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What Is A Good Sub $300 Computer I Can Use For A Server? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 month ago by qwestjest78@lemmy.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I have a refurbished Lenovo Thinkcentre that I was running Truenas off of. Everything was working great, but it got hit with a power surge and after lots of trouble shooting it appears the motherboard is fried and I don't trust my ability to soder and fix it.

No now I need to upgrade my setup. Wondering what is a good sub $300 computer I can order that will run Jellyfin, Immich, and a few light services off of? With Truenas you seem to need two SSDs. One to boot and one to run apps, so it seems like a mini PC will not work.

I have a seperate HDD drive bay with a few hdd's in it full of shows and picture. Just need a PC to run my services.

I would prefer something I can order off Amazon or can be shipped quickly so I can get back up and running again.

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[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
AP WiFi Access Point
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
PSU Power Supply Unit
RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SBC Single-Board Computer
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.

[Thread #266 for this comm, first seen 1st May 2026, 03:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] Atropos@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

A big fan of the HP elite desk line. Specifically the mini form factor. Also the Intel version for quick sync.

iGPU for low power draw, but can still handle a transcode or two for Jellyfin.

Cheap as a refurbish on eBay.

My server is currently sitting at 1.5 years of uptime, hosting Jellyfin, minecraft, adguard, and a while suitr of other tools!

[–] muxika@piefed.muxika.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

You you could do most of that with a raspberry pi5, 8GB. With a whole kit, you can get it for under $250. I'm running 3 at my place: 1 for media (servarr stack, JF, Navidrome, Invidious), 1 for the Fediverse (Mastodon, Piefed, Peertube, WordPress), and 1 for anything else.

Edit: I also missed the part about truenas, but you can still run containers on any other OS just fine.

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[–] AnotherMadHatter@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Hit up local government auctions. Sometimes they sell 2-4 computers in a lot, sometimes they sell 157. I got 4 Lenovo mini computers for $34 each in an auction a while back. They only needed hard drives.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

Openmediavault might be an option also, if the drive thing is a problem with TrueNAS

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

You actually can use a minipc. Minisforum has their NAB series and those have a slot in their internals for an SSD and they have an NVME slot in the motherboard. I found a NAB9 with an NVME, SSD, and 16GB of ram for around $310. So I would look for used NAB6s (cheaper than NAB9) on EBay. You should find some for under 300 with the Data SSD and NVME.

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Would a pi5 work?

[–] verstra@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

It would, but it does not have SATA. You can find much cheaper computers that do have it

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[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

You can go far below $300 with very little practical performance compromise, but I wouldn't even look on Amazon with memory prices being what they are lately. Get an old DDR3 era Optiplex desktop on eBay, throw a $25 Quadro P400 in it for transcoding, and transfer your existing SSDs over. Tons of eBay listings have 2-4 day shipping. With DDR3 you can easily get 16GB of RAM for like $30 if it doesn't have enough already. Avoiding DDR4/DDR5 will save a ton of money so it's essential to buy used.

The SSDs and hard drives for the array are by far the most expensive part. I've been using an underclocked and undervolted Ryzen 1700 in my server for 6 years now and have zero complaints around CPU performance. I did eventually need more than 16GB of RAM last year, but the only outright failures I've had are on the various component's fans.

[–] FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I use a nucbox mini pc and two usb ext hdds to run a jellyfin server and a samba file server. Works great. Im using Lubuntu -- i dont exactly recommend it, but it works fine enough. Any lite Linux distro would probably work great. Here's a picture of my janky "server rack" setup:

[–] ForgottenUsername@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

My last build and current have been a Thinkstation and a z series workstation, both used from ex-gov auctions, were decently priced, will run everything you wanna throw at them.

They do come at the cost of increased power draw, but since I've put in solar I'm not worried about that.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not much right now due to LLM training hogging all of the memory across the industry. Best bet is lightly used.

[–] verstra@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

For a server like this 4GB of DDR4 is enough. And that is cheap still.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Possibly, but it's going to have issues. Immich can run on 4GB if you disable machine learning features for image recognition and such. And Jellyfin can run on a minimal system with 4GB if you have a graphics card, but with integrated graphics likely to be in a sub-$300 system the recommend 8GB. And graphics cards are still expensive even after the crypto craze has settled because LLMs benefit but also because of the artificial memory shortages they've created. Running both might work if you set a lot of virtual memory and never have them operating at the same time so it's not swapping constantly. And that's not leaving room for the other stuff. I'd say you could squeak by with 16GB, but that's going to be most of the budget even for low-end, off brand sticks that are available right now.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Not with TrueNAS, ZFS is a RAM hog. They suggest 8gb minimum, and you really don't want the minimum AND adding more stuff on top. That said 16gb isn't too painful.

[–] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

Any post-2015 laptop would work. Look around in your local recycling bins :D

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

I do what you are asking about literally with a 2014 Thinkpad. The only thing is I don't use any "fancy" features. For instance, with Jellyfin I ensure that the data is in a commonly supported format to ensure there is no transcoding or remuxing performed by the server itself.

So, just find any computer made in the last 7 years, slap Linux on it, and I'm sure you'll be fine.

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Woot.com has lots of refurbs around that price.

It's part of Amazon so you can use your Prime shipping.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would pickup a old workstation of of a site like eBay. Last time I was shopping around they were pretty cheap but that was pretty insanity pricing

[–] minfapper@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yep. Assuming you're in the US, searching eBay for "Dell optiplex" is the way to go.

Those are mostly used by companies that upgrade their entire fleet in one go so they sell the old ones for cheap in great condition.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

it got hit with a power surge and after lots of trouble shooting it appears the motherboard is fried

I am truly sorry for your misfortune. I feel a bit bumed right now. Others with better knowledge than I have gave suggestions. That just slapped me in the face, because I know how I certainly would feel.

[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Can't help in regards to using Amazon, but some of the Lenovo Minis have an m.2 slot on the underside, as well as the 2.5 drive in the top. I think the M920q and some others have two m.2 slots.

If you want maximum jank, you can split the m.2 into 5 SATA ports, then leave the bottom panel off and to connect to drives in your drive bay. That's what I've done. You'll need a separate power supply for the drives, though.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

not the OP but :)

I have an older mini pc with 2 * Nvme and 2* SSD slots but how do i connect HDD drives,

Everyone tells me I should not use USB 3 for that. I have no eSATA on the PC

[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

What is the brand / model of the mini PC you're using?

If you aren't using both of the NVME slots, you can get an adapter to clip into those slots that has SATA ports on it. I'm using a SilverStone ECS07, I've also used a smaller one from IO Crest to give me two SATA ports on an SBC based media server that I was running for eight or so years before outgrowing it.

If you have 2x SATA SSD connections available, you should be able to connect 2.5 inch SATA HDDs to them without problems. 3.5 inch drives need 12 volt and 5 volt, whereas 2.5 inch drives get away with only needing 5V. It's likely that your mini PC hasn't ever thought about powering extra drives, so you may need to sort out a power supply for the extra drives. I have a tiny little power supply that I harvested out of an mITX case many years ago that I use to power the drives, and the power supply for the mini PC just powers the mini PC.

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Depending on what you are doing with them, the drives can work just fine running through the USB ports, which can be faster than hard drives in most cases. I have my content - which is like 90% of the data space - on USB hard drives and the databases to manage them on the internal M.2 drive. Works fine for something like Immich.

[–] Fetus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I know USB drives work well enough for most people, but I had never-ending issues when I was first trying to set up my media server. All of my problems went away once I connected my drives internally. Well, not all of my problems, just my hard drive related ones. :)

[–] csolisr@hub.azkware.net 1 points 1 month ago

The sub-$300 is increasingly dying because of the RAM prices, but anything with a N100 or N150 should be enough for your usage case.

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