PC or NUC?

Looking at installing HA on a PC or a NUC. Heck,I could even build something I guess. It will only be used for HA.
Wanted to get some opinions on what to get as far as CPU. I have a spare mSata and M.2 that I can use in it.
Suggestions,links or what you have will be appreciated. Thanks

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I’m running a HP prodesk 600 Mini. Find any HP, Dell, Lenovo mini pc running a low power processor ( typically a T designation at the end - 4590T) and slap a SSD in it and you will be good to run HA and a bunch of add ons.

I ran a few other PCs over the years but they all draw to much power for my taste. The HP I’m currently running generally runs in the high single digits as it’s basically idle.

Night and day performance difference compared to a pip for config checks and restarts. Config checks are basically instant and restarts are within a minute usually.

Look on eBay, Facebook market place or Craigslist for deals.

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What model is the 600 MIni? I see them from G1-G5?

Not 100% sure. It’s an older one.

Anything with a i5 in it should be plenty of power. The i3 processors should be plenty powerful too.

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I’m running on an 8 year old gen 3 i7 PC with 16G RAM. HA has no performance problems I can see - the VM it runs in uses ~20% CPU. I would say any vaguely recent i3/5/7 would be fine.

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I’ve had my eye on these. They pop up for under $100 on eBay and I have to fight the urge to buy one each time I find one.

U is the other designation to look for (laptop processor).

Really the only disadvantage to running on a full blown PC is the power consumption. Other than that it has many, many advantages.

Some hardware (onboard NICs for example) may not be supported by the NUC image and you will have to run a supervised or other instal type.

Second hand laptops are a great choice as they come with a built in UPS (battery).

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Can’t go wrong with an HP microserver any generation. I personally run a gen8 with windows server and hassio in hyper-v. Low power consumption, low noise, truly headless with 24x7 operation

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I am running Home Assistant in Synology NAS 918+ as docker container. So far…no issues… Have not much included but the CPU and RAM usually below 20%

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which docker image are you using, I can only find ones without supervisor mode…
Thanks!

I built with an ASRock j4105 board, 8gb ram and a 256 samsung ssd. It is a silent machine that has plenty of power. I wanted it silent as I have my rig in the middle of the house.

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I’d definetly take the NUC (or a similar product) if you only run HA, for the sake of low power consumption.
I had a NUC8i3 running for over a year and it was at about 7 W in average which is ridiculously low compared to a desktop PC.
The i3 was basically idling most of the time so there is room for more.
Maybe give some details what you plan to do with it?
Certain use cases could need more than a Celeron / i3 CPU, e.g. local person / face / whatever detection in camera streams.

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If you don’t want to pay the NUC premium I’ve been running one of these XCY mini PCs (i7-4600U, 15W) for a year or so without issue (my own SSD though, not the offered Chinese ones):

https://minipcxcy.aliexpress.com/store/4362012?spm=2114.search0306.3.3.38047457irxePt

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How about a Lenovo? One has an i3-3220t and the other i3-4130t? Both with 8gb ram.

For HA, I think they are rather equivalent. The fist number in the model is the generation. The 4130t is one generation newer compared to the 3220t. The 4130t is slightly ahead of the 3220t as its a later model but I’m not sure the difference would be noticeable in HA.

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He wants $35 for the 4130t,no hard drive.

That includes the 8GB of RAM?

Check if it includes the power supply (they often are a laptop style brick) and if the HDD Caddy is included. The HPs won’t boot without a HP power supply so it becomes an issue when they are not included. If its a standard 2.5 HDD holder they are often ripped out when decommissioned and not put back.

Other than that is sounds like a great deal.

Yes, 8gb ram and power supply is included. He will have to ship, so I’m waiting on a total. Not sure if I can use my msata or m.2. Trying to find the info on it.

Keep in mind that you will need to be able to load Home Assistant (if your running HassOS) onto that drive and then boot from it. Not saying its not possible, I just haven’t done it with msata or a m.2 drive.

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Yeah. I can always just grab a SSD since they are fairly cheap now.