I know a Raspberry Pi 4 with an SSD is a pretty common platform to use HA on but I recently saw a YouTube video suggesting that the Dell Optiplex micro (ultra small form factor) is also a really good option. Would be looking to get a 2nd hand model from ebay along with an SSD. I’d be looking to put HA OS on it. Seems like it’s pretty low powered (i.e. sub 10w when) whilst still having lots of processing power. Also it seems really good bang for buck. Any thoughts on this or any better options?
I have a Dell OptiPlex 3040 micro. I’m very pleased with it. I find it much more reliable than the pi4 I had before.
I’m running HA OS so it’s not doing much work really. The CPU rarely goes over 3% load or 40 degrees C.
It’s toolless design makes it easy to pop the hard disk into a desktop PC for loading the OS.
The fan doesn’t come on so it’s silent too.
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I recently picked up 2 wyse 5060 device from ebay for less than $50. Prior to that I was using a pi 3b+. It is easy enough to put a bigger hard drive in the wyse device and comes with 4gb of ram expendable to 16gb if needed. I have it on a tuya metering plug and it sits at about 7 to 8 watts.
Do you mind me asking what processor you have with it?
It’s a 6th generation core i3.
Thank you. Do you have the exact model number? I think the low powered one has the T suffix. Is it the 6100T or the 6300T?
Home Assistant almost runs on the smell of an oily rag. Possibly of more concern is add-ons that you might want in future - eg. Plex, InfluxDB, Deepstack, Frigate, etc. You might also want to consider running HA OS in a virtual machine, so you can use the server for other purposes too (which might warrant 16GB RAM and more storage options).
There’s a lot of useful info in the comments here.
I think I’m going to start small and incrementally upgrade as and when I feel the need. For now, planning to just have dedicated hardware for HA. I can always migrate to more powerful hardware if I need. From what I understand, all the configuration can be backed up and restored so it’d be reasonably easy to migrate as well.
As a reference point:
My metal box has a 4-year-old Celeron, and I use that metal box for hosting the HAOS VM, plus a bunch of other things in container, such as a plex server, and a photos service with AI recognition.
Yes there is some overhead running VM, but minimal, given how lightweight HAOS really is. CPU is consistently at 2-3%.
So you’d be fine. Even if you want to start small, you could still run HAOS VM. Any 2nd hand Optiplex with Intel Core you can find on ebay is likely (way-) overpowered to run HAOS only.
Also note that HP has the prodesk & elitedesk line that is comparable to Dell’s Optiplex.
Im running a Dell OptiPlex 7010. Probably overkill with 16gb RAM and the I7 3700k