Fully designed hardware for the nodes

The hardware the nodes will use

Home Server Cluster 2025 index

Nowadays you have lots of options when building a PC, you can choose between Intel and AMD, within their lineup they have various generations and types (mobile, desktop, prof, server, etc.) and then you have various motherboard vendors, lots of different cases, power supplies, and the list goes on, what combination will get you what you need?

It’s hard to say what *you* need, below is what I think that, at the time of writing, is ideal for my situation to get a good combination of Performance, power usage and expandability.

High performance nodes

For this new cluster we’ll be looking at modern, fairly non-restricted hardware. What that means is that I don’t consider low-cost, very restricted low end hardware like the Intel N100 for instance. Although these are nice in their own right, they won’t allow the performance and options I want for these main nodes. They could however make an interested extra quorum node for the cluster though, since Proxmox does not require all nodes to be equally configured hardware wise.

My budget for the main nodes is around ~$1500 without considering the cost of the HDDs, no matter the hardware you buy, that cost is going to be the same.

High performance but efficient

One of the main goals of making this new cluster is to try and lower energy usage if possible vs my current setup. I’ve already gone into this a bit more in the previous article about how CPU performance vs power used has improved since 5 years ago in a previous article.

One of the interesting options that has become available in the recent years is some manufacturers starting to use Mobile chips in desktop motherboards. This combines great energy efficiency with still a good amount of performance being available.

The nodes I’m building for this cluster are already built around such a setup, most  notably the MinisForum BD790i which offers everything we need both in performance and expandability to build some very high performance but still energy efficient nodes for a fairly low budget!

Hardware in a list

Links to Aliexpress and Amazon are affiliate links and can earn me a small commission if you use them, much appreciated!

Below will be the hardware used in list form, explanations about why this hardware was chosen will be in a different article where we’ll dive deeper into why exactly this selection. Please read through that well to understand the combination of components and what it does well or where it might be limited.

I will also have some extra articles which dive into some specifics even deeper such as Power usage and for instance, selection of power supply or NIC and how they affect power usage.

Main Hardware

Extra Hardware

Extra hardware for external HDD cage

Add-on NICs

Why this hardware?

I’ve always had an interest in building “cool” systems, finding the exact right components that fit together for the purpose but also matching them in regards to performance, although not so much looks. In the end to make something magical, something you might not have thought of initially but then think, damn, that’s awesome!

Ok, to read more, please go to do the dedicated hardware explanation article.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *