[CaptainBern]

You could get older server hardware pretty cheap, and just run everything on a single physical machine, no?

For example, I picked up about 96 GB of DDR3 ECC ram for around 75 euros. A quick check on ebay, and the same amount of DDR4 is selling for at least _twice_ as much. I imagine it's pretty economical to buy this older hardware and just assemble a single beefy server, instead of buying multiple physical machines.

The added benefit is that this older hardware doesn't end up in a landfill, and even though older CPUs generally consume more power than their current gen equivalent, I reckon a single machine would consume about the same, or less, than multiple NUCs (I have no source to back that up though, it's just my assumption).

[vinceguidry]

Server hardware is designed to run in server environments, not home environments. Maybe if you had a basement or something, but the noise on those fans is going to drive you nuts. Off the shelf home desktop hardware is better, but amazingly inconsistent. The NUC platform isn’t a bad way to go if you have the cash.

[CaptainBern]

You're absolutely correct about the noise. Those 1U servers sound like a jet taking off pretty much the entire time they run. However, there's plenty of motherboards that are ATX (or E-ATX), so they fit in regular cases with little to no modifications. (Though, I just keep mine in my attic)

I agree the NUC is a great platform, but if you could spend less cash and get more bang for your buck, and perhaps have the added benefit of having a platform with ECC memory (not sure if the NUC supports ECC, I'm assuming it doesn't), then I think the latter is what most people would go for (or well, at least what I would go for :p).

We're also talking about home _servers_, so it doesn't seem that odd to me to use actual server hardware. The homelab[0] subreddit has a bunch of folks running actual server hardware for example.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/

[hinkley]

Or drive your family nuts, who will take you with them.

I had plans to build a noise isolated data closet in the basement (tied into the furnace air return) but I never ended up with the right sort of basement.

[tomc1985]

A closet or the garage also works. I ran a couple of Dell 1U's in a closet for years, you could barely hear them thru the (fullsize, non-sliding) door

[dastx]

Sure, but desktop hardware is also more likely to fail quicker as they're not designed to be used like servers. So there's a trade off.

[voidmain0001]

I use Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations that are off lease for this very purpose. Dual CPU, large RAM capacity, and quiet.

[ivalm]

He wants the fun homelab not savings. His particular NUCs are ~$600 a piece, the nas was a few $k as well. Definitely you can get more compute on a single node but I think you'd be missing the point.