11 mo. ago • 89%

Recommendations on first Homelab hardware: NUC or not?

Hi,

I need help with my first homelab hardware. Maybe you experts can help me with that. I looked at this tutorial about building your own Openshift one node cluster using an Intel NUC, though I’m unsure, if I really should buy one of these.

I have set a budget of 1000€ (I’m located in germany). The tutorial suggests the Intel NUC10i7FNK, which I can get for 450€ new here (would buy 64GB RAM and a 2TB M.2 SSD for that). And I would follow the tutorial in getting a dedicated router for my lab environment.

Can I get more for my money (also in terms of upgradability) with some other product? Or should I just get that suggested NUC? I don’t need it to be that small (can be a tower), but I don’t want real server hardware, since the lab will run in my home office.

Thanks in advance for your help. My brain hurts from comparing products, searching for their availability, etc.

EDIT:

I've now decided to buy the NUC10i7FNK. It seems to be a sensible choice and the tutorial says, that it has enough beef for my first goal of building my own Openshift cluster for experimenting.

Thanks to all of you! You helped me to get to a good decision in this wide field of home lab equipment.

25 comments

You could start much cheaper with a refurbished thin client or a older laptop. Those work very nicely as homelab servers as well.

A new NUC is not really better than those as you will likely not need that much CPU/ram and the expandability is equally bad.

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- I want something with some beef on it. I want to experiment with an Openshift cluster and that needs quite some resources. So I decided to go with the mentioned NUC.
  
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I echo the other commenters, a NUC is a great beginner system for homelab; if all you want or need is minimal resources. For learning enterprise management or workloads, I'd say you need a full fledged server. There is nothing in common with a NUC and a Poweredge, for example. What is your homelab for you? A few VMs and one disk system attached to a COTS NAS? NUC will be fine. Wanting to learn to manage a Server with full on RAID, hot swap drives and 64G ram? You're gonna want a server.

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You can take a look at Aoostar R1, there is 2 bay option with Intel N100

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IMO NUCs are wonderful for a homelab beginner for 1. the vPro/AMT capability (that you're skipping on for some reason) 2. the ability to go passive with aftermarket cases. If neither if that interests you, they're... not much better than an equivalent laptop?

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NUCs make really nice homelab servers. They can give you a lot of power while not sucking too much electricity. I have used three NUCs to build a kubernetes cluster and I'm very happy with them.

The only thing that made me buy additional hardware was the need for 10Gb Networking and more internal storage, which I couldn't realize with my NUCs. I also learned to love the IPMI feature of server motherboards, that NUCs don't offer afaik. I would recommend to use a hypervisor like proxmox which makes it easy to spin up new servers inside virtual machines - this way you don't have to re-install your OS on the NUC everytime something goes wrong or needs to be upgraded.

Generally a NUC is a great device for a homelab, especially if you're just starting out!

Since you're also located in germany, I'd like to share a site I found when I was looking for my own router based on OPNsense: NRG Systems. Some of their models use pretty old hardware, but I got the IPU651 with the 19" chassis and I really love it.

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- Ok, that sounds like a solid recommendation for the NUC. I think I can live without IPMI, especially since this is the start of my homelab (besides my RaspberryPis)
  
  I've heard a lot about proxmox and I will definitely try it out before any other solution. Running VMs and containers side by side is a great plus.
  
  At this point I haven't really looked at the router-with-custom-firmware game. I heard about openWRT and OPNsense, but I definitely need to do some research on that. Interesting site, though it looks terrible on mobile.
  
  Thanks for your recommendations
  
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I just want to say that I don't love the NUC for homelabs; mainly that it only has one NIC. I also don't like USB NICs because I've had too many problems with them dropping out without any obvious cause, and then working again by simply unplugging them and plugging them back in. I don't like to have to be that hands-on with my lab, I just want it to work.

If you're okay with the limits of a single NIC, then the NUC is a great option; for my homelab, I actually run a storage network, so I generally need two NICs; one for production/front-end traffic, and one for storage/back-end traffic.

Beyond that gripe, you could do a lot worse than a NUC for your homelab. You may be able to save some money if you get an off-lease Core i5/i7 business class system, and the mini/micro systems that are available are quite good, even in the used market. If you want new, I'd probably say the NUC is going to be one of the cheaper options, even considering the tiny/mini/micro systems that are out there. I've used several tiny/mini/micro for small processing systems; one example of this is a DNS server; in another case, I used one for HomeAssistant. Neither system relies on external storage (no storage network requirement), so they performed quite well.

I know most people don't run a storage network, and just use containers/VMs on local storage, so if that's you, or you're just starting out, any tiny/mini/micro or NUC will do quite well.

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I started my homelab with a small form factor PC (not a NUC specifically, but similar). They can be very capable servers, depending on specs and your needs.

As for towers, you can do standard consumer workstations, too. I game on PC, so when I build a new rig every 3 or 4 years, my old one goes in the closet. Sometimes I just add it and have another server, sometimes I donate the current server to a friend or school. Point being, you don't have to have a Threadripper CPU and ECC RAM to run a server.

That being said, if you plan on hosting critical services or non-critical-but-public services that you want to have high availability and stability, it might be a good idea to upgrade to enterprise hardware eventually. But definitely not needed if you're just starting out or running personal, non-critical stuff.

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Loving the NUC. You're paying about what I paid and getting twice the RAM and twice the SSD space, so, from where I'm sitting, it looks like a good deal. I've got 4 VMs running on mine--and one of those is running about 8 containerized apps--so I'd say you should have room to do whatever you want with that bad boy.

If you're doing any kind of media center, I would definitely prioritize high speed Internet and hardwired connections as well. I hardwired my whole house for my project.

I added a 4TB external drive to mine, which should easily fit within your budget, and I'd recommend it if, again, you're doing media stuff.

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- Currently I'm not focussing on media stuff, more on experimenting with different technologies, that I use for work (like Openshift, Docker, Puppet, Ansible). Having dedicated hardware, that gets me further than some small VMs on my PC will be great for that.
  
  Though I might move to media stuff in the future. Heard a lot about jellyfin, for example. Though then I need to upgrade my home network too. It still is limited to 100mbit. But I already have wired connections through most of the house.
  
  Thanks for your fast answer
  
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  hth. In truth my setup is also to experiment with automation and it's a fun hobby, so more power to you! Getting to watch some very fast streaming TV is a bonus.
  
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If you think you will need more storage space, with a NUC, you will probably need either an external drive or a NAS. If you get a tower, you can add the drives internally. That is my one regret with a mini-pc, I can't add more hard drives.

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- In fact I already have a Synology NAS, that I have my backups on. I guess as long as the data connection doesn't need to be high speed, I can use some space on that (or even upgrade the 2TB space in my NAS in the longrun). So I probably don't need a full tower. My main concern was, if a NUC would be overpriced in relation to other similar products.
  
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  My homelab started with a Synology NAS as well. At first I put a few VMs on the NAS, and then I expanded the homelab to include a single PC. I almost bought a NUC instead. I’m glad I didn’t, because the NUC only offered one advantage: it was small. Beyond that, the PC was better in every respect. More expandable, more configurable, etc. I decided to get a really small PC case intended for home theater PCs to get some of the smallness offered by the NUC and called it good.
  
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  Ahh, okay.
  
  I have a NUC as a family computer and it works well. For my server, I bought a Minisforum mini-pc that works well. My brother got a Beelink mini-pc that he likes. Those are other options you can check.
  
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I love my 3 node nuc cluster, uses thunderbolt 10gig network adapters for the backend and storage network so it's super fast.

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- It's good to know about the possibility with thunderbolt network adapters. I think I've already read about that somewhere. At this point I haven't really though about high speed network connection (my home network still runs on slow 100mbit routers and switches). Thanks for that tip
  
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NUC is good choice. Cheaper is eBay Lenovo M900s. You would just have to buy more to max same memory and CPU.

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- An HP Mini unit will also be a good choice. Some even have 2x M2. slots.
  
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Whatever you do, don't go 12 enthusiast at the moment.

It seems lots of people (including myself) are having issues with the GPU and Linux at the moment. It only works for some during a soft reboot.

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- I know, that GPUs are often problematic with linux, mostly due to driver issues. I've had my share of this with my ubuntu desktop. Or is there currently something new/specific, that I missed? Either way I currently don't want to do things with GPUs.
  
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  Nah.. Actually.. They're generally good these days. The 12 Enthusiast NUC is an exception. It's either an ARC Driver bug, a power management issue, or something similar. The NUC 13 series even offer official Linux support
  
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I don't have experience with the NUC for my own homelab and kubernetes, but the main things I will say with any kubernetes is the RAM. I have 4 servers on VMware (just to get experience there) and then have Rancher (like Openshift) across them (both a management server and then a 3 VM cluster). Every resource is important, but the RAM is what was eaten up before anything else for me. I have Lenovo Tiny m910q (x 4) with 64GB and that allows me a full on cluster and then some with other VMs too.

Sounds like you made a good choice going with a NUC and 64GB ram. You just may find you want to add another or two depending how much you go beyond just experimenting with k8s and using it to host most of your homelab services.

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