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Mini-server at home, any good hardware options other than Mac Mini?

10 points by vincentellis ↗ HN
I'm looking to build a small server at home. Something physically small, yet powerful, like a Mac Mini. Is there any alternatives, probably cheaper? (depending on configuration, of course)

10 comments

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aidenn0
Any mini-ITX motherboard will be that size; for PSU a pico-PSU or similar is good. Biggest advantage over a mac mini is not price, but options; you can get dual ethernet; you can add a ePCI or PCI card, etc.

Strangely enough I find the case to be the only part that is pricy. Finding an inexpensive ITX case can be hard.

I optimized for power consumption a bit more than performance, so I went with a Via SoC based board (18W at the wall). They have atom and Core based ones as well though.

benologist
I have a little Lenovo IdeaCenter as well as a few minis. The Lenovo is smaller and can be used as a media pc as well, but it's nowhere near the Mini specs. They're not horrible though, you can upgrade the ram (I didn't) and throw an SSD in (I did) but at the end of the day it's still an Atom.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Ideacentre-Series-40814AU-Deskt...

dictvm_
A HP Microserver N40L is a pretty decent NAS. If you're willing to tinker a bit, you can also add some additional harddrives outside of the coldswappable drive-shafts.
4rt
i got one of these when there was £100 cashback, meaning the total cost was about £130. I paid another £40 for 4gb of ECC ram so I could use it like a real server.

It's an excellent case design - there's a huge fan at the back pulling air over the 4 drive bays and my TB drives never go over about 25C. It's in a cupboard and unless I open the door it's totally silent.

From what I've seen of other NAS-style devices, it's pretty much unbeatable for value since it does all the same stuff but is ultimately a real, if basic, server.

almostdvs
I have a Jetway Mini-top: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856107... that is very comparable to a mac mini, and fairly reliable.

1.8ghz atom, nvidia ion2 ddr3 memory.

Mine is my media server and desktop (I don't play games). It's a little slower running osx than other oses but if it's a server, you probably won't care enough to put osx on it.