[colug-432] wanted: silent PC for ownCloud hosting

[Brian Miller]

On 03/30/2014 03:50 PM, Scott Merrill wrote:
> As I mentioned at last week's COLUG meeting, I currently have two
> instances of ownCloud running: one at Digital Ocean, and one at home on
> a PogoPlug.
>
> The Digital Ocean instance works great, but it still means that all my
> data is "out there" in the cloud, which rather undermines one of the
> major benefits of ownCloud.
>
> My PogoPlug is great in terms of size, power consumption, and noise.
> Unfortunately, it sucks in terms of performance.  The single CPU in
> there lacks the oomph to provide ownCloud with any kind of
> responsiveness.
>
> It's been ages since I've built my own PC, let alone looked at hardware
> in any meaningful way.  What options exist today for silent computing
> without breaking the bank?
>
> I don't need a powerhouse machine.  Size and noise are my two main
> priorities, with power consumption being third.  Something I can attach
> to my UPS and forget about is ideal. Ideally SSD for storage, and
> something that doesn't require fans, if that's at all possible.
>
> Cheers,
> Scott
>

The mini HP systems sound good.  But I would look at a used laptop, 
personally.  I'm using my old (dual core) Acer NetBook as a server.  The 
fan almost never comes on (I get a syslog entry when it does.  It is 
physically located in a place where I wouldn't hear it if it did.), 
it's small, comes with its own UPS, and the notebook capabilities means 
it runs at the slowest CPU speed most of the time. I bought mine with an 
SSD disk.  But you can generally get SSDs for notebooks, too.