For background - I’m very new, I have a Synology NAS (918+) I use as a Plex server where I put HA in as a VM to run supervisor mode. This slowed my main NAS functions down a fair bit, and as I intend on getting cameras and using Frigate, I figured that putting more strain on the NAS probably wasn’t the best move, especially as it will already need to lift it’s game to deal with backup of HA and storage of video files.
I’m now looking to get a NUC to run supervisor and other services such as Frigate.
I was keen to understand what specs I should be looking at to ensure I get something that’s fit for purpose and has room to grow if I want to add more services?
I can see anything above i5 and 8gb of RAM seems solid, but keen to understand more about how the other specs might impact on the overall effectiveness within HA and associated services.
Frigate needs Coral TPU. After that it not use CPU much. I suggest you worry more about the coral than the pc as they are hard to find these days
Plex or other video server can be cpu intense but recent i5 or i7 should handle this Ok. Pass mark score is good judge for how cpu will perform. Overbuild for plex and all else is easy
HA not really use much resources. Same with most other things. Memory would like become issue but 8GB is likely OK. You can always add more memory. If price to buy with more memory is small than get more but if not, 8 will likely be fine
Almost any NUC will be fine for Home Assistant.
I am running Home Assistant on a NUC i3, including three cameras on Frigate without Coral. This NUC is dedicated to Home Assistant only. Plex is on a separate NUC i7 and my NAS is on an old POS PC (Point of Sale) computer (Intel Atom CPU @ 1.60GHz).
Thanks for that! I actually ordered a Coral 2 weeks ago after hearing about all the difficulties and it’s here already!
I noticed when setting up a VM on my NAS that it asked how many ‘cores’ to dedicate. Should getting a NUC with 6+ cores be important to future proof for any future VMs required? Or are the i7s powerful enough that I probably only need to dedicate one core anyway?
That’s very similar to what I’m shooting for, so thanks for that, good to know! What’s your set up on the i3? Are you running, OS, core or supervisor? Are you using Proxmox?
Thanks!
They had a bunch of stock (over 2000 units) available for the last week or two. Unfortunate though for anyone in the US, as their US site didn’t have any stock.
RS Components (the Australian store). I put in a few orders at different places (knowing they would be easy to resell if more than one came through). As they were all backorder it was pretty easy to cancel when this one came through.
Also if you see stores in other countries with stock, mail forwarding is pretty easy to organise (as an Australian have to do this all the time with the US).
I flashed the HAOS image on the M.2 drive, boot it up and go. I don’t even know what Proxmox is, and I didn’t even know that I was running on docker until a year later.
I just wanted a simple, supported, no complicated extras installation and this couldn’t get any simpler.