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$88 Quad Core Celeron J4125 Desktop for Pfsense, NAS, Plex, etc. for $87.99
$87.99
$329.99
Deal Live again. Previously posted here - https://slickdeals.net/f/15938788-in-stock-again-88-celeron-with-fs-for-pfsense-project-and-other-general-shenanigans-87-99?v=1&src=Site
Placed an order last night. Plan is to somehow add two 3.5" HDD to turn this box into a low power yet efficient NAS. Will be looking for deals on WD Red Plus 6-12TB drives. Currently running a 2 SSDs NAS on a raspberry pi 4B using hardware raid switch on the USB enclosure, and drives about to be full. Plus running 7 docker containers, including NextCloud which can sometimes become unbearably slow. Hence looking at a faster NAS setup. I looked at Synology, QNAP and bunch of other NAS systems, but price and performance wise this looked like the best option, though those NAS systems look quite appealing.
Placed an order last night. Plan is to somehow add two 3.5" HDD to turn this box into a low power yet efficient NAS. Will be looking for deals on WD Red Plus 6-12TB drives. Currently running a 2 SSDs NAS on a raspberry pi 4B using hardware raid switch on the USB enclosure, and drives about to be full. Plus running 7 docker containers, including NextCloud which can sometimes become unbearably slow. Hence looking at a faster NAS setup. I looked at Synology, QNAP and bunch of other NAS systems, but price and performance wise this looked like the best option, though those NAS systems look quite appealing.
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In stock again, $88 Celeron with FS for Pfsense, project, and other general shenanigans $87.99Front page deal Alive again. Not sure how many are available but shows in stock for me to buy another one. Multiple discussions here (over 800 comments) available for your pursual pleasures. Specs Intel Celeron J4125 2.00 GHz Quad-Core Processor 4GB RAM 256GB Solid State Drive Intel UHD Graphics 600 Includes Keyboard & Mouse Windows 10 Home https://www.ebay.com/itm/255186968611 WIki: * The motherboard size is likely mini ITX. Meaning if you are adventurous, you can relocate the motherboard to another case, and get more bays in the process. * System has 2 SODIMM slots. One is empty, another is occupied with 4Gig. It is possible to install 2x8Gig for a total of 16 Gigs. Regardless what Intel and Acer says, 16 Gigs (2x8) appears to work fine. This is the 8 Gig I used in mine. 8 Gig Team Memory [amazon.com] *The system has a single SATA full length power connector. If you wish to connect a second drive that needs a full SATA power port, you will need a splicer, something like this. SATA Power Splitter [ebay.com] * Depends on how drives you install and what type of drives you install, the temperature in the case could be higher than desired. I modded the case to take a 140mm and spliced the 3 pin CPU fan connector. It would be useful to disable fan control in BIOS so it runs at high speed at all times. *spliced fan header [ebay.com]140mm fan [amazon.com] * The system as shipped accommodates 1x3.5 above and beyond the DVD drive installed. If you want to change the DVD bay to accept 2.5 inch HDD< you will need something like this *a DVD caddy 3.5 9.7mm bay [amazon.com]. With all above modification, my system draws about 25Ws at peak. Copied suggestions below for various uses. ================================= Desktop replacement, Rating: Medicore This is a mediocre use case as a desktop replacement because the limited CPU capability and memory. The system comes with 4Gig standard which will mean a lot of swapping on Windows 10 in default configuration. If you can up the memory to 8Gig, I think the use case becomes fair. It is a reasonable system for lite web page browsing, spreadsheets, email, YouTube and Netflix at 1080P. ie, this is a good system for your grandparents if usage case isn't aggressive. Gaming setup, Rating: Poor Expansion slot is half height, power supply is 65W, there is only a CPU fan. ie, if you want to game other than minesweeper, you should look for a beefier system, such as the one with I3 and 250W power?. Again, if you go that route, maybe Acer small form factor shouldn't be what you should consider. For reference, my current game setup has a 850w ps and about 7 fans. NAS, Rating: Good This thing draws less power and is quieter than my Synology 2 bay. CPU will be more powerful than my Synology with more possibility of expanding via standard PC peripherals. A two bay Synology is about $200 right now which means you can use this thing at about half the cost. With this said, there are only 2 SATA ports and no additional cooling fans and will only accommodate 1 3.5" and 1 2.5" drive without additional engineering. If you are okay dropping in a 10TB 3.5 WD Red Plus and call it good, you have an excellent use case here. If you are desperate, I suppose you can always use external USB 3.0 enclosures for additional drives. Hardware transcoding via Plex for a single 4K stream shouldn't be a huge issue since this Celeron has a UHD600 onboard. pFsense, Gateway replacement, VPN server, PiHole etc, Rating: Excellent What this system really excels is as an always on, minimal power, minimal noise internet relay device. I listed a couple use cases above. I am thinking moving my VPN server (both up and down streams), PiHole, and Firewall server into this thing. As given the system has more than enough resource to run Debian or BSD, never sipes more than 15Ws, generates no heat, and is virtually silent, I can see this thing sitting next to my cable modem and be the consolidating gateway machine that is currently being taken up by a Synology, a number of Rasperberri Pis. For $100, this is just a bargain you can't find equivalent elsewhere. Now the only decision is to buy another one as a backup in case this breaks. :-) Store: eBay |
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looking forward to digging into this!
Anyway, I bought two of these a few months ago and while I haven't used them yet, I did open one and check it out. They are standard MiniITX boards so I'm probably gonna ditch the case and put the board in my 1U rackmount case my current router is using when I do finally upgrade it. It has two SODIMM RAM slots of which one is populated, and the SSD is an x4 NVME, which I plan to remove to use for something else and just use a low capacity SATA drive to boot the router from.
All in all, a standard low power Mini ITX board by itself goes for more than $100 as it is, and you get the 4GB RAM and 256GB NVMe SSD with this too.
edit* nevermind, there is an offer applied I did not see at first.
Edit: Not sure if slickdeals allows Aliexpress links, but if it does, here's the one I bought: https://www.aliexpress.
I played with Windows on my N5105 unit for a while before I put Windows on it. It would have been perfectly usable as a media server, albeit a bit sluggish. I would not want to run Windows on a j4125, which is significantly slower.
Realtek is an issue with running pfsense as a VM with VMware but I wouldn't do that with this device anyway. Agree it should work fine with another nic.
I don't know that I'd load all the OP suggests but that's me.
It would. If you want more Docker freedom you could probably run Proxmox with extra ram. Set up HA as 1 VM and run another for Docker stuff.
If this had a 2nd nic already and a smaller case it would be more interesting to me. For about $100 you can get an EliteDesk 800 G1 or similar with 8GB of RAM and likely a 256gb ssd. Not a huge difference in power draw and more expandability…plus either a similar sized case for the desktop flavor or the desktop mini form factor for small footprint.
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I would not touch an Acer system with a 10 foot pole. They acquired the Gateway 2000 company that drove that brand down.
Tl;dr It's an economy system with components to match. For something to sit in the kids room, I guess it's OK, they will probably outgrow it before it dies.
But build a NAS as this for a base? No way! Spend a few more bucks and get a refurbed Dell OptiPlex, HP ProDesk, Lenovo ThinkCentre (pro models) and you won't regret it if you are going to go the Windows/NAS route. You won't be sorry.
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