(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best barebone pc

Happy to help!

​

So specs aren't as important as form and function in this case, but I figured I'd get them out of the way first just in case you are curious:

• CPU: Intel i5-7500
  
• MOBO: MSI H270I GAMING PRO AC
  
• SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB
  
• GPU: EVGA GTX 970
  
• CASE: CoolerMaster Elite 130
  
  Really the only elements that matter here as far as building a couch setup are motherboard and case, as they pertain to the form factor. I chose Mini-ITX to keep the size down, which helps the PC fit nicely under my TV alongside my consoles. The Elite 130 is big for an ITX case, but still got the job done for what I need. Specifically, I chose it for its ATX PSU and full size GPU support, in addition to its affordable price. For reference, ATX PSUs are generally the standard size power supplies for a PC. Smaller PSUs tend to command a significant premium compared to ATX PSUs of the same quality. Speaking premiums, you can end up paying a hefty premium for smaller and better designed ITX cases. just look at /r/sffpc if you want an example of how beautiful (and expensive) these things can get. There's some really awesome stuff in there, but honestly what you need will depend on your use case. If you're going to be doing any gaming, then a case that supports a GPU is a must, and you'll pay for cramming more power into a smaller space. However, since your current couch build is a Vista laptop, this may not be an issue for you at all!
  
  In any case, deciding where you're going to put the PC is important. If size is a concern, there are still great options out there if you don't need too much performance. There are other Mini ITX builds that could accomplish this quite nicely, but if you don't need any PCIe slots at all, ASRock makes a beautiful Mini-STX machine called the DeskMini that is only 6"x6"x3"! I'm not 100% sure that the remote start I first mentioned would fit into this case, but I have a non-ASRock MiniSTX machine at home, so I can take a look and speculate if you'd like. And even if not, you could get that same function through Wake-On-LAN if you have an ethernet connection. Anyway, you can get a barebones model for $170 that supports the latest 8th and 9th gen Intel CPUs, but you'll need to add the CPU and SSD on your own. There are fully built models available, including AMD Ryzen models starting at $500, but again, depending on your needs, that may be more money than you need to spend. For instance, adding an Intel i3-8100 CPU for $135 and a Crucial SATA M.2 SSD for $63 brings you up to $368, and leaves plenty of upgradability down the line. Additionally, you could scale that price down further by lowering the SSD capacity, getting a Pentium CPU, buying used, etc. Let me know what you currently (and want to) do with your couch computer, and I'll be happy to help with a performance recommendation!
  
  Moving on to peripherals, a wireless mouse/keyboard combo would certainly work well! There are plenty of bluetooth and USB dongle-based options on the market for you to consider. I personally use a Roccat Sova lapboard, which is wired, but I decided that was more important for me as it comes with USB ports for my headset and mouse. Plenty of options are available that are both cheaper and better suited for a wireless mouse and keyboard anyway, so don't feel like you need to go this route! Another product to consider is couch table. I used this model for my mouse before I learned about that Roccat lapboard, but I still love that table for couch use in general!
  
  As for the display, I use my TV. It's a 4K TCL 55p607, which got great reviews for its price when I bought it. Full disclosure, TVs generally aren't as good as PC monitors when it comes to use with a PC. Refresh rates and input lag tend to be the biggest differentiating factors, but this video will do a far better job of explaining it than I can. Overall though, TVs as displays only get more viable every year! Just don't expect the budget set from Walmart to be as easy on the eyes as a high quality model. If you're going to be staring at it for hours at a time, it will likely be worth the investment to research and buy a better model! One other thing you will likely have to play with regardless of TV quality is visual scaling. Since default settings assume you are sitting a foot or two from the monitor, text and graphics will be very small at first. Customization options are getting better though; Windows has settings for text scaling now, and even has an automated tool to fix programs that aren't cooperating in this regard, but you will still likely have to tinker with settings in some programs to get things comfortably readable from the couch.
  
  Something else to consider is audio, HDMI inputs, and overall technology compatibility. I have a surround sound setup via a Yamaha receiver. All my consoles (and my PC) plug into it, and it feeds HDMI to the TV. However, I ran into a snag on this front. My receiver is a few years old, and thus cannot support 4K at a refresh rate above 30Hz. Here's another TechQuickie video on refresh rates, and yet another about TVs faking better refresh rates (which should absolutely be disabled if you got this route). So since the receiver sits between the TV and the PC, that means that me getting both surround sound and 4K for my PC got very complicated. In the end, I decided to forego the 4K resolution and instead opt for the simplicity of sticking with 1080p at 60 Hz for my gaming PC. It ended up making sense to me since my hardware specs were better suited for 1080p gaming anyway, but again, higher resolution tends to be easier on the eyes when it comes to everyday PC use, so your mileage may vary.
  
  ​
  
  Sorry this got long winded, but I hope this answers a lot of your questions. Feel free to reach out with any additional questions, I'd be happy to help in any way I can!

Thank you to you all for your comment and support in my previous post, it was my first project and I didn't expect such positive and the amount of feedback, so thank you to you all.

Since there are a lot of you asking / PM me for guide / link / pics, please see below:

First of all, let me make a few things clear:

Q: Why I don't use the VPN Server / VPN service / Download Station on my Synology?

A: Security VS Speed. I want to have a stable upload speed while I back up my NAS to the cloud and to a remote location, but I also want to download torrent with VPN, and I don't want to choose one over the other, hence I leave my NAS to run without VPN and use my Pi to download torrents with VPN.

Q: Why I use Deluge as torrent service and not the others? Why don't I use other programs (Sonarr / Radarr / Jackett) to pair it with?

A: The simple answer is, I was a pure beginner and I found the guide that fit me so I follow what's in the guide. Whatever the guide / tutorial suggested I just do it the way it tells me too, and not because of preference whatsoever.

Q: Why don't I run pi-hole in Synology docker / why not add the pi-hole DNS to the router?

A: I want to keep things simple and I don't want to config too much on my Synology / put too much program to it. Plus whenever I'm out and connect to my local network using the PiVPN, I have the ad-block also. And since pi-hole is not perfect and it might blocked website that it shouldn't, I realized it's not suitable for my family, so I only set it up for my device and not for the entire network.

Now off to the guide, performance and etc.**

For the Pi Zero some of you asked me for the pictures

Here are the links for the accessories:

Pi Zero Ethernet HAT

Pi Zero BadUSB

Guide to install Pi-VPN with Pi-Hole

For the Pi 4 I have installed OpenVPN with PIA auto start configuration, Deluge for downloading torrent, and have mount the Pi to my Synology for torrent to download directly to my Synology, save me time to move the files to it's correct destination (I have Plex setup).

The metal case I use

I have follow this YouTube video for setting up OpenVPN with PIA and Deluge.

While I have 500 mb/s internet speed at home, the download speed I got is around 2 MB/s. It's not ideal but acceptable for me, because when it comes to downloading I think security is more important than speed.

When I run deluge (the torrent download agent) with VPN (Which I setup to run upon starting the Pi), CPU is running 40% max (mostly around 25% - 30%), which is much better than I expected.

And for mounting the Pi with Synology, I'm just gonna share a few codes that works for me to save your guys the time for trying / failing and to spend time for trouble shoot (that's took me days /weeks)

sudo mkdir /mnt/raspberryfoldernamehere (To create the folder on Pi that use to mount to Synology)

Type "ls" to check if it created

sudo mount -t nfs 192.168.1.**:/volume1/synologyfoldernamehere /mnt/raspberryfoldernamehere (To mount the Synology and Pi folder together)

Type "df -h" to check if it's successfully mounted, it should show the Synology folder on the left and the pi folder on the right, which means it has successfully mounted

And to have it automatically mounted upon startup:

sudo nano /etc/fstab (To open the fstab in order to edit it)

add the following line:

192.168.1.**:/volume1/synologyfoldernamehere /mnt/raspberryfoldernamehere nfs defaults 0 0

(See Video at 11:09 for example)

Those are the guides that I followed in order to set it up, of cause there were a lot of trouble shooting for me but I don't think it's neceseary to share those since the guide I shared works for me.

I have ordered a new Pi zero and a 3B+ for my next projects, I have no idea what I should do yet but I have a few ideas in mind including reuse the monitor I took from an old laptop. Also maybe an audio station with the DAC HAT I found online, which I believe it will work wonderfully with my media files in Synology and Spofity.

I'm very excited for my next project and can't wait to share with you guys.

Once again thank you very much and I really really appreciated for those who gave me suggestion in my pervious post.

So basically that's all I can share with you guys, if I have missed anything please feel free to let me know, and also please excuse me if I don't reply back to you on time, I'm typing this up at the airport while my flight is delay and I believe soon I will be in the air and not being able to respond for the next 20 hours or so.

There is one other.. You could take a look at the Rock64 and Pine64 boards. The Pine64 isn't perfect as it basically needs to be powered through the GPIO connector, but it'll do Android and has reasonable Linux support currently. The Rock64 is a bit new, but I would imagine it'll receive decent Linux support as well.

The best there is would be something like an XU4, Clearfog, LattePanda, or at least what used to be the best of the best Fitlet.

Intel was even making SBCs for a while. Boards like the Joule, as well but iirc they gave their entire product line in that area the axe.

edit: Oh, if you do use streaming services on any of these open ARM based devices, you will likely be limited severely in video quality as they're not going to meet DRM requirements.

I've looked in the past. Maybe things have changed recently, but I doubt it. There aren't really any x86 that come reasonably full featured, like ethernet/wifi, multiple usb ports etc, for anywhere near the price of a raspberry pi 3. You don't want to host a server over wifi if you can help it which rules out most of those small stick types.

Along with the other overly expensive ones listed here so far, there's also CompuLab's FitPC & fitlet designs. You'll need to buy the add-on heatsink if you want to do any sort of heavy lifting with them though.

If you're simply looking for something with better performance than a raspberry pi 3, it's probably just as easy to stick with ARM. You'll likely save a bunch as well. Odroid C2s & XU4s make great servers with their gigabit networking and eMMC support. Either will run Armbian Xenial Server without skipping a beat.

while a Pi-type device seems really cheap at first, they're really not all that cheap comparatively when you include SD card, USB power adapter, a case for the Pi, USB hub, etc.

And Pis feel super slow when you use them, they have SUPER low I/O speed so whenever you have to perform updates or update your Plex library or whatever it will be verrrrrrrrrrrryyyyy slllloowwwwwww.

Something like this will give you a lot better performance for not a lot of money, and it's all one unit that's designed for professional use as opposed to a Pi which is designed first and foremost to be cheap. BTW those are like 30% cheaper on ebay than amazon but I don't want to trigger reddit's spam filter.

Just add a Best Buy WD Easystore and you're good to go.

All-In-Ones are TERRIBLE! NOT because they are pre-built, but because they are AIO! Some may be good, but really you shouldn't look for those.

I would recommend steamOS, butttt it sucks.

There are versions that are cheaper and versions that are more expensive, but how about something like this

EDIT: Well you said your price was less than 1kUSD including peripherals. While I cannot recommend peripherals, how good would this be? I mean, I don't really like pre-builts but if you don't have the time then this is good!

Otherwise, if you can do a build, I'm sure your son would learn a great deal about computers!

Alright, I found these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102052

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP3R87777
(alternate amazon link http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Computer-Components-CUBI-001BUS-936-B09611-001/dp/B00UK3L1Q4/ref=sr_1_45?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1453054872&sr=1-45&refinements=p_n_availability%3A1248800011%2Cp_74%3A00000-49999)

The MSI with the i5-5200u is a little bit more, but it will be a bit faster.

Like I said these don't come with RAM, so you'd have to pick some(204 pin SO-DIMMS), I'd recommend pc partpicker to find the cheapest. I also strongly recommend you buy the fastest ram you can(meaning 1600MHz cause those cpus don't support faster) and get two sticks for 2x the bandwidth, this is very important for integrated gpu performance.

...- https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/memory/#t=9&sort=a10&page=1&Z=4096002,8192002
looks like you can get 4GB of g-skill memory for $25. That's plenty for an emulator box. Idk how big of a hard drive you'll want, just make sure it's a 2.5" drive.

Yes .. spinning rust drives are not good for multiple, simultaneously I/O active virtual machines running.

Your idea to move to NVME is a good one.
You could save some money and get standard SSD with more capacity as an option too.

True. Dell disabled the internal M.2 slot with a BIOS update.
Keep in mind you can always use a M.2 to PCIe x 4 slot adapter.

Example:
https://www.amazon.com/NGFF-Adapter-heatsink-Server-Profile/dp/B077QRPR9S

You seem to be off to a great start!

• $25 shipping. Original Atoms are slow and that case will fit 2.5", not 3.5". Also remember that on slow CPUs, SMB (aka Windows File Sharing) may become CPU bound.
  
• Newer Atoms (which may be labeled Celeron or Pentium) use less power overall than the originals because they are SoCs instead of a separate processor+GPU+southbridge, etc. like the old Atoms.
  
• Pull out a calculator and find out how much a 15W system will save you over a 45W system over one year -- is the price premium for high-performance, very-low-power worth it? If not, consider an older used "compact" PC with a regular processor.
  
• If you do want a 15W-ish system, it won't be cheap. To fit a 3.5" drive, roll your own with any motherboard with the Intel Celeron J1900 SoC (~$55-70). Or if the drive can go external, consider a NUC-type mini-PC -- the MSI Cubi with a Celeron 3205u (15W) is currently $110 has 3xUSB 3.0, gigabit, BT, Wifi and a SATA cable you can extend to eSATA, in addition to an internal mSATA drive.

That case is sold by a few vendors. Thats a 9 layer right? If so Smarza is another brand. I was going to buy that, but Smarza also had a 4 layer. I love it! Amazon doesnt have any more 4 layers or id be a couple more. The fans quiet on 3.3 or 5. And temps are around 31--32 with the fan and small heatsink at idle.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GKXZH7X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

> Ça ressemble à quoi ? Un seul par rack ou plusieurs en cluster ? Y a réellement un gain en perfs ou consommation par rapport à une seule grosse machine avec un hyperviseur ?

Alors, un seul par rack, ce sont de vieux racks 19" SuperMicro que j'ai récupérés chez un client (sinon ils allaient à la benne), ce genre là: lien amazon mais avec un modèle d'atom antérieur, deux cœurs et 2Go de RAM seulement (j'aurai préféré le quad-core). Je les ai mis dans mon cellier, ils ne font quasiment pas de bruit :)

Eux, je les utilise en bare-metal, pas d'hyperviseur dessus, et ils font juste des tâches "basiques" (haproxy, DNS (pour ma zone "interne", et ensuite pour le reste il interroge les DNS publics de FDN), VPN "de secours sur réseau hostile" (port 443, TCP, planqué derrière HAProxy et un certificat Let's Encrypt - en gros, openVPN over TLS :)) pour le premier, NFS uniquement pour le second).

L'hyperviseur, c'est un petit NUC Intel, un petit Pentium N3700 quatre cœurs avec 8Go de RAM, amplement suffisant pour faire des petites VMs à faible usage. L'avantage c'est qu'au repos il consomme 5W, et qu'à "pleine bourre" - ce qui n'arrive quasiment jamais - il doit à peine atteindre les 15W, et qu'il ne fait pas de bruit. Typiquement le nextcloud qui tourne dessus (la VM nextcloud a deux cœurs et 2Go de RAM réservés) est parfait pour moi et les cinq potes qui ont accès à mon VPN. PostgreSQL a un cœur réservé et 4Go de RAM. Le reste (wiki, relai Tor, ERP, VPN) se partage un cœur (elles vont rarement être utilisées "toutes en même temps"), avec de 256Mo à 512Mo de RAM. Et enfin Domain0, la VM "d'administration" de Xen, dispose de 512Mo de RAM. Toutes les VMs ont chacune 100Go d'espace disque (elles ont chacune une partition logique dédiée). Lui, je l'ai eu lors d'une promo sur materiel.net (j'habite à ~500m de leur showroom à Nantes… pratique) il y a deux ans.

Enfin, les petites cartes Olimex Lime-2, car on a eu un prix de gros avec le FAI associatif local, et parceque j'avais envie de tester Docker Swarm (j'ai que du kubernetes - on va dire que c'est lui qui a gagné la guerre de l'orchestration de containers - en prod' et c'est clairement un poil trop lourd pour ces petites cartes). Et ça marche étonnamment bien :) (par contre, éviter de stocker quoi que ce soit autre que l'OS et les images docker sur les cartes microSD, d'où le NFS et la BDD postgreSQL sur une VM dédiée).

Pour le NAS, c'est un vieux synology récupéré d'un pote, auquel j'ai ajouté deux disques WD Red 4To, en RAID-1. Il ne me sert qu'au backup quotidien de tout le bousin, plus le backup du desktop :)

Après, je pourrais tout remplacer par une plus grosse babasse (genre, Atom C2750 8 cœurs ou un Xeon-D), mais j'aime bien toutes ces loupiotes qui clignotent sur mon switch :D - et niveau consommation électrique ça reste très raisonnable.

The android client of the shadow app is currently not as good as the windows/mac/ghost clients, especially at handling input (especifically mouse inputs) it has seen some improvement in the latest update though.

The Shield is a great device, and one of the benefits it has over the ghost is that it is not limited to using shadow, that said, it is not officially supported by Shadow, so I wouldn't expect longevity, support, etc...

Right now your best bet would be buying a mini windows PC, I've seen people buy a 100-ish £ mini-pc that can run shadow without any problems at all.

I'll try to dig out the mini Pc details.

Edit: ok couldnt find the specific mini PC but it was something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CYBR484/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_n1B6CbJF4CF2A

But have a read here: https://wiki.shadow.pink/index.php/Can_i_run_it

This will tell you all you need to know to make an informed purchase.

FreeNAS

It's Free Open Source software, available at no cost (the commercial, paid version is TrueNAS).

It's built on FreeBSD, and uses ZFS filesystem - a Copy-On-Write filesystem that completely avoids the URE/Write Hole problem that RAID5/6/etc. has.

It supports Windows File Sharing, NFS, and iSCSI, and works very well with VMWare. It also directly connects and shares your AWS storage.

---
e1: non-affiliate links, here's how to build a SAN on the cheap:



Qty | Component | Part Number | Amazon | Newegg
---|---|----|----|----
1 | Chassis | SUPERMICRO SYS-5029S-TN2 | $434.90 | $599.99
1 | CPU | Intel Core i5-6500 | $199.99 | $204.99
2 | RAM | Crucial 8GB DDR4(PC4-19200) Unbuffered SODIMM | $70.95 | $69.99
1 | USB drive (OS drive)| Corsair Voyager Vega 16GB | $18.99 | $13.99
1 | SSD (ZFS Cache drive) | Samsung 850 PRO - 256GB | $117.44 | $119.99
4 | SATA Drive | Seagate 8TB (ST8000VN0022) | $259.79 | $259.99
1 | OS | FreeNAS | n/a | n/a
| | Total | $1,952.38 | $2,418.89

The drives are half the cost of the system. If you reduce the size of the disks, you can significantly lower cost. However, keep in mind that RAIDZ will consume 1 disk, and of the remaining 3, you only get 80% with ZFS. With 8TB drives, this is 19.2TB

e2: updated the above to be SATA instead of SAS - the onboard controller does not support SAS

---

e3: Here's the same basic setup, but with a Xeon processor, ECC memory, 2x1Gps, 2x10GigE, and SAS support:

Qty | Component | Part Number | Amazon
---|---|----|----
1 | System | Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T | $1,220.00
1 | CPU | Intel Xeon-D-1541 | n/a (included in server)
1 | RAM | Crucial 8GB Single DDR4 (PC4-2133) ECC Registered | $109.57
1 | USB drive (OS drive)| Corsair Voyager Vega 16GB | $18.99
1 | SSD (ZFS Cache drive) | Samsung 850 PRO - 256GB | $117.44
4 | SAS Drive | Seagate 8TB (ST8000NM0075) | $299.79
1 | SAS controller | LSI SAS 9207-4i4e | $114
1 | OS | FreeNAS | n/a | n/a
| | Total | $2,888.73

Of the two above systems, the first I would use for home/media, the second is appropriate for business (though it does not have a redundant power supply)

Why buy a portable device with a screen for a job it was never made for?

Cross out portable and screen to get simply an SFF device, like a NUC.

Why not just buy a Brix? It was meant for this task and can do it more efficiently at the same pricepoint while still featuring HDMI and WiFi. It also features upgradeable parts so you can spend $75 in the next two years rather than $250 again.

It's important to note that Brix device is sold barebones and does not come with everything you need like ram and storage.

I had the exact desire for my R420. My solution was one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/SATA-Pin-Power-Cable-inches/dp/B005NZ5PY8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503670250&sr=8-1&keywords=sata+15+pin+power+from+a+usb+y+cable

Power cable from the USB port on the riser card. Cable is long enough to reach the front of the server where I have the SSD mounted next to the DVD drive. I then used the Sata cable from the DVD drive for data to the SSD. (I don't really need the DVD Drive...) Been working great for a month now.

Sure. Since this is on a hypervisor and I keep every service on a separate vm, I set the cpu priority for vm's like plex to higher than something like sonarr or a downloader; so even if the cpu gets hit really hard, the media experience isn't impacted. It doesn't hurt to have more power than an i3, but I like the low power usage and it was cheap.

If you want to 'build' your own you can use a mini-stx case which is cheaper for putting higher end hardware in, and can have better cooling than most NUC's have.

Ya, I had plans on nailing all that down once I got my radios in. (I had noted that in the "Spec")

Pretty much I have two of these and one of these and I was going to figure out some settings that would allow all three of them to behave.

Edit: Suggestions are def welcome, Mostly we are looking to do a blast and forget network, not a whole ton of two way traffic. (And def not doing LoRaWAN, that looks like too much work)

What about a Gigabyte Brix? Here's a super high end one. Barebones, so you need to provide everything else, but could be a solution.

I bought a NUC5i7RYH ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WAS1FX6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) and put 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD in it. Runs Plex on Ubuntu like a charm.

What about this? Or if it's going to constantly plugged in all the time I would actually suggest grabbing an Intel NUC and decking it out with a nice SSD.

They don't. It's the Intel iris 6100 in this NUC

Intel NUC Kit NUC5i7RYH Barebone System BOXNUC5I7RYH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WAS1FX6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EOKdBbH7FXZ99

They're just that much more efficient at h264

Just checked peak transcode in the last 30 days. I had 5 simultaneous transcodes and cpu was at 12% when it was happening

You could get this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00FN5ZK6Q/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Small, yet powerful with two Gigabit lans.

You can check out their zbox products with dual gigabit lans here
https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/all

Just recently started looking into Zotac, for an HTPC option. I wanted to build one, but finding what I want with a case to fit the size requirements turned crazy.
At any rate, all built up the price isn't bad. You'd need an OS.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FN5ZK6Q/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_9rVTtb0NH7252

Smraza Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Case with Fan, RPI Heatsinks, 5V 2.5A Power Supply for Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+(B Plus), Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, Pi 2 Model B (4 Layers Case) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GKXZH7X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_w8YADbA9EQ7KN

Well it depends. Some of them do use laptop parts to begin with(check for the -M or -QM suffix at the end of the part's name). Gigabyte has the BRIX model which uses real desktop parts but ich glaube es ist in Deutschland nicht zu finden. Anyway, you can build a micro-atx case with the dimensions close to what you described in the OP. I suggest you do that.

ninja edit: Here's a brix model in amazon germany. That's not the one I was referring to though. This is pretty shit IMO.

I recently moved my plex server from an old laptop to this NUC. I wanted an i7 and got the dual disc model because I pulled a 1TB SATA SSD from another laptop. It runs Sickrage, Couchpotato, and nzbget on Fedora 23 in addition to plex. I have it hooked up to a TV for those few cases where I want to watch something that is only available on a browser.

I went that route initially due to having some 2950s on hand (work tossed them). The power bill killed me. And the sound was a pain as no one wanted those jet engine fans in the house. I replaced it with http://amzn.com/B00I0G7E7S for ~$240. Works just great on 1 x 1080 stream or 2 x 720 streams. And the PowerEdge collects dust in the garage now. :)

This comment obviously got some downvotes, but it's the most helpful one in this thread. That box is WAY overpriced -- probably 2x as much as it should be.

Compare it to this build, which gives you a much faster CPU, 16GB RAM (4x as much), and a 500GB SSD (instead of 16GB) for less money:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HWP6CMG
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LTBJFW
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HWHVOQS

The fact that this build doesn't have ChromeOS is a moot point, since all that power would be wasted on it anyway. The point is, that seller is just ripping people off.

It'd work but that adapter has a lot of bad reviews on Amazon. I'd suggest a more expensive (but properly working) adapter like this if you want extra (powered) USB ports, this if you don't need full-size USB ports, or this if you want a HAT instead.

Note that most NUCs don't come with RAM or storage, you have to buy those afterwards or find a deal that sells the NUC+RAM+SSD in a bundle.

You don't need more than 8GB of RAM, even 4GB will do for a simple Plex server that isn't used for anything else.

My suggestions.

Intel NUC Broadwell i7

• $450
  
• 2-3 simultaneous 1080p trancodes, will vary depending on media
  
  Intel NUC Skylake i5
  
  
• $425
  
• 2 simultaneous 1080p transcodes
  
  Intel NUC Skylake i3
  
  
• $320
  
• 1-2 simultaneous 1080p transcodes, will vary depending on media.
  
  Intel NUC Broadwell i3
  
  
• $270
  
• 1 1080p transcode
  
  All the other options aren't suitable for plex or aren't price/performance competitive at this time so these are the four different levels to chose from.

If you're intending on running Kubernetes or ESXi on your NUCs, you might consider investing the bucks in populating your boxen with these, especially with RAM prices where they are now.

If I were rebuilding my NUC lab this is what I'd do, but alas, my NUCs are DDR3.