Hi and thank you for reading and your input. I did a quick search regarding hardware, but didn’t find what I was looking for. I understand my questions are thinly associated with HA but I know many of the community members are well versed on computers and technology in general.
At the moment I an running a small server on my old i7 processor from about 13 years ago with 16 gigs of memory. I am running proxmox with HA OS on one VM, OPNsense on another VM, and Frigate as an LXC. In the near future I plan to add a NAS.
The extra hardware I’ve added is a 2 port giga nic, and a coral tpu via pcie. I have 4 wifi cameras up and running, with 3 more set up ready to install. In total plan to have up to 10 cams, with two of them being PoE.
I am looking to substitute the current computer I am using, mainly because I have to press f1 each time the machine reboots instead of it being able to just reboot itself after a power failure.
I can easily google what is the “best”, but I know if I buy the best i will be wasting my money since I wouldn’t take advantage of it. For example I’ve seen homelabs with 2.5gig ports. After inspecting my current setup I noticed that I am plugging my 1 gig out of my OPNsense to an old TP link router/AP that is only 100. That AP is feeding the rest of my network so that means I am choking all my traffic through that 100 mpbs connection and my network is running just fine for our use. (I did purchase an inexpensive 1 gig switch that arrives in a couple of days, so I can send 1 gig to another router that does have 1 gig ports.)
With that in mind what I am looking for is a new setup that would hold up good for at least 5 more years.
There is usually 3 to 5 people in my household. Most of them mostly watch movies via netflix and videos via youtube. I am more of downloading my content. The NAS I plan to install would be mainly for computer backup files, and general storage for everyone. If I set up Plex, or similar for a music library it wouldn’t get used. We don’t transfer larger files between our computers. We have two 4k TVs and only 4k streaming we seem to do is via netfilx.
For network I have the OPNsense router, a 5 port 100mbps wifi switch, a 5 port gig wifi switch, and a wifi only AP. Do have a 2nd wifi only AP ready to install, and plan to add another wifi AP on the side of the house where two of the 3 cameras I haven’t set up will go. At the moment I usually have about 40 to 50 devices connected to the network. In the near future it will get closer to 60 to 70, but can’t think of any reason of why there would be more than that except when we have people over.
So for my needs, OPNsense, HA, Frigate and a small NAS running on Proxmox, what would be an appropriate setup? I am currently running 16 gigs of RAM, for my needs could I get away with 8 without noticing any difference? For CPU power, would any of the new but lower end processors work for me?