This is all I could think of…

Not even a parent (okay, a cat dad), and yes, this was most of my wrapped. 3 of 5 songs were KPDH.

First thing that came to mind: GPT4All

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Max Miller aww yeah

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Still kicking around in my Gen 3. Bought it used in 2016 as I was putting 90 miles a day for commute, but now I work barely 10 minutes away. Sometimes I get to work quicker then it can jump into EV mode.

Thanks! I just ordered the BeeLink EQ14 and it’ll be here sometime next week. Hopefully your guides prove useful to the noob I am :)

EDIT: I’ve chosen the Beelink EQ14. It had the best “last-gen” specs, lowest price, and better hardware (BT 5.2 vs Pulcro’s 4.2, as well as Wifi6 vs Wifi5). I also ruled out the Morefine because all of its reviews were paid, not very reassuring imho.

Alright, not sure how many will circle back, but I’ve narrowed down my choices, as they hit my current thresholds - N150 or equivalent/greater, 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe, and Dual LAN connection.

1st place - Morefine M9S - This caught my eye, as although because to me it’s a no-name brand, it has a beefiest specs still well within my price range ($270-ish)

2nd place - Pulcro.io TurnKey Two - These guys I just found, and they seem the most… professional? Same specs as the two below.

3rd place - BeeLink EQ14 - Weird that link has it as an N100, clearly shows N150 on the page…

Thoughts?

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I know some of those words, but with that said, thank you for those ideas! That’s a lot more complicated than I was planning, but you gave me fodder for buying a beefier NUC! I think I’m close to settling with an n97 unit that has dual LAN for Pihole and such.

Would you know of any guides or such to set something as complex as what you’ve going, or was it more just time and tinkering? I’m still wrestling with which VM setup to use, but at least Mint was on my shortlist for OS choice.

Damn right. As much as I love my Pis, they have minimal headroom for what I’m looking at doing. This upgrade is great esp with the ability to consolidate all my stuff into one unit. As for power use, the lower the better as I’m guessing the setup will be idling majority of the time, and “vampire power” still sits in the back of my brain. In another comment I placed anything below 50w as a good limit.

As for my Pi4, I’m looking at possibly gifting to a friend as their primary devices don’t handle x265 at all, but I have plenty of options to repurpose both it and even the Pi3. I do need to look into Zigbee stuff though. Still an alien term to me lol.

Thanks! Yeah I’m thinking I should get a higher RAM setup just for flexibility’s sake and futureproofing so some extent. 16GB was my bare minimum, but I’m looking at some configs with 32GB and they aren’t too much pricier. The soldered RAM is def iffy, as I like having the options to improve a build without too much headache, or no solid upgrade path whatsoever.

As for the Linux stuff, I’ve dabbled in it, and currently run ZorinOS on an old Thinkpad. It’s not heavily used, but it’s similar enough to Windows (as are many flavors), that the difficulty curve for me boils down to terminal stuff. I jump between Powershell, MacOS Terminal, and this on a roughly weekly basis, but by no means am I a scholar :P

Oh wow. Heavier hitter than my initial needs, but I wonder if more overhead would be worthwhile, or if the other NUCs I’m looking at will be “enough” for my current and future needs. I do have some card points to burn, so I could get something up this alley. Thanks for the rec!

Yeah, this QuickSync option looks like the best all-rounder for my needs. I don’t transcode atm as I’m simple and usually stick with 720/1080p stuff, maybe I’ll get around to 4k eventually (when a codec makes them the size of 1080p vids lol), but for now, all my devices handle video without any extra fancy.

Yeah I did get a little __ Lost __ :P

But for reals, yeah I did. I was taking in the entire picture, but still way more than I’m hoping to utilize. One tiny box for now, but maybe down the line I’ll expand to a rack. Its only me, as my housemates use the Jellyfin setup a bit through our TVs, but the HA stuff, and even the PiHole are more or less all mine.

I do have a few old desktops I could work with, but my goal here is to find the golden ratio or whatever of hosting a bunch of small things all in one unit without going overboard, and ultimately shoving it all into the networking cabinet I posted in another comment. Low power, low footprint, etc. But who knows? Maybe one day I’ll jump to something like your setup. Thanks for the input!

Oh don’t get me wrong, I get burnout myself if I’m hovering on a hobby for too long, but tinkering is in my blood. I’m sure I’ll have moments where I’m just thinking, “Fuck it, Imma play some gaems instead.”, but that itch is bound to come back.

I am curious what VPN you use tho. Been shopping around, and the unfortunate news that the big services are owned by a particular company kinda stalled my research.

As tempting as that is, I’m not expecting to build up something that hefty. Love the wireminding and all, but I’m hoping to keep this as something I can mount nicely in my teeny tiny network cabinet. The horsepower I’m looking for, alongside the low thermal and power loads, are my goal. Maybe I’ll expand beyond eventually, but who knows?

Thank you for the suggestion though! Also love the R&C refs :) Still need to finish Rift Apart.

Yeah, in all reality, I’m not too hung up about AMD/Intel, I was goofing in an earlier reply, and that was geared more towards the Nvidia/AMD perpetual battle. And that doesn’t matter much here as I’m not doing anything GPU intensive outside some possible transcoding, but even that may be unnecessary with my needs.

Thx for the video as well!