Build a Low Power, Efficient, Small Form Factor but Powerful Proxmox Server

Have you been thinking about building a low power, efficient, small form factor but performant Proxmox server? This is the perfect home server build for anyone who wanted to virtualize some machines while still staying green. This tiny, silent, and efficient build is one that won't drive up your electricity bill either.

A HUGE thanks to Micro Center for sponsoring this video!

See the kit here:

(Affiliate links may be included in this description. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.)

#Proxmox #HomeLab #Virtualization

00:00 - Intro
00:58 - MicroCenter Gift (sponsor)
01:58 - Specs
03:46 - Storage
04:31 - RAM / Memory
04:58 - Unboxing and Assembly
07:10 - Powering it on and Measuring Power
07:52 - Install Proxmox
08:38 - Starting Up Proxmox
09:44 - Checking Performance and Power Consumption
10:40 - What do you think about an efficient server?
10:50 - Stream Highlight - "Nano - Dog goes Moo"

"Miami Deep" is from Harris Heller's album Supreme.

Thank you for watching!

[daveopsnl]

I took 5 nucs from work that were decommisioned. from 2017, upgraded the ram and threw in a 1TB nvme ssd m.2 disk in all of them, has been running in a Proxmox cluster happily ever after :).

[gregorybers]

If you want to shave even more watts of those 24 watts you can do some tweaks in your nuc's bios

- disable wifi if you do not use it
- disable bluetooth if you do not use it
- disable the sd card controller
- disable front panel audio
- disable front (yellow) usb always provide power

this shaves off 3-4 watt

now to make a real difference change the following settings in the bios:

- set the power setting to balanced
- disable turbo boost

this shaves off another 5-7 watts

my nucs run ~14-16 watt here. imho disabling wifi/bluetooth etc makes a lot of sense because those chips use power and you wont ever use this for your lab (unless its connected to wifi)

Disabling turbo boost has no noticeable impact on performance, and i tested this both with proxmox and esxi. Even with 35 linux servers running on one nuc it just happily chugs along. Disabling turbo boost makes sure that your nuc remains cooler, and quieter. It also prevents the nuc spiking to 40 watt when fully boosting.

[YordisPrieto]

Thank you so much!

I don’t have much time to figure these things out and I always wanted to wait until I buy a house to get some home stuff going, but I didn’t know such good tiny computers exists.

Really appreciate your list and video. Brought me joy to know that I don’t need to wait much.

[bizanks]

It takes a truely brave man to put his mom on Linux

[jason-budney]

That's one nice little mini beast Tim! The NUCs can get pricey, but the used pc/server market is still a bit nuts. I just put my home lab back into commission, my Netgear router wasn't cutting it. So for now I'm running Proxmox with pfsense, pi-hole, and TrueNAS Core (Storage & Plex) VMs, all in a Meshify S2 case with a 3700x, 90GB RAM, .

[TheJonathanc]

I love this video. I have been running proxmox on a fanless i7 mini pc for a year now. Love what it lets me do and how cheap it is to run. Also, no noise is a major plus.

[conquerordie]

Low power and efficient builds are definitely a sight for sore eyes. Most reviewers only focus on what kind of performance you can get from the biggest and hottest (literally) chips out there. But as manufacturing nodes continue to get ever smaller, it's amazing what kind of services and things you can run on these tiny machines (same goes for Raspberry Pi's, etc.). Love the content Tim, keep it up!

[WaltSpence]

Wow Tim have been subbed since the early days but took a break from YT. It's nice to see you growing. Always good stuff.

[pringls]

Running Proxmox on a Nuc i5 paired with 32gb and it's super stable! I love my own little low consumption box. I've watched a lot of your videos and those inspired me to set up my own small server and i absolutely love it. Its running ubuntu/docker, home assistant and truenas. Cloudflare DNS proxy to acces my services, using nginx. All of this because of your videos. Thank you so much for teaching these vuluable skills!

[CyKoSyS]

Just a shout out to say thanks for all you do. You have a unique gift explaining technology and appreciate your videos and documentation. I hope the links you provided I used to purchase my own nuc kit helps your channel.

[mblackonline]

Great video! Hope to be able to do something similar someday soon for a low powered and quiet homelab. Looking forward to more content.

[techdad]

Excellent video! I've been running Ubuntu server on a NUC for a couple years now and just recently switched to Proxmox 7. I love Proxmox for it's ease of use and ability to manage VMs and containers. One issue though is that I've run into an issue with being able to pass a USB device through to a LXC container. I'd love it if you could do a video on this. Of course if it falls in line with the content your trying to put out.
Thanks for all of your videos, I'm alway excited for the next release.

[amp]

Interesting video, but it'd be nice to include more info relating to cost and comparing power consumption to other systems. If, for example, it uses 1/3rd of the power of an R720 but cost so much that it would take 10+ years to recoup the investment then that should be taken into consideration. Obviously there are other differences (e.g. form factor, noise), but it would be nice to put some more info in for comparison.

[EusebioResende]

Right on time video Tim. Was looking for a replacement for my noisy and power hungry HPE ML350 Gen9. Been watching some videos on SFF/1L desktop systems as an alternative. This solution looks amazingly good. Thanks for sharing. Cheers!

[weiSane]

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Subbed and I will work on my intel nuc soon too.

[electronicstv]

Cool tiny server! I'm also really proud of the low power consumption of my Server. I have a Desktop HP with an i7-6700, 1 x NVMe, 1 x 2, 5" SSD, 1 x 2, 5" HDD, 1 x 3, 5" HDD. It's running 2 VMs and at least 15 Containers 24/7 and using only 25W in idle. That's really incredible.

[AsenGrozdanov]

Nice video, Tim, thank you. I am using NUC Hades Canyon for one of the nodes for my proxmox home lab for several years already. I will consider your choice as my second node there. Best

[Franchyze]

Love ProxMox and love Microcenter! Thanks for the video

[JasonsLabVideos]

You make such good content ! Keep it up Tim !!

[theonenerdyguy]

Currently running 5x Dell Optiplex 7060 USFF's as my Proxmox dev proxmox cluster at home. Each has a 1 TB NVME for bulk storage, 32g of ram, and 2x usb 3.x nics for secondary. 1 of them is setup for glusterFS replication of volumes, but the other two are in a LACP bond for vm data.

Been solid.

Prior to these, at an old job, I ran production Proxmox clusters for all vms, around 120 in total. This was hooked back to a pair of FreeNas boxes via 10g, that were doing a zfs send/recieve for hot/cold setup. This was prior to docker really taking off, around the proxmox 1.6 days. Miss that environment since moving on to new stuff.