, I've got one of those around too that I need to get around to seeing up!

[@jamegrabham9992]

Unfortunately we can't get the iKoolCore R2 in Canada yet...(we are behind the times...LOL) @@EverythingSmartHome

[@MrWiner222]

Loving the videos, small production tip would be to look into adding a hair light to your main "talking head" shot, would give slightly better sepperation between you and your desk. Either way love the video and looks like a great product

[@saninnsalas]

Pretty nice device. Not sure if inside the price range I can afford right now. But I wanted to write mostly because you nextcloud tip is exactly what I needed right now!

[@craigblackie2034]

I currently run home assistant in a docker container, would be good to see a video with the benefits of running in a VM and other install methods.

[@tin2001]

There's not many differences. Being able to use the add-on store and update the HA software inside HA are the main differences. OS can do that (on dedicated hardware or as a VM), the other methods of installing can't. All above is just from memory and possibly worded poorly so take it as a guide for further research rather than advice 😂

[@tiloalo]

Wolfgang's channel has a video on how to build a low-power home lab, much more involved but a build that can be maintained and upgraded. And it probably would end up much cheaper.

[@jayjake]

Hello fellow Wolfganger.

[@bryceyorkpm]

Would love to see some kind of "why you might want to build a homelab" type video

[@JasonsLabVideos]

I want to get one soon, then run Opnsense alone on one ! Good video sir !

[@ramonvanderwel5858]

Thank you, this is exactly the setup i wanted to know, and if it would perform!

[@TheMongolPrime]

You're great at server related content. Although there are plenty of other content creators out there doing the same thing, I think you could find some great success if you wanted to do more!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Appreciate the kind words!

[@soumynonareverse7807]

Could you do the same "benchtest" on a Udoo Bolt V8? And could you cover some compatibility hiccups aswell?

[@kevinhenryviii]

Merry Christmas Lewis and family 🎄

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Merry Christmas to you too! ☃️

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Great video, as always, but I'll stick to old laptops for my stuff. I just can't justify the amount of dosh needed for this one. As for the power consumption, I will rely on my solar panels (and future batteries), low cost heating, etc to give me reasonably price efficient power for my older power munching computers. Merry Christmas t'ya'all

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Merry Christmas! 🎅

[@jeremymcguire7069]

That Core i3-N300 processor is very neat. Hopefully it will be available on mini-itx boards soon for diy applications.

[@automacao-para-todos]

Love your videos, and this one is no exception at all. Of course there are other hardwares that cna be reviewed or used to run a home lab, but this one's very focused on a hone need, considering power consumption. Would love to have one of these, but Brazilian government taxes it in 60%, so it's going to be more expensive than using a full pc, despite the power usage. I have a hone automation server, usong home assistant with more than 100 devices, and also building a storage server to replace google drive. I'm planning on using two pcs, on different sites, with internal disk redundancy and also over network. A product like this would certainly be my first chiice if it wasn't for the price. Excellent video!! Merry Christmas!

[@dimtass]

60% tax is ridiculous. Why? Is that for all electronic devices in Brazil?

[@automacao-para-todos]

@@dimtass agreed... 60% is too damn high. To import a product, the tax is 60%. To buy in here we pay a little less, but still a high tax. The main objective of this tax is to make it easier to buy from local industry, but in reality it makes easier to buy from local importers

[@ronm6585]

Thank you and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you an yours. 👍🏻🎄🎅🏻❄

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Merry Christmas to you too Ron, thanks for watching! 🎁🎅

[@philipp1960]

who wants to go even lower on the power consumtion, take the n100 is half the power consumption and still runs everything. If enclosed in this little cwwk 4port and 5 nvme case and I added 32gb ram, that is I think a better choice because more ram and zfs raid2 with still 3.6gbits.

[@junkins]

Thanks for the video! Very interesting little piece of hardware. Would be nice to see like a comparison video of some of the different ones you have or something similar. 😊 Hope you had a Merry Christmas! 🎄

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Jamie, hope you had a great Christmas and happy holidays!

[@chrisdixon5241]

Nice piece of hardware. Like you, I'm puzzled by an audio-only USB-C port. A full function USB-C or else the SD card reader from the R1 would have made more sense. For the NAS side of things, depending on home user needs, you could run a couple of external drives via the USB 3.1 ports. I just bought an 8TB one recently for not too much money. A couple of those on the 2 USB ports, would give plenty of storage for all your media.

[@DimmuBoy]

Could you show how do you have connected storage inside Proxmox? physically connected and then to VMs and LXCs

[@wildekek]

Hello, this is Patrick from STH.

[@Diegosv13]

The idle powers seems a bit high for me. I have a NUC with a j4025 (i know its TDP is lower) with HA and more than 15 containers and in idle uses around 5 watts. For the form factor I would expect it to be more efficient since its going to be running 24/7. I know a lot of people dont care about their bills, but still..

[@MartinHiggs84]

Merry Christmas to you and the family 😊 You could add a usb wifi dongle for access point if pass through to opnsense.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Absolutely! Merry Christmas to you all too! 🎅

[@stefan39289]

How much additional protection does an opensense firewall provide if I already have a Unifi Dream Machine running at home? Does it make any sense at all?

[@vdis]

I wonder what it would take to reproduce a similar result with a mini cluster of Raspberry 5s. Specifically with idle power in mind.

[@theglowcloud2215]

You'd spend more on RPi5s to get equivalent CPU performance, with worse wired networking performance and hacky solutions to expose NVMe functionality.

[@markusheitmann]

Can you do a long video how to set up a smart home from start to Finnish?

[@unknotmiguel]

Can this run LLM, or the whisper and those voice modules of home assistant?

[@MarceloGalas]

Hi Lewis! How about booting from USB and using the m.2 slot to connect a GPU (something like a RTX2060 12GB) in order to run some LLMs (e.g. using ollama)? It's something I've been thinking about doing. A small, cheap(-ish), low power home AI rig.

[@denvera1g1]

FYI, the only hardware difference between the Atom class i3-N300/N305, and the Atom class N100, are the number of CPU cores enabled. The rest is firmware limitations to how fast the existing hardware runs Keep this in mind, this IS NOT a 12th/13th gen Core i3 part like the 1215u/1315u, instead it has no P cores and only E cores(like atoms of the past), has less than 1/2 the PCIe lanes at the slower previous gen speeds much like Atoms of the past, instead of supporting a theoretical 256-512GB of RAM in dual channel this has a firmware limit of single channel 16GB much like Atoms of the past(going over can cause issues in some cases), and despite the i3-1215u being lowest cut down part on the totem pole for Alderlake, the i3-N305 has 1/2 the GPU, much like Atoms of the past. Dont get me wrong, the N100, N200, N300, and N305 are great parts i have an N100 for my firewall, and an N305 for my steamcache, but they're only good as long as they're sold for a good price(like in this video, a complete computer for $399 is a good price) However according to Intel, the N305, is supposed to cost as much as a 1315U at $309 for just the chip, at least before they took down the MSP from the N305 ARK page. Thankfully most nanoPC builders are clearly not buying them at this price, because i've seen a full machine with N305, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB if RAM for $309, or the MSRP for just the chip itself, Oh, and it had a legit version of Windows 11 Pro

[@LeoTheHuman]

How many 4K cameras can one throw onto a Frigate running on this? (:

[@TheDiabeticWay]

I just ordered so look forward to learning it all from your great video! thank you. Not at all sure on the setup as that alone is not easy to install the Proxmox which I did a practice try on a old laptop but got stuck on there ip section as that many ways to do a setup but I want to mostly be just getting Home assistant up and running and not servers quite yet! And a more stable local SmartHome when there is drop out in isp connections! would be good if you can do or do any setups to get a static IP address setup with using Cloudflare as that is also what I'm using too! And if possible through this connection with something like my setup with 2 ASUS RT-AX82U 5400 Dual Band router mesh? Thanks!

[@BlueYeuda]

Why do we need dedicate ethernet port for the management ? Also, why do we need another one for the VM traffic ? Can I connect the VM directly to the firewall as they run on the same host ?

[@JonBrookes]

extremely cool piece of kit, thanks for your video. I was particularly interested to see the capability of pass-thru for NICs - something that is lacking on some hardware I've come across of this ilk that would otherwise require bare metal install of say pf-sense or similar. The ability to virtualise both firewall and other vms is great. I'd tend to go for 2, where the first would be pf-sense, the second a general purpose docker server or like you say, just LXC in proxmox - wehey ! Thanks again.

[@oliverbutterfield9844]

I’ve not used proxmox, but I did get confused by references to the jellyfin container. I had assumed it was a VM running directly on proxmox and not a container running in a docker env. I guess I need to give proxmox a go…

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Proxmox supports LXC natively which is similar to Docker, it has a bunch of LXC templates built in that you can choose from

[@oliverbutterfield9844]

@@EverythingSmartHome makes sense, thanks. I just had to read the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article and I would have understood that! Cheers, have a good Christmas!

[@pimw9805]

Is this device powerfull enough to do speech-to-text (Whisper) for Home Assistant with decent results?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Would need more time to dive into that but I would say so yes

[@xxSneeky]

Would the R2 handle all of the functions in the video, plus Frigate NVR with 5-8 cameras?

[@Diegosv13]

I have a lot weaker cpu (j4025) with the services from the video and many more plus frigate with 3 cameras and runs just well. Thats on the video side, in the detection side not sure, with coral it will be ok, dection with the gpu and openvino, not sure.

[@patrickpaganini]

Great video. I'm currently using a NUC (13th gen) with proxmox to run services with jellyfin also. Can I ask the community here - what is the best way to connect some kind of NAS? Temporarily just an external USB drive, and down the line something like Synology - or is there a better way?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I guess it depends how much you want to spend. Keep in mind that using a single drive over USB could be risky (depending on what you store on it)

[@Arbotm]

Does it require Internet to function? What if your camping with no service in rang.

[@LiviuPavel]

I don't think quick sync cpu usage is shown as part of the cpu utilisation, intel gpu top will probably show very high usage. It would be nice if proxmox would show other hardware usage, lige GPU/s :)

[@danwhite2717]

Could it be used with a DAS? Ideally don’t want to invest in a new server and nas

[@allitthings]

Can't I add a DAS and make it a NAS? Are there any downsides to it?

[@lawrencemanning]

I’d go along with using that for as many services as’ll fit on it, but not running the firewall as well. You can isolate in software all you like, but it’s just not worth the risk to lump it all together. Hypervisors have bugs and do not offer the same security as using a dedicated appliance. Very interesting hardware though. Thanks for making this vid. I do think you needed a “I bought this with my own money blah blah”. Just to button it up.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

For me personally it's kinda old school advice that I think we've moved on from and virtualization for firewalls is fine, but I also respect if people prefer dedicated hardware for it too - I use a mix of both in my environments!

[@lawrencemanning]

CPU architecture bugs, kernel bugs, etc, are very real. You cannot “move away” from them. Ultimately as per any security decision it’s a balance. I love my smart gadgets, but I’ll never get a smart lock. We are all slightly different folks with our own preferences and priorities. Love your channel, and your EP1. Will likely order another soon. Hope you and the family have a lovely Christmas and new years. 🎉

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Sure but everything you mentioned also applies to non virtualized. There are plenty of vendors who offer virtualized firewalls now from all the big names, Palo Alto, Checkpoint, Fortinet etc. Everything can have bugs, regardless of whether it is virtualized or not. Anyways like I say, I don't think it's a bad strategy and like you say, it's what you're comfortable with. Merry Christmas to you too and thanks for the support and kind words!

[@lawrencemanning]

The difference is once they have your virtual firewall they also, potentially (assuming hypervisor/CPU bugs), have your entire network with no more work to do. Vs a physical separation where - yes they are on your network - but they are not yet in your other services. They have to then go to the effort to leverage other vulnerabilities on those servers. In other words: they are only virtually separated, they are not actually separated. But yes VMs are convenient etc, etc. And this does actually happen in the real world, but usually us minions aren’t a target. Anyways, I’ve said my bit. And you are most welcome. I’m off to learn about using an ESP32 as a voice assistant. 😊

[@dahamsta]

I just don't understand why you'd bother, any good quality home router will have a perfectly serviceable firewall

[@lenanaH]

how's the fan noise?

[@MrDj201]

Would you be able to connect to NAS for media storage ?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Over SMB or NFS you mean? Sure!

[@LiLBitsDK]

did you run your router in a vm? thought that was a big no no?

[@TecSanento]

How could a usb port be audio only?! And you could use the other USB Port to add external storage storage

[@dimtass]

It doesn't make sense. The usb audio class requires more endpoints than the usb storage class devices.

[@RafaGmod]

My 15yo Atlhon server seeing this: "young people learns fast nowadays"

[@kbauer57]

Soldered on memory kills this for me, otherwise this looked like a great nuc killer

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yeah I agree I do wish it wasn't soldered, especially the 8gb model

[@peteradshead2383]

Emby on a LXC I may have to try that ? , I'm running a Asrock mini x300 , ryzen 5700g , 64 gb ram , 2 x 4tb ssd drives and a 2td nvme for proxmox system . Got Emby on a VM with 8gb ram and transcoding by brute force because it is hard to use hardware en/decoding without passing a video card to that VM , but I'm passing the VM both SSDs for a zfs mirror . Running more or less the same things, home automation , pfsense , influx , pihole , emby , samba , netboot-xyz , windows 10 and windows 11 unactivated for software testing and roll back . Was running Frigate on it too , but one of my h265 cameras would keep crashing the server if I passed it hardware en/decoding.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Sounds like a nice setup! 🙌

[@rvm10]

No sata ports ?

[@glenndhooge6787]

getting a more indepth explenation on some of these components (especially opensence in my opinion) would be great haahaha. We've all seen an knwo how to instal HA. but for someone to who a "homelab" first sounded verry fague and dounting, but now potentially manegable, some more indepth explenations would be great 😁 open sense sounds really great, but combining sofware and hardware aint always the easiest to understand

[@sura_]

so tiny and cute!!!!

[@theglowcloud2215]

Soldered RAM is a bummer for something you want to serve as a hypervisor.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I would typically agree, soldered RAM is annoying, however I imagine it was due to space constraints, and then given that Intel limits the CPU to 16GB of RAM anyways, it's not such a big deal unless you buy the 8GB version and want to upgrade. In which case yeah I do wish it was swappable.

[@SoulReaver]

Well can't you technically increase storage capacity via usb hubs? Surely USB interface won't be as fast as NVME, but it's something.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Absolutely yeah!

[@rafaelestevam]

N95 for proxmox is ... ... a risk At least with other brands with this cpu

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That's why I recommend these one in talking about in this video which is the n300 😅

[@bluearcherx]

its a security nightmare to run all that other stuff on the same device as firewall and router.. 😬

[@marcusone1]

I love these, but HATE, that they use non-standard USB-C ports (meaning, Audio only? wtf... worse is the "USB-C" power port... ah, no it isn't you can't use a USB-C PD power supply on it, and worse, if you mistake the "USB-C Power" plug it comes with, for a standard USB-C power, it will send 12v to your device and well, ya, magic smoke for many things :( Should use standard DC Barrel jacks for power, and standard TRSS for audio!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yeah it was annoying, even when I knew it was an audio only jack, a couple of times I wondered why it wasn't booting then realised I'd plugged into that port 😅

[@james-cucumber]

Were you paid for this video? Did they send you the product or did you buy it? Edit to add: this review seems to completely neglect the similar offerings at lower price points. An n100 could comfortably handle all these workloads for half the price

[@ghostbuttster]

He's legally obligated to say so if it was... So no.

[@james-cucumber]

@@ghostbuttster I’ve got a secret to tell you. Not everyone follows the law all the time

[@mohamedbadawy9822]

What is the n100 you talk about ?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

No, not a sponsored video, I would have very clearly disclosed it had it been as required by the law. I am always extremely transparent about this in every other video, please check back other reviews. This product was provided for review, but absolutely no money changed hands - I typically mention this at the start of every review but missed it this time, apologies. I don't "neglect" to mention them, I just haven't tested them. Why would I give opinions on products I've not used before? What is the model of the machine you're talking about? N100 is a 4 core, which is much less interesting to me personally

[@james-cucumber]

@@EverythingSmartHome I came in a bit hot, which was unfair to you. I’m a little upset the fact it was sent to you wasn’t mentioned, but my criticism of not looking at other systems isn’t really justified, you’re right. I do however think that putting products into context with their competition, especially with products that are advertised as low-cost solutions, is important. It can just be a mention of other brands you’d considered instead of reviewing this one. Just my two cents, and I don’t think this review was made disingenuously. Keep making great videos and products! Edit: I was talking about the n100 cpu in the abstract. I have a beelink machine with an n100 which runs a very similar stack to what you show in this video with no issues. But there are downsides, you trade the 4(!) NICs for 1, and the m2 sad only has 1 lane of PCIe making it barely better than SATA.

[@dave24-73]

That device seems quite low spec for virtualisation, I mean you couldn’t run many machines, might be ok for one or two simply projects, but for more complicated labs I’d be surprised if it can cope.

[@watch-o8f]

the price is really not worth it , except the NIC's its somewhat subpar to any beelink/minis in same price range

[@EsotericArctos]

Running a router is a VM is not ideal. Sure, it is doable and done in an emergency type situation, but you really should have your router as a separate, bare metal device for security and performance purposes. Teh definition of Home Lab has become very very loose these days. There are as many definitions as there are people. Home Lab use to be the people wanting to experiment at home and play with networking, which is where the lab part of it came from, these days anyone running a VM calls it a Home Lab. How times have changed :)

[@jayjtee]

I decided to check it out and went to the site for a price. To get a price it insisted that I had to add the spec to my shopping cart first and then refused to delete the item from the cart afterwards. With cheap stunts like this, I am not sure this is a company I would be comfortable doing business with.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

The price is at the top of the page when choosing the configuration, no need to add to cart at all. You can see me do this in the video. Though it did take me a sec to notice the price on the page, could be better placed!

[@TheDiabeticWay]

you missed medical on your list! :-)

[@giusepearturo]

hi, my friend you have in "no link¨the link of the r2, maybe you lose money for that :)

[@Mockusoff]

I don’t know , but it seems a bit pricy…

[@brainz-brainz]

While this is an amazing piece of tech, I cant see the cost benefit over a $150 mini-pc.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Do you have the model number of a system with the same feature set at $150? Be interesting to do a comparison

[@souk-tv]

I dont recommend anyone pack anything essential on these little largely proprietary SOC type hardware devices unless you have some responsible backup recovery plans in place or some ability to be able to obtain replacement parts quickly (like off the shelf). Its all well and good if you can run your setup on a 1watt calculator, but if getting parts are a c**t should something go wrong i bet you will spend all that energy saved money in loses trying to source replacement parts and doing RMA postage. Also, what the replacement parts cost like on these should something go wrong? Also, whats the long term reliability test like with these devices in general anyone know?

[@AdamsLab]

Realtek NICs = non starter :(

[@estusflask982]

Orange Pi 5 Plus is better, and uses less wattage. Supports full size NVME.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

It's not really comparable.

[@estusflask982]

@@EverythingSmartHome Please enlighten me, how is it not comparable?

[@MaxSmith-e4k]

Do you set these up as a business? just asking, do not have the knowledge, I could learm,

[@kirillkasyanov]

for this amount of money you can build a better server with i7 processor

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That conveniently ignores size, power draw, convenience of not building or not knowing how to build and more.

[@kirillkasyanov]

@@EverythingSmartHome rookie won’t buy this pc anyways, I think the niche for this device at this price tag is quite narrow - either there is not enough space, or the corporate segment is trying to save money and again there is not enough space. And for us, computer enthusiasts, we can only wait until the price drops to around $200. I have now GMKtec G5 for 150$ and this price is good for this device, my little tiny proxmox home server :)

[@mcash2189]

I'm getting really tired of everyone and their brother raving about these mini PCS I agree that they are impressive however these mini PCS come from companies based in China several of which have strong ties to the CCP and absolutely no one who recommends them performs a firmware/bios dump to examine the code plugging any of these mini PCS into your home network could be a major security risk

[@LiLBitsDK]

then you do that and post your findings, can't wait for it, you seem to be an expert in the area and I have no clue how to do it, please post your findings

[@thespencerowen]

Is this sponsored? Please disclose your relationship when doing hardware reviews

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Not sponsored, would have very clearly displayed it as sponsored as required by the law. Unit was provided for review purposes, that's all (apologies I typically very clearly mention this in every review I do but missed it this time)

[@user-xu2pi6vx7o]

You DO realize you can get USB HDD RAID enclosures, that take 2 or 4 HDDs and handle the RAID array themselves, right? All your homelab will see, will be a single mass storage device, plugged into one of its USB ports.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Of course, but that significantly changes the footprint of the device (which is completely fine) to a different class

[@user-xu2pi6vx7o]

@@EverythingSmartHomeTrue, but that's because HDDs themselves are bulky. There's no going around that, unless you have some serious money to spend on high capacity SSDs or NVMEs. A raid enclosure does at least give you the option to hide the thing under a table, or the likes and just run a single USB cable to the thing, to still keep it looking small. As of writing this, a 22TB helium filled Ultrastar, can be had for about two Euro less than the cheapest brand name 8TB SSD I could find (a Samsung 870 QVO).

[@zyghom]

I trust Intel NOTHING! I bought N100, that according to Intel is up to 16GB RAM but see and tell me if this is true: CPU: Intel N100 (4) @ 3.400GHz GPU: Intel Alder Lake-N [UHD Graphics] Memory: 5318MiB / 31863MiB so exactly 32GB RAM installed and working ;-) and this model you are showing... kind of 2x too expensive considering the return value

[@souk-tv]

That's RAM that's detected not RAM that's supported. An X64 CPU for the most part will always detect any amount of RAM, but you try and fully utilise all of that 32Gb of RAM to its capacity via all of your spplication services and VMs and your CPU will have a heart attack and choke out as it can only process a limited bandwidth. 😂

[@zyghom]

@@souk-tv And you might be completely right - how to test it though? Not that it EXISTS but that it WORKS ;)

[@souk-tv]

Play Escape From Tarkov on it... 😂

[@zyghom]

@@souk-tv I don't play games