It won’t be on Amazon, but I found a ton of older generation Mac minis available on Craigslist in my area. I picked one up for $50 and installed Ubuntu server. Thing’s been running like a champ for 2 years.

Edit: should have fully read your post. No idea about installing truenas on it. I’d assume most would be single ssd machines.

You you could do most of that with a raspberry pi5, 8GB. With a whole kit, you can get it for under $250. I’m running 3 at my place: 1 for media (servarr stack, JF, Navidrome, Invidious), 1 for the Fediverse (Mastodon, Piefed, Peertube, WordPress), and 1 for anything else.

Edit: I also missed the part about truenas, but you can still run containers on any other OS just fine.

So a trick for the double drives is to pop in a low profile usb drive and install the os on that. Then you can use the ssd/hdd for other things.

Just about any of the Intel N series minipcs are often suggested for just Jellyfin. I haven’t looked at them too much yet.

I just use whatever trash and old computer parts I have lying around.

The key here is old hardware. I built a TrueNAS box out of an old Dell Optiplex 990. I got it from a friend for free but you can find one online for well under $200. Later you can upgrade the box bit-by-bit if you care to. I upgraded the case, motherboard, cooler, and power supply over time. It’s been a capable NAS for several years even though it’s using a 2nd gen Intel core i3.

Find something on craigslist or local pickup on ebay, check government/police surplus, or do some freecycling. At least in my area a lot of people leave their e-waste computers at Best Buy, often in the doorway, nobody cares if you come and pick them up. Even if they’re broken (and they’re often perfectly functional and sometimes surprisingly powerful) it likely only takes a few before you’ve got some functional combination of parts.

It’s likely not as much of a picker’s heaven anymore since I imagine the huge wave of windows-10-obsolete computers being thrown away for no reason has probably mostly subsided, but there is so much old and perfectly functional stuff out there it’s really unjustifiable to be buying something new especially at today’s modern prices.

A mini PC could certainly work! If you’re willing to go ebay, I’d recommend any of these Lenovo Thinkcentre SFF PCs:

forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/lenovo-…

1-2x m.2 slots, 1x 2.5" slot, and some can accommodate a half-height PCI-E card in place of the 2.5" slot. Presumably, you’d want to go Intel for QSV

Can’t help in regards to using Amazon, but some of the Lenovo Minis have an m.2 slot on the underside, as well as the 2.5 drive in the top. I think the M920q and some others have two m.2 slots.

If you want maximum jank, you can split the m.2 into 5 SATA ports, then leave the bottom panel off and to connect to drives in your drive bay. That’s what I’ve done. You’ll need a separate power supply for the drives, though.

If you want a lot of cores, there are xeon kits on aliexpress and other websites, xeon e5-2650 v4 or v3 has a lot of cores and consume very few energy, mainly the v4 (comparing to other server cpus), it has a lot of pci express lanes, etc.

Handle 0x0073, DMI type 17, 40 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0070
        Error Information Handle: Not Provided
        Total Width: 72 bits
        Data Width: 72 bits
        Size: 8 GiB
        Form Factor: DIMM
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM_B1
        Bank Locator: NODE 1
        Type: DDR4
        Type Detail: Synchronous
        Speed: 2667 MT/s
        Manufacturer: Undefined
        Serial Number: A64010B5
        Asset Tag: DIMM_B1_AssetTag
        Part Number:                     
        Rank: 1
        Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Minimum Voltage: 1.14 V
        Maximum Voltage: 1.26 V
        Configured Voltage: 1.2 V

Handle 0x0076, DMI type 17, 40 bytes
Memory Device
        Array Handle: 0x0070
        Error Information Handle: Not Provided
        Total Width: 72 bits
        Data Width: 72 bits
        Size: 8 GiB
        Form Factor: DIMM
        Set: None
        Locator: DIMM_D1
        Bank Locator: NODE 1
        Type: DDR4
        Type Detail: Synchronous
        Speed: 2667 MT/s
        Manufacturer: Undefined
        Serial Number: A6401009
        Asset Tag: DIMM_D1_AssetTag
        Part Number:                     
        Rank: 1
        Configured Memory Speed: 2400 MT/s
        Minimum Voltage: 1.14 V
        Maximum Voltage: 1.26 V
        Configured Voltage: 1.2 V

Hit up local government auctions. Sometimes they sell 2-4 computers in a lot, sometimes they sell 157. I got 4 Lenovo mini computers for $34 each in an auction a while back. They only needed hard drives.

I would pickup a old workstation of of a site like eBay. Last time I was shopping around they were pretty cheap but that was pretty insanity pricing

If you want a NAS on the cheap my preference is just get any cheap “normal” PC, a case with a good amount of HDD bays. Move the drives into the PC, and you have all the expand ability you could dream of. You can find plenty of DDR4 machines for cheap now. Then as ram prices come down you can go up to 128gb of ram as long as your board has 4 slots.

Anything on craigslist/FB marketplace will work.

CWWK pocket NAS

Openmediavault might be an option also, if the drive thing is a problem with TrueNAS

it got hit with a power surge and after lots of trouble shooting it appears the motherboard is fried

I am truly sorry for your misfortune. I feel a bit bumed right now. Others with better knowledge than I have gave suggestions. That just slapped me in the face, because I know how I certainly would feel.

Set aside some for surge protection/UPS

Any used PC or laptop that can run Linux.

You actually can use a minipc. Minisforum has their NAB series and those have a slot in their internals for an SSD and they have an NVME slot in the motherboard. I found a NAB9 with an NVME, SSD, and 16GB of ram for around $310. So I would look for used NAB6s (cheaper than NAB9) on EBay. You should find some for under 300 with the Data SSD and NVME.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

[Thread #266 for this comm, first seen 1st May 2026, 03:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Woot.com has lots of refurbs around that price.

It’s part of Amazon so you can use your Prime shipping.

I do what you are asking about literally with a 2014 Thinkpad. The only thing is I don’t use any “fancy” features. For instance, with Jellyfin I ensure that the data is in a commonly supported format to ensure there is no transcoding or remuxing performed by the server itself.

So, just find any computer made in the last 7 years, slap Linux on it, and I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Would a pi5 work?

Any post-2015 laptop would work. Look around in your local recycling bins :D

Where you happy with the Lenovo thinkcentre? You can often find replacement motherboards for these. It will be cheaper than any of the alternatives here.

Thinkcentre Tiny, Dell Optiplex Micro, or HP ProDesk Mini. Prices have gone up the last few months but they’re still a solid value. Most sellers ship pretty quick these days.

Ask your local university facilities department about their overstock policy. The university of Arizona literally has a warehouse where you can peruse their old computers and furniture and buy at Craigslist prices.

Stop ordering from Amazon

Not much right now due to LLM training hogging all of the memory across the industry. Best bet is lightly used.

There are companies selling off PCs that are “too small” for Win11, really cheap. More than sufficient for a NAS. You might even get a bunch of them, chose the best mainboard/case/PSU set, put the others in storage, and get all the RAM and HDD in one box.

I use Intel NUCs off eBay for this kind of stuff. A few years ago you could get one for ~$200 on eBay.

Ask a local ISP like us. We store our old servers and send them to be recycled annually. If I had an enthusiast walk up to our offices asking for a donation, we wouldn’t hesitate. Can’t speak for competitors, but it’s worth a shot.

University surplus. I work for a university and we get rid of stuff all tfe time that is still very useful.

A refurbished Dell optiplex has been my move. Hasn’t failed me yet.

Dell optiplex

Wondering what is a good sub $300 computer I can order that will run Jellyfin, Immich, and a few light services off of?

A lot more options than you think. The Tiny/Mini/Micro PCs are fantastic for what they are, even one running a 7th gen Intel CPU is more than plenty.

I usually pick up the cheapest non-chromebook laptop I can find and put Linux on it.

There are a couple key advantages here:

1. It’s very cheap.
2. Battery Backup included.
3. Monitor and keyboard included.
4. Power efficient by design.
5. Available all the time from any vendor.
6. You can take it with you, update your server on the couch and slap it back on the rack.
7. Virtually any configuration you want in candy colors.
8. Did I mention these are very cheap?

It can be a bit tricky to find one with Ethernet and two SSDs is kinda exotic (especially because you could get two whole laptops for the cost of some NAS enclosures) but there are over 3000 different models under $300 on Amazon, I’m sure you can find something good.

You can go far below $300 with very little practical performance compromise, but I wouldn’t even look on Amazon with memory prices being what they are lately. Get an old DDR3 era Optiplex desktop on eBay, throw a $25 Quadro P400 in it for transcoding, and transfer your existing SSDs over. Tons of eBay listings have 2-4 day shipping. With DDR3 you can easily get 16GB of RAM for like $30 if it doesn’t have enough already. Avoiding DDR4/DDR5 will save a ton of money so it’s essential to buy used.

The SSDs and hard drives for the array are by far the most expensive part. I’ve been using an underclocked and undervolted Ryzen 1700 in my server for 6 years now and have zero complaints around CPU performance. I did eventually need more than 16GB of RAM last year, but the only outright failures I’ve had are on the various component’s fans.

I use a nucbox mini pc and two usb ext hdds to run a jellyfin server and a samba file server. Works great. Im using Lubuntu – i dont exactly recommend it, but it works fine enough. Any lite Linux distro would probably work great. Here’s a picture of my janky “server rack” setup:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b4c3abe4-f7a8-40cb-9a4d-7f47df2e1b64.jpeg">

A big fan of the HP elite desk line. Specifically the mini form factor. Also the Intel version for quick sync.

iGPU for low power draw, but can still handle a transcode or two for Jellyfin.

Cheap as a refurbish on eBay.

My server is currently sitting at 1.5 years of uptime, hosting Jellyfin, minecraft, adguard, and a while suitr of other tools!