Server Hardware reviews from Reddit
Summary
We analyzed 128 Reddit reviews across 24 subreddits and 52 posts to rank the best Server Hardware brands recommended by redditors, including communities like r/homelab, r/HomeServer, r/selfhosted, r/PleX, r/sysadmin. Top-rated brands include Dell (4.3/5), Intel (4.4/5), Beelink (4.7/5).
Stats
Reviews128
Subreddits24
Posts52
Brands50
Products72
128 reviews from
and
By Brand
/By Product
#1
Dell
4.3
(27)
"I recently bought DELL Optiplex 5050 with i5-7500/8GB ram/256GB nvme."
"Yes, more than enough. The primary benefit of a workstation class computer (Dell Precision, HP Z-series, or Lenovo ThinkStation) would be the ability to use ECC RAM."
"Recently leased-to-buy a PowerEdge R740 (dual Silver Cascade Lake refresh) and bought an R750 (dual Gold Ice Lake) last week."
"My wife bought me a dell r620. I installed proxmox on pcie nvme ssds and 2 one tb ssd."
"I bought one of these and run Ubuntu with docker on it. Running zoneminder, Jellyfin, and about 4 other containers and it runs awesome."
"It runs flawlessly with HW encoding enabled."
"I recently built a NVR/VMS for a client recently. T640 rack mount with dual 480GB M.2 SSD."
"I highly recommend getting Dell/HP equipment."
"The new generation of Dell and HP servers are coming out in February / March."
"Look into any miniPC setup, dell or Lenovo are pretty cheap."
#2
Intel
4.4
(15)
"NUCs are great for homelabs. Hades Canyon (fabulous value for money IMO, lots and lots of connectivity) or newer."
"An i7 NUC is quite powerful enough and uses less power than a 'real' server."
"This is exactly my setup! The J1900, SSD, the NAS"
"I am running on an Intel nuc and it was a massive improvement over my pi 3."
"It runs Nextcloud, NFS server, Git server, DNS, backups, Transmission, SOCKS over VPN proxy and some other stuff."
"I've run Proxmox on my NUC for 5 or 6 years without a problem."
"Get a Cheap M710q or something similar on eBay or Craigslist."
"Intel NUC or Atom SBC's > Raspberry Pi right now."
"A lot of people use NUC to do their own homelab"
"I'd go with an Intel i3 10100 ($115), a cheap mini ATX motherboard ($90), 16GB DRR4 ($60)..."
#3
Beelink
4.7
(9)
"10/10 would recommend."
"The Beelink kicks ass."
"I really like my Beelink SER6. It's very quiet and relatively low power."
"I’m happy with it."
"Update: decided to go with beelink which was on sale."
"I have a BeeLink SER 5 MAX, Ryzen 7 5800H, 32gb, 1tb NVMe."
"Thanks for your post it made me feel more comfortable with the beelink."
"Mini pc with Intel N100."
"I have two Beelink S12 Pros, it's fine."
#4
HP
3.8
(11)
"I have a DL380 with twelve 10TB LFF drives plus a 10 gig NIC to connect to our iSCSI network."
"Really, the only things you miss on consumer vs commercial gear is Out Of Band management, and redundancy."
"My next server system was an hp proliant dl385 g5p. It was significantly quieter than the poweredge."
"Unless you go for a HP’s microserver, a regular server will increase your power bill."
"I run all this and a bit more on a HP Microserver gen8."
"I picked up a HP SFF refurbished from tiger a few weeks ago for around 300 and it’s running Plex really well."
"Get an intel quicksync capable micro workstation or a mini pc."
"I run all this and a bit more on a HP Microserver gen8."
"For what you want, an old i5 HP workstation should be ok."
"You can get an eight-core HP DL585 w/ 32GB of RAM for under $800."
#5
Supermicro
4.7
(6)
"Supermicro stuff is very homelab friendly."
"I'd suggest you get a Supermicro motherboard."
"I have this in a Supermicro SuperChassis 846BA that holds 24 drives"
"I just built a server for myself that I use in much the same way."
"You can find some Supermicro boards to build your own server."
"Pizza box rack servers are great since you really don't need much for storage on a VoIP box."
#6
Synology
5.0
(4)
"Synology works great at great price."
"Check DS720+ or DS920+ with hardware transcoding for h264/h265."
"A friend of mine uses a synology ds918 for up to 10 simultaneous users."
"Media streaming: Synology NAS (ds720 maybe)"
#7
AMD
4.8
(4)
"A thread ripper and lots of ram."
"I would recommend something like a Ryzen 3600 because it will both be great for your tasks and some mild virtualization."
"If you want something new I highly recommend a ryzen 5 2600 or 3600 build."
"You can build an excellent Ryzen system with ECC for very modest amount of money."
#8
Unraid
4.5
(4)
"Maybe examine unraid for system software. It runs vm's, apps in docker containers, hardware passthrough with vt-d system, and filesystem is easily expandable with different size drives."
"I'd skip the retail NAS market and go with a built server running NAS software."
"Have you looked into Unraid as a base OS? I think it would fit your needs perfectly."
"UnRAID doesn't require server grade hardware."
#9
Lenovo
4.0
(3)
"Maybe the M920Q if you can get a good price."
"Given your use case I'd get something like Lenovo M710Q because it's cheaper but mostly as good."
"Lenovo's desktop and laptop support of OpenBSD is typically very good to excellent."
#10
Proxmox
5.0
(2)
"Proxmox is great and you can snapshot and clone VMS."
"I have a four node proxmox cluster with a standalone prox backup server."
#11
Intel NUC
4.5
(2)
"NUCs are definitely the way to go here."
"I bought a cheap nuc type pc. Works fine."
#12
TrueNAS
4.5
(2)
"I built a really nice TrueNAS box in 2020 and I recently changed it to a proxmox host."
"If you only need it to be a nas then your hardware is good to go, I ran truenas on a 7 year old laptop that had an i3-6066u."
#13
ASUS
4.5
(2)
"I would go for $300 ryzen 3 asus pn50 it is really powerful and energy efficient."
"I am selling an Asus PN50 with 4500U for $250 with 32GB RAM and 256 GB SSD."
#14
Customer Hardware
5.0
(1)
"Customer hardware all the way, less noise, much more power efficient and cheap to run latest gen architecture."
#15
Enterprise Hardware
5.0
(1)
"I personally went for enterprise hardware. Reliability and scalability are a must."
#16
BliKVM
5.0
(1)
"I use this in my headless proxmox server and it works even better than idrac imo."
#17
Hetzner
5.0
(1)
"I’d recommend Hetzner, running a fairly large Space Age server on one of their VPS."
#18
Amazon
5.0
(1)
"I'm using amazon ec2 for this kind of thing from now on."
#19
x86
5.0
(1)
"I would just get 1 system x86. More powerful, doesn't significantly use more power, and much MUCH more versatile in terms of software compatibility."
#20
X79
5.0
(1)
"You can get 32 GB for cheap and even though they're old they're more than adequate to run a home lab."
#21
X99
5.0
(1)
"Great deals, especially with X99 motherboard combos"
#22
Huananzhi
5.0
(1)
"Great performance for their price, with a Huananzhi combo with a E5 2680 v3 and 64GB ram costing $434 USD"
#23
Samsung
5.0
(1)
"Go buy a samsung 850 evo or pro SSD and run the server off of that."
#24
UP Board
5.0
(1)
"I have good experience so far with the up2 board."
#25
Odroid
5.0
(1)
"I'm running OMV5 on a Odroid HC1 with 3 containers, Jellyfin, motioney and watchtower without any problem."
#26
Fitlet
5.0
(1)
"I run PFSense on a Fitlet2 and it is extremely reliable."
#27
Intel Xeon
5.0
(1)
"Put a Xeon E3-1230 and 16GB of ECC RAM into it."
#28
Lake N95
4.0
(1)
"I have one that I use for my zabbix install, SMB server, pihole, nginx, etc."
#29
NAS
4.0
(1)
"Plenty of modern NAS devices have hardware acceleration built into the CPU's"
#30
Old PC
4.0
(1)
"I’d just move your old PC into a server case and get SAS controllers and a lot of storage."
#31
Processor
4.0
(1)
"Get yourself a decent processor around 6000 Passmark score and add a SSD drive for the OS and Plex."
#32
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super
4.0
(1)
"Just get whatever + 1650 Super. Tada, high quality transcoding for 150."
#33
Thin Client Desktop
4.0
(1)
"You can use thin client desktops as servers, they use very little power, and they are super quiet."
#34
Pine64 RockPro64
4.0
(1)
"Probably https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/ or https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/"
#35
Solid State Drive
4.0
(1)
"Use spigot and an sdd, the ssd will help a ton when people need to load world."
#36
X79 Turbo
4.0
(1)
"I usually order kits like this: [X79 Turbo motherboard LGA2011 ATX combos E5 2620 V2 CPU 2pcs x 8GB= 16GB DDR3 RAM 1600Mhz PC3 12800R PCI-E NVME M.2 SSD]"
#37
Consumer Grade
4.0
(1)
"There's nothing wrong with using consumer grade hardware in a homelab if you can accept downtime."
#38
Mikrotik
4.0
(1)
"I run a consumer desktop as my server but with small business access points and switch (Aruba)."
#39
HCI Solutions
4.0
(1)
"I would recommend you contacting VAR and get a quote for different kind of HCI solutions."
#40
Dell R540
4.0
(1)
"R540 (2) flex bay disks for OS, (12) high capacity disk would provide the most retention."
#41
Dell PE1950
4.0
(1)
"I've been considering getting some used PE1950s (like, a 64bit server capable of running ESXi for a very, very low price)."
#42
Raspberry Pi
4.0
(1)
"Pi works fine. a usb stick will last for up to a year."
#43
Fractal
4.0
(1)
"If 6 is enough I would suggest a miniITX build based on Fractal Node 304."
#44
SuperMicro
4.0
(1)
"I'm leaning towards the SuperMicro SC847 36 or 45 bay."
#45
4.0
(1)
"I'm going to second the google coral suggestion in combination with frigate."
#46
HPE
4.0
(1)
"They are a little quirky but pack a good amount of hardware."
#47
OrangePi
4.0
(1)
"It's powerful enough to do both."
#48
Raspberry Pi 4
3.0
(1)
"It sounds like a pi4 is not a bad recommendation."
#49
Enterprise Gear
3.0
(1)
"Older enterprise kit tends to be noisy, power hungry, you can need a support plan to get bios/firmware updates."
#50
QNAP
3.0
(1)
"I have an TS-439pro, even direct stream with plex uses 99% cpu."
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