hello everyone, newbie here trying to get started and not sure what way to go. My endgame hope is that i will be able to run PLEX, cinemavision and HA on one unit separate from my gaming PC. i have an un used tower available and possibly a few parts i could reuse like cpu fan and some hdds. would i be better off going with NUC or is it more ideal to use the tower since it can house more like hard drives? which rout would be more cost effective? looking to hit the sweet spot of value/performance and dont want to break the bank. what are the upsides and downsides of each? what are you using?
An old tower uses a lot more electricity, so in the long run you might be better of with a nuc.
Get a NUC you don’t need much… something like this is all you need. One benefit is running it headless you can place it almost anywhere to get it centrally located so it can reach all your Zigbee & Z-Wave devices.
1 Like
This is something to pay attention to when doing cost comparisons. When I was looking at options awhile back I made a spreadsheet to calculate costs. Take your last few power bills and take the total cost and divide it by the kWh used. Use that as input into the spreadsheet. You likely pay less per kWh but after delivery charges and taxes the $/kWh is a better value to use.
In the past I have run Home Assistant on …
Raspberry Pi 2B
Raspberry Pi 3B
Raspberry Pi 3B+
Zotac Ci323 Nano (Intel N3150 processor)
Dell Optiplex (Intel i5 3470T processor)
Zotac Nano (AMD GX-415GA processor)
HomeAssistant runs automations and handles things basically the same on all the options. Things like history loading and restarts/config checks are quicker on the faster hardware.
What you really need to pay attention to is what the other software you run needs to perform at an acceptable level. Then balance that with the cost of building and running that platform.
You can run it on anything that is on 24/7 as a VM, no need for any dedicated hardware anymore. Decide what you need for Plex etc and just strap it onto that. Mine lives on my HP Microserver which acts as HTPC, media server, web server and anything else I want to add at any time.
1 Like
thank you all for the input
I’d use the old tower myself.
An old tower uses a lot more electricity, so in the long run you might be better of with a nuc.
I don’t think a NUC will save much money in terms of power costs to justify the cost of them.
I’m looking into buying a new platform for my home assistant, instead of going for a NUC I’m looking into a Thinkcentre M-series USF. I5 can be had for around £100, I3 for around £60 second hand. Obviously it’s not the latest generation of chipset.
The Ali express computers are very tempting though for wife acceptance, as well as newer chipsets. Hmmm more to look at…
I meant to post this one… for $160 you can’t go wrong just load Ubuntu on it and never look back.
Use a HP Z220SFF with an I5 CPU, super fast, SSD, storage and lots of IO.
Very inexpensive on eBay…
1 Like
Any idea on what the pulls from the wall while running HA?
I would go fir an old low power server I got my fir $300 Au from gumtree. I run Plex at 100%…Acer Altos T310 F3 Server, Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 3.4GHz CPU, 32GB RAM, 2x 500GB SSD, 2x 1TB SSD, Intel RAID, Server 2012 R2 Standard,
I use an old Dell Optiplex 990 SFF with an i5 2400 I got off eBay (Aus) for $105. I added a 120gb SSD for $25.
Runs Hass.io over Ubuntu, Plex, Shinobi for CCTV, Transmission, OVPN etc etc, all in Docker. Power usage sits between 35w and 40w when not streaming Plex, jumps up to 80w-90w when streaming Plex.
Very affordable option, and more than powerful enough for anything you may want to throw at it.
Based upon the heat dissipation numbers on the spec sheet, it’s about 160 W, typical. No idle dissipation number is listed. HA is a pretty light application unless you use the machine for some other purpose.