literally anything with a cpu haha. maybe something after the pentiums? if you don’t have a lot of users, you really don’t need much
I highly recommend factoring in a cheap UPS into the project.
If you’re only running nextcloud on it, any computer 15 years old or newer, with at least 4GB ram will be able to handle it.
If you want to have a reliable installation, avoid a raspberry pi and get a computer that can take at least two storage drives so that you can set up RAID. Or better yet, mount the storage from a dedicated NAS.
Most computers should be able to run Nextcloud, but to double-check, look at the minimum requirements for Nextcloud. I run my instance using an old laptop I had lying around, and I think it has an 11th gen Intel processor of some kind and 8GB of RAM. It runs fine with plenty of headroom for many other services
I run nextcloud and a few other things comfortably on a pi 5 Not sure how much ram it has I think maybe 4?
@DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world recommended this on is the last similar thread to this one: Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro. The price seems right and you could probably run good many other Docker containers in the future.
My comment got deleted for some reason
I think the mods deleted under rule 3 which really doesn’t make much sense to me. If you are going to self host and you are starting with equipment recomendations, who better to ask than the people who selfhost. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
How does rule three apply to a comment? lol. I’m not the poster, I’m replying to a post that doesn’t break Rule 3. Oh well. I tried
I think they nuked the whole thread.
Lmao. Why?
Dude, I do not pretend understand the inner machinations of a Lemmy mod. Rule 3 seems a blanket coverage for a lot of threads. But, I’m still out here repeating your recommends. Seems like it would be a jammy server for Docker containers at a good price.
Haha. No worries and no hard feelings towards the mods. This little computer has been a great machine for a bunch of things running on it. I installed debian on it and went to town. I’ve even made my Synology NAS a mounted storage on it and switched everything to debian. Thing’s been a champ with no hiccups.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
[Thread #298 for this comm, first seen 16th May 2026, 19:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Some HP SFF with 8GB+ and maybe 6th gen or higher would suffice. Spend $100 on a used one which will come with a small SSD. Slap a used 4TB drive in it for storage. Install Debian, Docker and use the NC AIO config.
Don’t piss around with a Pi that’s going to be twice the price with a tiny SD card (that you shouldn’t use for volatile storage), no NVME or SATA, and a tenth of the processing power.
more details about use case plz. how much storage do you think you need, how many users, how many concurrent users, is this a node or the entire server, is this the sole exclusive use case, do you not want to add more services later, etc
Wand what’s your electricity price per kWh.
Payback time of a Pi 5 vs an old laptop could be well under 2 years depending on where you live
I run Nextcloud + Memories plugin on a Pi5 8GB with NVMe with a fanless Argon Neo case. Fast & very stable. One user but it gets quite heavy use.
An alternative you might prefer is a Beelink mini PC which I’m runnin with SSD’s. I went for a Beelink EQ14 which i use for stuff like Paperless & Immich plus several other self host softwares. Picked it up cheap about a year ago before the AI nonsense pushed prices high. Frugal with electricity & more powerful than Pi. Ships with Windows which I ditched for Ubuntu Server. I’ve found it to run like a dream.
This is my exact setup and I’ve wondered if it would be enough. I haven’t spun up nextcloud yet, but I’ll have the need for it soon I think.
Do you run other apps through nextcloud? I have have things mostly as separate containers in the eq14, but wondered about experience from others. Is it more resource efficient to run something via nextcloud instead of separate container?
As far as Nextcloud plugins go, aside from Memories I just run the basics such as Contacts. I sync Joplin notes through it & it all syncs to 2 x desktops & a mobile. For me the Pi5 8GB with NVMe is plenty fast enough for Nextcloud & it’s proved to be stable. I run it through Docker via Portainer. This device is also running Kopia for snapshot backups, reverse proxy & Linkwarden.
The EQ14 is running Docker, Portainer, Kopia & about 5 other self hosted apps, the most processor hungry of them being Immich & Paperless. I haven’t tested against my Pi5 setup but its anecdotally massively faster & more stable than the Pi4B 4GB that I initially deployed Immich on. The Pi4 was really slow processing more than a few images at a time & sometimes crashed whereas the EQ14 doesn’t blink adding say 100 images at a time, processes face recognition etc much faster too & has never crashed. Immich was the driving factor for me to upgrade to the EQ14 & its been great. It also chews through manual backups of Paperless documents in a fraction of the time that it took my Pi4B.
The EQ14 would have no issue whatsoever running Nextcloud. I’ll be adding more self host stuff to it once I find anything else I think will be useful!
Depends if only a few people use it or tens. Then it can range from a potato to a decent oc not older than 8years.
CWWK pocketNAS
