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[Need advice] My first home server

I need some advice on what hardware to buy for my home setup. I see a lot of posts talking about software, but not so much hardware. I would love to have a box I can buy and start setting up stuff.

A rack seems a bit expensive, my initial budget I feel is reasonable starting out is about $500-$800.

I’ve been looking at mini PCs, what are your thoughts on ASUS PN52? Just throwing that into the post to give a pin point of what I’m looking for.

I’m planning on hosting

  • Bitwarden
  • Nextcloud
  • Plex
  • Standard notes
  • Lemmy instance
  • Web server
  • Openresty

And need to be able to upgrade storage etc. for future proofing.

Thankful for all insights, tips, and suggestions!

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  • Pn52 is not a bad choice. Very upgradeable. Gigabit networking is probably all you’d need.

    The heat may become a problem. But I dont run one so wouldn’t know.

    Run proxmox on it. Your sweet 👍

    What size drives are you thinking if you plan to host a plex server? Whatever you think, I’d recommend doubling it.

    • Thanks, I was thinking 2TB, so 4TB then! I’m considering a RAID1 setup, so the budget would need to accomodate that

      • Isn’t there only a single drive slot? (Not including the m.2’s) Don’t think Raid is an option for the pn52.

        • What do you think about running the OS and binaries on the SATA SSD, and storing the data on the M2's? And having the M2's in RAID1?

          • I don’t know why. But it makes me uncomfortable.

            • It's weird, because that's my feeling too. It got suggested by customer support at a retailer when asking in their chat. I guess it'll work, but feels backwards. I think I'm going with a NAS solution, and running the server without RAID

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