Hi,
https://hometheatrelife.com/tronsmart-ara-x5-review-windows-10-cherry-trail/
I can see that it is about the bare minimum. If I wipe such a PC clean, how bad would it be as a first stage, learning the system?
I only intend using to control lights and such, not to stream anything. Right now have only WIFI devices - some Matter, some not. I may buy some Thread devices in the future, but have no need right now, nor many options to buy from.
I don’t want the PC to be working at 100% all the time and heat up.
What do you say?
Thank you for any idea.
Do you already own this? If not you will find far better value elsewhere.
It will no doubt work although the ram may be a bit too small. Need to check if it has UEFI boot before messing about with it.
Only 2 gBytes of ram will be a problem.
I would pass on it. The RAM is soldered to the board, so you can’t upgrade it. That and the hard-drive space are the only real contention points regarding the hardware. You’re better off picking up a Dell Wyse 5010 from eBay for $20 USD. You can upgrade the RAM to 4GB and install an SSD drive. Mini-PC’s are a dime for a dozen on eBay, so if your budget allows it, get something even better than the Dell Wyse 5010, like the 5070, etc.
Yes, I have it with Windows installed, but if it is no good, then I will just leave it. Otherwise, I need to look if there’s any valuble data left on it.
Don’t let the limited RAM stop you from other uses. I have a similarly constrained computer (Zotac) running Ubuntu and RTL433. It is by far the slowest computer in my server closet, but it is useful.
My preferred mini-pc is the Intel NUC. I run Home Assistant (bare metal) on an Intel NUC i3 that I bought used on eBay for less than the cost of a new Raspberry Pi. Any similar micro PC will outperform any Raspberry in every metric.
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If you are just trying out HA use it, you can always update to a new box if you like HA. Changing hardware is easy.
2 GB RAM will run and will be fine, at least for an entry point to HA. I’ve run with 2 GB and the only visible slow down due to swap use was some graphs with data from long term stats, and that was only a problem after a couple years - and even then everything worked fine, just one dashboard would take a few more seconds to load. Some add-ons (sorry, apps) may need more RAM though(especially Music Assistant), but you don’t have to use them.
So I would say, if you already have it, go ahead and install HA on it, check if you like it and you can always migrate to some more capable hardware in the future.
I will say its a really bad idea. I literally started just like you wanting to control some lights while you dont need a quantum computer lol i do recommend atleast an intel nuc n150, i say this because it gives you room for the future as you grow with home assistant youll eventually be drawn in to more complex things than lights, and considering raspberry pi’s are about the same price now as nucs why bother with a raspberry pi just go nuc. They dont draw that much more power either but far better performance.
edit: not to rant but honestly theres no real reason to even bother with raspberry pi in 2025 2026 (oops) for servers im literally in market for a second nuc for self hosted home server as my starter pi i use to run home assistant on is fried 
(less than a year old too) i mean if your planning to build something with a pi thats different it just not the best hardware for server related stuff in my opinion
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Thank you all
I actually have spare SODIMM DDR4 and M.2 SSD, but couldn’t find a nice cheap box for it, as I get eBay shipping around $100, and on AliExpress it’s hard finding barebones from a hmm…searchable brand. Am I wrong?
And regarding the old mini PC, I suppose you’d install the Home Assistant OS?
??? Box for what?
My personal recommendation is to install HAOS bare-metal. You do not need Proxmox, Docker or a VM to run Home Assistant.
- Flash the HAOS image to the boot drive.
- Reboot.
That’s it. Done. No learning curve for Proxmox, Docker, VM’s. No USB or Network issue. No managing disk or memory allocations.
The downside of bare metal? Your Home Assistant host computer is just that. Dedicated to one task. It just works.
If you need to run other programs on their Home Assistant server that aren’t available in an add-on, migrating to ProxMox can always be a solution later.
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Agree with all of the above. Low-end or used x86 boxes are cheap. But if you can install HA on (I didn’t read all the specs) that 2GB one in the OP will work OK for “normal” stuff. Keep it lean, exclude a lot from Recorder and don’t go crazy with add-ons.
That said, if and when you choose to move to a machine with more headroom, the migration is easy. I just went through it. Twice, if you count doing an upgrade from HDD to SSD not too long after migrating to the new machine (an old, unwanted laptop.)
Now that I’ve got the capacity, I’m starting to look at add-ons. I’ve found a few I might like to play with, to start consuming some of that excess CPU and memory I’ve got now. All on a bare-metal HAOS, no VM or proxmox needed. I wish I’d done this years ago!
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As another point of view on ram size, I’m a relatively new user. I have about 20 yaml files, 6 app/add ons, 7 integrations I’m actually using in about 100 automations (many refactored from another controller). That uses 1.2 GB. If i use the studio code server app/add on, that’s the biggest user and it can jump up closer to 2gb.
Granted its on an ha green server which is a different platform, but the point is you can get a good start with what you have, write some test automations to prove things out, and watch the system / hardware section of ha or os system monitoring tools to monitor how resources are used up as you go.
Growth is a factor to plan for as well. I started off thinking… “I’ll give it a try”, and I’m still going 