ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 Tiny Desktop

Were in the same situation an seperated the storage and compute devices. Currently running a Synology DS 723+ with extra 16GB of RAM, 2x WD Red SN700 1TB nvme's and two 8TB HDDs. No need for RAID5 IMHO. For compute I have two Lenovo m70q with i5 10600T CPUs, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. Some cons

i've been down this road with the whole n100 vs used tiny pc thing. what helped me was grabbing an Intel NUC 11 with Core i5 when prices dropped. the quick sync on 11th gen handles 4k hdr transcoding without breaking a sweat and you get dual channel ram. for under 300 eur look for used Lenovo ThinkC

Id buy this: Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 5 – Tiny Desktop – 14th-Gen Intel Core i5-14400T – 16 GB DDR5 – 512 GB NVMe SSD – Intel UHD Graphics 730 – Wi-Fi 6E & Gigabit Ethernet – NO OS – Raven Black (Open Box) https://sellout.woot.com/offers/lenovo-thinkcentre-m70q-gen-5-tiny-desktop-14th-gen-intel-c

Lenovo Thinkcentre... best minis for home lab Try to look for recent models of m70q , m75q or m90q i5 should be good for basic home labbing. I would say fo with i7 (if available in cheap), 16GB RAM minimum.

I'm using an older Lenovo M710q early gen I had spare, which is working well under Ubuntu with Docker Compose. Has NVME port for the DB, 4-core i5, 16GB RAM, hardware acceleration for H.264 (unfortunately not HVEC but for the ~$100 it cost back in the day it beats an RPI). New edition M70q Gen 5/6 h