Greetings! If you're reading this, the Jaslo server #3 is already up!
I named the home server I run my stuff on "Jaslo server". A bit more than a year ago, I bought a mini PC that served as the very first Jaslo server, and labeled it Jaslo server #1. It did really well for about a year, until there was a blackout that affected the whole country and it was damaged with it. I was away from home, so until I came back there was no replacement.
The good thing is that I got refunded, so I bought a similar one as a replacement with that money, which would serve as the Jaslo server #2.
It lasted 17 days. If I had to guess, I'd say it's either a factory issue or it just had a really bad thermal design (which would be surprising, since it's a very low-power thing).
It wasn't completely dead, but just enough to be impossible to fix: no peripherals, no screen connection. That made me think that while these mini PCs are really convenient on many fronts, they aren't when it comes to reliability or fault tolerance. Most of the time, if something breaks, the whole thing goes off with it.
Since it's already been over a year of having a home server and I've been finding more and more stuff for it (including this blog), I think it's overall been a success and I can involve myself a bit more with it, and instead of going with mini PCs, I'd have a more modular solution, closer to a normal PC (but keeping things cheap). It helps that I have some components from an older PC, so I needed less stuff than usual. The idea for the Jaslo server #3 is to be:
- Reliable. It should be able to run 24/7, including punctually more intensive tasks like game servers.
- Power-efficient. I think this should always be a priority, but for a server it is a must. Lower efficiency translates to more heat, and I don't want an additional heater on my room.
- Silent. It's on while I sleep, so...
I think any mini PC is really one of the best possible options on the latter two points, but they can struggle to be reliable on many aspects, like not being able to handle heavier loads, or having poorer cooling.
My "solution" is to have it use a more powerful CPU (I mean, it's a no brainer since they don't really individually sell stuff like the Intel N95 to consumers), while still being somewhat low on power, especially having a good idle power average. That'd be as power-efficient as it can get, and for it to be silent I just need a CPU that doesn't go crazy (check) and a good silent cooler (also check). I can't really speak for its reliability yet, but to me it looks better than those mini PCs.
A plus is that I had 32GB of RAM laying around, which will be now used on the server. Having a PC case also allows me to fit more hard drives in there, and by directly accessing the motherboard I can turn off so many annoying LEDs.
We'll see how it goes...