My use case is a homelab kubernetes cluster, so I want multiple nodes for redundancy, but I don’t want to use too much electricity or generate too much heat. But for the sake of other readers, let’s keep it general:
What’s a nice little computer for a homelab, with its own power supply, ethernet, and room for 2 internal disks?
Refurbished Lenovo Tiny, HP micro or Lenovo mini are the go to things for this. Available in plenty different configurations, modular and widely available due to getting decommissioned by the industry in big numbers after 2-3 years.
They idle around 6-7W
Thanks; this is the advice I was looking for.
This is the way. I have an HP ProDesk 600 G4 with an i5-8500T, and it has been sipping 7 W for years now. Just be aware, most of these boxes only have one 2.5" SATA and one M.2 2280 bay. For HP, the ProDesk 600 and EliteDesk 800 have another M.2 2280 slot. Also be aware, you need a special internal cable for that SATA bay, so if you buy one of these make sure it has that cable in it already.
Here is a good comparison list of all the different Tinys out there.
Amazing reference friend! Definitely bookmarking it and maybe mirroring it locally (I hate when repos go private or disappear).
@B0rax Cool, I wish, I had seen it earlier this year, when I wanted to get the differences between some HP and Lenovo models.
Especially, how much NVMe sockets are available.
If you want a lot of NVMe sockets, my recommendation would be the Lenovo M920x. It has 2 on board. Then you can add a special riser card, which gives you 2 more + a 4x PCIe slot.
Which gives you 4 NVMe slots + SATA + one 4x PCIe slot and not counting the B-Key WiFi slot which also has PCIe.