Nova is here.

Australis was a decent big PC, but I wanted something smaller, both in size, and power consumption. 50 watts idle was quite a lot, especially since it wasn’t doing anything much, and the blame goes to both the CPU and dGPU (I wanted an HDMI port and a way to pass through VMs, though I found it quite pointless at the end), it was also quite bulky, taking up space with lots of empty space inside the case (small motherboard, big chassis) and it doesn’t help that I wanted it to be more like a NAS with hotswappable bays and 4 HDDs running at once - I needed to rethink my choices.

The weird one - Fermi

Knowing that AeroNook couldn’t stay powered on for too long at 50 watts, I needed to somehow consolidate the power usage to a minimum, I briefly moved my server containers to Fermi (an old laptop with a Fermi dGPU, that’s where it got its name), which worked to cut down back to 10 watts, but it was running off a single, slow, old HDD that I got from a friend, plus, it could fail at any point.

I tested it out for a few months and saw that my services dont really consume a whole lot of resources, but I still wanted that ability to expand in the future, so I started to consider mini desktop PCs, especially USFFs (Ultra Small Form Factor).

The search of Nova

I was researching these PCs for over a month at that point, looking at many homelab YouTubers (huge thanks to Hardware Haven, Jeff Geerling, NetworkChuck, ServeTheHome and Kalos Likes Computers), I was set-in-stone that I NEEDED one - the hardware benefits and compact size really made it a thing worth looking into.

So I went to a few websites to check: Skelbiu and Eneba, I’ve been comparing prices for a bit over a week to find what was suitable and I stumbled across a few Dells, ThinkCentres and HPs, however, one seller was selling various USFFs under a few hardware configurations that I could select, so a day later, I went there to check it them out - turns out, only one was in stock that had the CPU I wanted - the Dell OptiPlex 7040 Micro.

It had a 128GB NVMe, 8GB RAM (I chose 16GB for 10 EUR more) and a quad core Core i5-6500T, all for 90 EUR - a bit expensive, but it was well worth it.

I brought it home, plugged it in and tried it out as a basic Windows machine, which it was fairly decent, though nothing to write home about - the iGPU wasn’t the worst, but considering I don’t run JellyFin and instead use Stremio (Y’arr…), it’s all good, however, I am not exposing Windows to the public internet with many vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited, thus I had to put good ol’ Proxmox VE. Having both nodes on, I decided to backup every container and VM with vzdump and use scp to remotely transfer every container and VM from Fermi to the Nova. After which, I did some work behind the scenes and we’re back to working again!

Cooling and noise

I still can’t seem to figure out something - its cooling solution, it seems fine by eye, I had to replace it since it froze a few times during testing (the fan was max speed, likely overheating), but after replacing the thermal paste, it now does stay quiet, until it hits midnight, which then the fan noise is quite audible, as if the CPU is running 50% or more, though the CPU usage meter says otherwise, so that makes no sense… Oh well.

One small upgrade, maybe some more…

I had to slap yet another old HDD I had, and knowing how “reliable” that is, I’ve decided to pick up a used, but tested HDD (aka, clean SMART records) that could surely last a while - a 750GB HGST drive. Why not a 1TB? They didn’t have that in stock.

I also noticed a lot of people like to replace their Wi-Fi modules for secondary NICs, I might go that route, but none of my tech is capable of 2.5Gig, though who knows, that might change soon..

What’s happening with Fermi and Australis?

Fermi will be a guinea pig again, or a parts-only device, no idea, as for Australis? It’s going to a family member that needs their PC replaced.