Recommend a good budget NUC/Mini PC

I would like to keep it as small as possible for both applications i would like to use them for.

thats one!


i have done a tone of work with RPis and i know they are "enough" to run HA. but even when running minor tasks thhe Best RPi will lag and i want to pull my hair out.

I have 2 RPis running to different beer related servers and man they work....they work ok. but i just want more power.

i have looked but that forums layout is so.......bad... haha. i didnt see that thread ill read over it. I mean i think one of these atom processors is plenty to run it, it is really how does Win10 run on it, now that im looking at it looks like most people are runing them on linix....i wish there was an all in one tutorial about VMs and docker containers and nodered etc.

I was in the same boat as you. Had HA running on a Pi and it was good for learning and tinkering but once I needed something more stable and powerful, I ended up moving my main HA instance to an old laptop I had and use the Pi as a remote instance for various things (I use a PiFace Digital for relays and IO sensors).

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how does Win10 run on it, now that im looking at it looks like most people are runing them on linix

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Yes it can "run" on Win10 but do you really want to pay for the OS just to run HA? Check out this guys video on how he was able to do it. However, it looks like it is the "old" phython-based Home Assistant build and not the newer hassio build. Hassio, I find, is a little easier to work with and allows you to install add-ons, install updates, and manage the services easier through the web GUI. Home Assistant would require you to do all that manually. I would definitely recommend sticking to a Linux build if HA is all you will be running on it. Ubuntu is more than ok and there are tons of install tutorials if you run into trouble.

I haven't tried it yet myself but have you looked at the newer RPi4? The proc may not be on the same level as an i5 but may give you the extra oomph you need and you can get up to 4G of RAM.

Would an older laptop be small enough for what you need? If you know someone that has one they don't use anymore, you could drop an SSD in there, install Ubuntu and it will feel like a new computer and be more than enough for HA.

as i have been watching the last couple days it seems amazon always has some on lightning deals.

the 150$ ranged Atom Z8350 fanless and ususally has only 1 usb3 ports.

then the Celeron processors list price of around 200-220 for 20-30 bucks less. these usually have a fan but have more ports. Some have m.2 capability some dont. id rather have the os on M.2

LINK m.2,mSATA
LINK mSATA only

LINK

Get something like that and swap the HDD out for a small SSD

I think you have picked me out a winner, bobby.

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Also, what all are you planning on running on these? If all you have is HA with a few basic add-ons, a low-end NUC with an i3 may be all you need.

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yea it would. but i would rather have more power than need more. I already have a big PC running my plex server. I have about 30 people that have acess to it and i have most everything encoded to 265, some people still are making my machine transcode. I have a 1080ti on there using hardware acceleration and it works great. But i would love to no need to transcode and run my plex server from a less power hungry computer. But thats not really feasible when you have dozens of people streaming.

At some point i would like to move to one of those mini rosewill racks and move it out of the gamming case i have it in.

how are AMDs now here is the newer Elitedesk 705 series with a A6-8570E, 8GB of ddr4 and a 256GD SSD for 160.

LINK