I read very good things of the Intel N100 chips on r/homelab (homeserver subreddit) - seems to be exceptionally power efficient, has modern encode/decode and works with pretty much every operating system out there.
Do not know the particular mini PC, but I geuss they are all pretty much the same. Small fan is good for 24/7 use (10° lower equals twice the lifetime for capacitors as far as I know…), 16 GB of RAM is plenty for your use. While I would use Ethernet, WiFi is nice to have as a fallback during setup, and in theory you could configure this thing to be a WiFi access point for other devices, too ^^
This is an interesting comparison of the Pi vs a cheap mini PC:
It looks like the ARM architecture in the Pi is definitely still more efficient, but as @ebastler mentioned it might not matter depending on your electrical prices.
That very much depends on the application - Jellyfin for example heavily uses video encoding, and since the Pi5 has no encoders and can only decode one very specific codec, it would probably be close to 100% CPU load for the entire video playback time, if it is capable of transcoding the bandwidths and codecs needed at all.
While the N100 will draw more power in idle (not even sure about that with a slim Linux setup, Intel got those really efficient at idle) and during generic CPU loads, its dedicated hardware encoders/decoders (intel is still king in that field, even better than nvidias NVEnc) can do that with a CPU load close to 0%, and at low power draw.
Pi5 can decode h265 only, and can not encode anything in HW. Pi4 had some more supported formats IIRC.
N100 can decode pretty much everything incl AV1, and encode pretty much everything excl. AV1. AV1 encode came later, with AMDs Ryzen 7000 notebook chips and Intel 13000 or 14000 desktop chips I think. N100 is based on Intel 12000.
I used to get (still got) standalone NASes that are just the disk and embedded *nix SBC inside, then just connect each to a router/switch. I like simple. Each one also has a usb port to be able to plug in 1/more external usb disks or even a flash-thingy.
Can also keep the bulk of them unpowered when not in use, to virtually eliminate any wear’n’tear on the spinny parts.
Make your own disk farm in a single box, etc., and everything’s gonna be whirring away 24/7 even when you’re not touching it.
That’s just me. You do you. But I like the “modular”-ness of that setup.
So drives can be spun down when they haven’t been accessed to save power. On the flip side, spin up/down cycles are more wear than just spinning 24/7, as far as the motors are concerned. It’s basically infamous that losing power to a large NAS means you’re going to have disks that just won’t spin back up.
I set my NAS to spin down disks after 15min of inactivity. I’m about to retire my drives that have been running 24/7 since 2014ish soon because I do not have much use for 2 TB anymore. SMART still flawless. Will probably put them in some USB enclosure and keep around for backups.
While true for some mini PCs, there are zero reports online (that I can find) of malware or spyware found on any new Beelink S12 Pro, which is the one I’m looking at.
As has been discussed, any RPi would be the wrong tool for the job at hand.
These mini PCs are much more powerful (and useful) than any RPi, and they don’t cost much more than an RPi 5 (once you add up all the accessories).
I can find a Beelink S12 Pro on Amazon for $159.
Hmm…
I’d like to build my own mini PC, but I cannot find a computer case suitable for a nice motherboard.
For example, I’d like to get an ASRock N100M when it comes back in stock at Newegg for $119.99 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162134
A case about 7" x 9" x 2" (made specifically for this motherboard) would be perfect, but apparently that doesn’t exist!
It would be cheaper to get the Beelink S12 Pro, but I would still like to build my own (so that I can choose each component) if it weren’t for this dealbreaker.
HP had a series of inexpensive servers with 4 3.5" bays and hardware RAID (Proliant Microserver). Got one with 1TB RAID, 1TB backup and one HDD for the OS. Along with a lifetime plan cloud storage, I’m done with all things backup and network storage for everything that’s important to me.
