Getting first homelab (EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini), some advice on starting out?

[QuestionAsker]

Hello all,

I recently bought an EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini i7-8700T (16GB), and wanted to ask for some advice based on the services I want to run on it.

Just had the following questions:

1. Should I get a 90W or a 150W charger for it? (I don't plan on adding much more stuff to it down the line... but maybe there's something I'm not thinking of).
2. Given the following services I want to setup, is there a certain way I should approach it? Or some of them that I should do first? Or any general tips?

Services:

- Syncthing (to have all my devices / laptops sync their Joplin / Obsidian databases to one place)

- Nextcloud (to replace google drive, etc, and have a private cloud)

- PiHole

- Plex(?) - just light use or to experiment though I think. I don't watch much TV / movies. Optional.

- Private VPN

- Reverse Proxy

- Firewall? (not sure how necessary / complicated this is)

- Hosting own website (might be more of a security risk / hassle than it's worth. Just a potential idea)

- Tandoor (recipe website)

- AI Services

- Running scripts at night, doing website scrape jobs at night, or any type of script jobs I might need done. Maybe pulling data from APIs, to feed into more powerful PC in my room during the day.

More Background:

• I do plan on building a trueNAS from a old tower case I have, and that one would be the serious trueNAS / backup server / Plex server.
• This mini PC I plan to use more as a service that will always be on 24/7 (mostly as a central hub for Syncthing and Nextcloud, and also to use as a reverse proxy and private VPN).
• My main PC in my room is quite powerful, and I want to use that one for learning LLM's and any heavier jobs / computing.
• I got my Sec+ cert not too long ago and looking to experiment and learn stuff to help land a job in the field (My background is Mechanical Engineering but I'm looking to switch).

Thank you in advance for any insights and tips!

 

[cwt]

Short remark: running that amount of virtualized services on a host with only 16GB RAM will be no joy.

 

[uzumo]

Do not use ZFS as the file system for Proxmox VE.

ZFS is a filesystem that requires a large amount of memory.

Please use LVM instead.

Since each service is not a topic for discussion on the Proxmox forums, please calculate the required memory, CPU, and storage after actually running each service.

 

[QuestionAsker]

Short remark: running that amount of virtualized services on a host with only 16GB RAM will be no joy.

Thanks CWT - I'm looking right now for upgrading it straight to 64GB.

I wonder if I could do even more, on the EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini. I think I heard somewhere people have gone up to 128GB, I'm looking into that now

 

[uzumo]

Desktop DDR4 memory modules typically have a maximum capacity of 32GB per module.
With two slots, you might be able to use up to 64GB.
* However, 32GB modules are not necessarily compatible with all systems.

 

[QuestionAsker]

Desktop DDR4 memory modules typically have a maximum capacity of 32GB per module.
With two slots, you might be able to use up to 64GB.
* However, 32GB modules are not necessarily compatible with all systems.

Thanks Uzumo.

Going to mess around with the 16gb machine, and hoping for a good deal on prime day (oct 7th), looks like 64gb ram Crucial ram kit has been as low as $120. It's currently $208.

I'm also talking to a local seller and I'm trying to get a good deal on 2 x Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini i5-6500 (16GB).

I know they're not powerful, but would it be useful to hook up those two extra Elitedesk i5-6500's to my more powerful i7-8700T, and practice with Kubernetes?

Or would I have to upgrade the i5-6500's RAM as well?

I figure I'd only run Kubernetes on one or two services for the i5-6500's. (Or open to a better way to go about it, if you have any ideas).

Thank you again