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Looking for an SBC to run a low power NAS
(slrpnk.net)
A community for the discussion of all single board computers. Raspberry Pi is ok, but there are so many other boards now that get looked over that deserve attention.
Post news, questions, your setups, guides, anything that has to do with SBCs. Server wide rules apply
If PCI-E is a must your best bet (with least headaches) is still something x86 based, and for the lowest power you'd want something like a celeron-N or J series. For example this board: https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/ has sata, m2, pci-e, non-soldered RAM and will idle at ~6-7W (excluding storage). If I were doing it, though, I'd spend a few extra watts on an i3-10300 or later, which will idle at maybe 10-12W (again excluding storage) but give you much better performance and much better hardware assistance for video transcoding if you're going to be running plex/jellyfin or an OTA DVR. I use an Asus PN-41 miniPC with an i3 10300 with a couple of USB-C HDDs as an offsite backup server, and it idles right in that range plus about 5W per attached disk (when not spun down).