I have two systems that I need to replace. One is my backup server, which runs FreeBSD and uses some USB attached drives. Really that could be done with anything that is like a Pi, except amd64/x86.
The other is my pfSense router. It is having some hardware issue, which isn’t surprising, I pulled parts out of my scrap pile to make it. For that, I need something that can take an pcie card for my dual 10g network card. Does anyone have any ITX or smallish machines they like? Actual smallness doesn’t matter so much as not being expensive.
How do people go about finding things these days? I used to use newegg, but mostly now it seems to be a trap of accidentally ordering parts from the moon. Amazon is fine if you know exactly what you want already. Pcpartspicker works well, if you are building a full system from parts (which I do for bigger machines) but I don’t know where to get barebones boxes.
You can get a Dell Optiplex 7020/9020 SFF i5 16GB RAM No HDD from the Michigan State Surplus. For me shipping was about $25 for three of them.
Damn I need something like this but in Canada
Nice, thanks.
Wow, that’s a shockingly good deal. I’d love to get something like this for Plex and general household stuff.
Yeah, they have ones with 1 TB HDD, and some with Windows installed too. Besides these guys, I routinely search for surplus equipment all the time
You wouldn’t mind sharing where to look for surplus stuff would you?
Such a good find. Now I’m trying to find a reason to get one lol. My Plex and *arr setup right now is an older model gaming rig with an 8TB external.
You want 7th gen or newer for Plex if you want to use QSV for hardware acceleration! Good news is those boxes are still under $100 on ebay.
Wow, just learned about a really awesome place, those are good prices!
That is actually pretty solid. Ordered one.
Curse you! Ordered…
Just add power cost to run it. Old thing become way more expensive if you add power cost over it life.
They use about ~20W, not too bad.
That said I would go for 7th gen or newer at this point for proper QSV support, and OpenVINO support for things like Frigate object detection.
