Comment by nisa
19 days ago
Nice overview, another venue worth looking at is thin clients. Some models like the Fujitsu Futro s740 are passive cooled, draw only 3-4w idle, can encode hevc in hardware and support up to 16gb memory and a nvme drive. There is a nice overview here: https://github.com/R3NE07/Futro-S740/blob/main/README_EN.md
Another very similar alternative with support for 32g memory and dual channel is the Dell wyse 5070 https://github.com/pflavio/Dell-Wyse-5070-Home-Server/wiki
These can be brought used for around 60-80€ on eBay.
For about 150€ you can buy new Intel n100 mini computers on Ali express with similar low idle power but vastly better top performance.
I've been using some of these off-brand n100 mini PCs as a homelab cluster for the past year or so.
Their physical size is smaller than a Raspberry Pi with case, and performance is more than twice a RPi5. And you get full x86 software compatibility. Idle power is around 4-5W measured from the wall.