Cheap Always On Server Build Ideas?

[TTesla]

Hello

 

I am looking to build a cheap, power bill friendly system that will act as a server for me. I would like it to run a heavily modded minecraft server, a plex server, and remain on 24/7.

A small(ish), quit(ish) case would be best, and I'd rather not have it hooked up to a monitor or anything after setup (and modifications). It also has to have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module), and run windows 10.

 

Any suggestions? US location, budget is basically as low as possible while doing what I want it to do.

 

[Anghammarad]

Don't know about mincraft but as for only a plex server... RASPI is the answer ^^

 

I think chepa power friendly with work as minecraft server... dunno if possible.

[TTesla]

7 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

Don't know about mincraft but as for only a plex server... RASPI is the answer ^^

 

I think chepa power friendly with work as minecraft server... dunno if possible.

Well I want it to run windows too

[flibberdipper]

If you get a Plex pass, honestly I think a quad core Ryzen 5 with 8 gigs of RAM and whatever graphics cards are supported would work totally fine. Not sure if you could find a board with TPM though as I've never had to look for boards that require them.

 

I personally have a G3258 @ 4.6 and it does fine for Enigmatica2 with 4 people, though trying to get more than one or two 20Mbps 1080p streams out of it at the same time might be tricky if everything had to be flawless.

[Anghammarad]

2 minutes ago, TeenTesla said:

Well I want it to run windows too

only a quick google away howto windows on a raspi

 

I would past links, but my first side is only german links, even while my search phrase was in english... that much for googling from germany

[flibberdipper]

2 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

only a quick google away howto windows on a raspi

 

I would past links, but my first side is only german links, even while my search phrase was in english... that much for googling from germany

Windows on a Pi for what the OP needs is incredibly useless.

[goto10]

a intel nuc 8th gen i5 would cover almost all the needs except for storage, unless you buy nvme ssd and put a 2 tb laptop hard disk inside or add usb storage on some of the usb ports of the nuc

[TTesla]

14 minutes ago, goto10 said:

a intel nuc 8th gen i5 would cover almost all the needs except for storage, unless you buy nvme ssd and put a 2 tb laptop hard disk inside or add usb storage on some of the usb ports of the nuc

Would it have the TPM?

[goto10]

i am unsure if it has a internal tpm connector like q traditional motherboard, on bios supposedly has some tpm support for encription afik, but perhaps you need the tpm connector, so that is why i said almost covers all your needs

 

some itx motherboards for intel cpus do come with the tpm connector for the tpm  module if that is what you need, if you want a small silent headless server might be a option 

[KuJoe]

Any reason why TPM is required for a Minecraft and Plex server? If you're willing to consider other FDE options other than BitLocker then pick up an Atomic Pi for $37 or a ODroid H2 for $115. I use the Atomic Pi as my home server (and just received 2 more because they're awesome) and it's an x86 CPU so it'll run Windows 10 no problem. I use my H2 as a desktop (specs in my signature), it can hold more RAM than the Atomic Pi so if you think you need more RAM then check it out. Both CPUs support QSV so if you have a Plex membership you can utilize hardware encoding.

[goto10]

the problem with atomic pi is that is a repurposed pcb from a failed project that was going to use that board to power a small robot with cameras, the rumor is that when the robot project died someone bought all the parts including those pcbs with atoms in them and sold them as sbcs, 10000 units more or less and those will disapear forever, never return, no one is doing more, specially at that price

[KuJoe]

35 minutes ago, goto10 said:

the problem with atomic pi is that is a repurposed pcb from a failed project that was going to use that board to power a small robot with cameras, the rumor is that when the robot project died someone bought all the parts including those pcbs with atoms in them and sold them as sbcs, 10000 units more or less and those will disapear forever, never return, no one is doing more, specially at that price

It's only a problem if you don't buy one. Once I learned that there's a limited amount of them I ordered 2 more to keep in a drawer for when I need another cheap server.