I picked up a few Dell WYSE 5070 thin clients for under $50 off eBay. Run HA just fine and sip power. Single digit (5-6) idle and 10-11 watts fully loaded. Mine sits a 4-5% typically.
They have a built in Battery EMMC drive and depending on what you buy (16 or 32 gb version) that could be enough or a M.2 sata (not nvme) Drive is rather cheap.
Celeron or Pentium?
Pentium. J4105 or J5005 depending on what you can find. I’m running a J4105.
J4105s are celerons. The 5005s are pentiums and are much better.
This. I found there was a significant increase in performance with just a < $500 NUC I can’t recommend one enough.
You are correct. Regardless I think both options have plenty of power for HA and a few add ons. I don’t think either are going to do any serious lifting but for Home Assistant it’s running nicely.
Here’s a tip if you are running a 5070 (or something similar).
If you don’t need the wlan card (or if yours didn’t come with it) you can install a second gigabit nic in that m2 slot. The back of the pc even has a nice punch out plate where you can fit a 3d printed mount for the nic. I know that in proxmox you can set up the nic as a trunk port but having a 2nd nic makes it real easy to have a VM/container on another subnet. They are also pretty cheap as the ones I’ve seen (including my own) are realtek based.
I been installing and selling ARM quad core 4/64gb TV box with preinstalled supervised HA in docker for 60 USD in my country … So far nobody complained . Some people put a small FAN , mine has no fan and is running since 08/22 and just upgraded to latest HA release . No wifi just ethernet . Powerwise it does not drains 10w .
Buyer beware the term “bundle”. They show a picture of items that would make you think come with the bundle but there is no “bundle” unless you make a separate selection that doesn’t include the word bundle in it. If you choose the “bundle” you only get the n2+ with HA installed. That’s not a “bundle”. That is one single board computer with Home Assistant pre-installed. It is very misleading on their desktop website layout. The mobile version is more organized and easier to read. So make sure that when you order the bundle and think you are ordering more than just the N2 + with HA installed to check the selections available. The reason for the “warning” is that whomever they have doing their customer service sucks. They are quick to tell you that you are wrong and even go so far as to be very snide and downright rude. It is the worst service I have ever seen. Keep an eye on YouTube for videos about their “service”.
Hard to know which post you are replying to.
Hi
I’m planing to install HA in a new hardware,
As today, my options are ODROID N2+ or ODROID M1.
I’m reading about N2+ usb ports failures and lack of support, M1 having lower CPU processing power comparatively, people who have them, what do u recommend?
Not interested in NUCs, Servers, laptops, etc…
Currently running a Raspberry pi 3B+, and it’s good enough for me needs.
Thanks in advance for the responses.
Would you be interested if there are NUC / thin clients out there that run as efficiently as an ODROID, are more powerful and cheaper?
Just asking as I was considering one too, and have discovered the above by my own experiments…
(experiment 1: 4th gen Intel I3-u based system running HA using 6W, experiment 2: HP 260 G3, 7th gen intel i3-u based running HA on 3W, experiment 3: intel NUC 8th gen i3-u based, also running HA on 3W)
The n2+ is still a great option as long as you get one of the newer boards that doesn’t have the usb issue (not sure any of the older ones are still in circulation)
I have a lot of the newer boards in production and never had a failure. Even if I did it’s still cheaper to buy two of them vs some of the other options so I don’t care about the poor warranty.
I have seen this mini pc BMAX (https://www.amazon.it/Windows-N4020C-Desktop-Computer-Dual-Band/dp/B09YTRWJQM) and for the price it seems to me an excellent purchase to make HA work.
I come from a rpi 3b+ but the RAM is no longer enough with influx and grafana…
Can the eMMc disk be a problem? Even if you add an m2 ssd?
Here is a note to everyone who seeks a computer to run HA on.
As Microsoft kills off the low end/older PC market with its non-supported CPUs, all the 6th and almost all the 7th gen Intel CPUs will be not supported under Windows 11. The price of these CPUs and computers plummeted already. You can get a Dell 3050 tiny with 16GB of RAM (DDR4), a 256GB NVMe SSD and the i5-6500(T) processor for less than 150USD/EUR/GBP from official post leasing resellers with 1 year of warranty.
If you don’t mind the fan noise or you can tuck it away those small computers are perfect for running HA.
Depends on what you find, it might comes with a built in Wifi+Bluetooth card as well, and they also support SATA SSDs/HDDs as well.
If space is not a problem, then SFF and towers are going around the same prices, giving more options for upgrades, running Frigate beside HA and have space for a slot to add any cards. Or run as a NAS as well with TrueNAS Scale.
This might look like a good idea, but honestly the power draw of these kinds of machines are usually pretty bad.
I myself have a 4790K running as my server (Unraid and HA in a docker container). On idle this machine is running over 100 watts constantly, I also have a dedicated GPU for transcoding but with that under load it will easily hit 180W.
So yeah performance wise it is great, but it is also a quarter of my yearly energy usage. Which is quite a lot. My network (router/switches/AP’s/cams and server) can easily use up to 5kWh per day which I think is way too much for any homelab server.
So my two cents: get something that is less power hungry. It might be more expensive now, but if you live in Europe the lower power draw will easily make up for the higher initial price.
Edit: I saw the specs of the dell 3050, it’s not so bad actually 
, still if all you want is some containers, a NUC would be the better option IMHO.
The Dell 3050 Tiny comes with a 65W power adapter, and the processor i5-6500T is a 35W TDP one.
Of course, if you run continuously multiple HDDs and have multiple USB dongles for radio communication and a GPU to process images/video, etc. then it will add up.
Which NUC would you chose with similar capabilities?
I have one of these that boots Ubuntu Desktop on the M2 SSD. I left Windows 11 on the eMMC. This computer runs a video program for a Halloween prop, but after the project is done I will probably flash HAOS to it just to say it can be done. Since I can flash the M2 SSD with Ubuntu and boot to the M2, I have no doubt that you could flash HAOS to the M2.
Great, thank you very much!
Could you tell me how many watts it consumes?
When it is doing a lot of I/O over Ethernet, it was around 8 to 10W.
Idle = 4.1W.
Idle, Headless = 2.5W