Hi :)
I’ve been playing around with a pi 4 for a few months now, but I want a dedicated home server now, since I want my pi to run HomeAssistantOS.
I’m looking for something that can store documents and photos (paperless and immich) and maybe run a small program like Ad guard. At first I just want to hookup an old SSD (250GB) and a HHD (1TB), but maybe I will buy a second one for RAID in the future. Power consumption at idle is really important for me (energy prices in Germany are really high).
As a beginner I find it very hard to find the right hardware, because everyone is recommending different things. (Slim-Clients, Intel Nuc, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS).
I hope someone can recommend me something that will work for me.
Up to RPi4 the power efficiency was a lot better, but performance wise you really struggled due to lack of options to connect faster storage. With the RPi5 becoming more power hungry (but also more performant) it is less clear cut, and price wise a refurbished x86 pc isn’t really more expensive either.
All in all I would say the benefits of using standard x86 outweigh the slightly higher power use these days. RPis are still good if you need the specific hardware GPIO etc. that is has though. But for self-hosting go for x86 and be mindful of peak loads (these CPUs become much more power hungry on higher clock-speeds, especially turbo-boost).