Right? I made the realization a while ago that refurbished mini PCs are a way better fit for most of my homelab needs.

Sure, if power consumption is your #1 priority then you’d want some ARM solution. But for my use cases, I’ve found myself fighting with software support and the relatively low computational power of even the newer RPis.

Also, T-series Intel chips (the low power ones) have pretty good idle power consumption and don’t spin up the fan too much given their lower power. And a lot of uses cases require sticking a fan and heat sinks on an RPi so you lose the quietness benefit.

Also also, you (still?) need proprietary blobs to use a bunch of the hardware on RPis. You can go full open source on a regular old PC.

Have you considered/tried streaming games from your primary desktop PC? Obviously very dependent on your situation’s specifics, but that’s one of the things I do with the Linux htpc I have set up.

And then you wouldn’t have to worry about games and NAS stuff competing for system resources.

I’d personally go the hypervisor route (I’m using proxmox, truenas, and an *arr stack on my NAS). It keeps things compartmentalized (especially network configurations) and usually keeps me from breaking everything at the same time.

Just jump in the deep end and install NixOS. 😉

I was seduced by the possibility of permanent “new computer smell” and it is 100% worth the fiddling: https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/