Note that the adapter on the link does not actually use the USB protocol. It’s still PCIe sent over a USB 3.0 cable that is good enough for the job. But not actually USB, there are no signal / protocol conversions happening.

This is a decent setup if you want to leave the Mini PC intact, with the case and all because it allows you to route the PCIe to outside of the machine using a somewhat solid cable that you can run through a small hole OR the optional port slot (VGA on this machine):

The VGA card can be removed so you have a big hole to pass the “USB” cable through.

They’re selling around 40-50€ here just the CPU, with motherboard and RAM for about 100€ and mini pcs with those around 150€.

They usually have M2/NVMe slots, those can be turned into SATA port easily and cheap in multiple ways:

• Add 6 SATA ports to a M2 slot for 22€ with a board like the one I linked above
• Convert the M2 slot into a full PCIe slot
• Use a riser to move the port to outside the machine, like this ribbon cable or that one that uses a USB cable

There are A LOT of ways to convert the M2/NVME slots into SATA ports, some you can get hundreds of hard drives there if you need.

In fact, I already have a mini PC (an MSI Cubi 2 with an i3-7100) that I sometimes use. I’m sure it’s fairly power-efficient, but again, it only has room for one 2.5" HDD, which limits its usefulness for a NAS setup :(

Again, that board has a M2 slot, just use it. OR you can use of this cards to expand that 1 sata port into multiple ones.

what happens if something breaks. Is there any warranty?

If you exclude the Chinese brands (including Lenovo) it is very, very unlikely that a Mini HP or Dell will break in your hands anytime soon. Some even come with extended warranties from companies that bought them and you’ll be able to ask HP for help. But frankly I wouldn’t bother with this, those machines are good hardware designed for 24h7 operation and will not break easily.

Totally, but that won’t be a problem if you’re 8th+ gen right now. I’ve had experiences like you describe with a Core 2 Duo about two years ago, even SSH was taking ages to connect because the CPU lacked some modern instruction for ECDH.

Yeah, laptop CPUs are low power, after all they’re configured to run on battery with Windows. :)

Well it happens :D Happy new year!

I believe you should buy second hand hardware for that. Can’t beat the price and you’ve tons of gamers and offices trying to get rid of perfectly good hardware for what you’re trying to do. I mean a 8th gen i5 CPU will most likely be idle or in low usage most of the time.

I would say to buy i5-8500T or more recent (because you can run a full machine on 8W on that). You can either go for a micro ATX motherboard with that and RAM second hand OR pick an HP Mini ProDesk with the same CPU, both options will be about 130€. Check this example.

The thing with the Minis from HP is that they come with everything, NVME, power supply, ram and ready to go. Most of those more recent machines come with 2x NVME + 1 SATA + USB-C.

If you’re comfortable with taking the board out of the case you can place it anywhere and add a M2 to SATA adapter on both NVME slots for about 22€ each and have like 12 SATA HDDs connected to it. If you don’t want mess with the hardware you can get a USB DAS for your disks, since it’s all USB-C you will not notice any performance impact.

Those machines will outperform your CPU pick by a lot while being cheaper and power efficient on idle.

I’ve a very similar setup, but connection to the remote machines is done via WG. Works fine.

There’s a plugin for that: https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/create-smart-callouts-that-have-a-different-icon-and-background-color-as-needed/29141/2

Joplin: Sufficient but no callouts :(

Can you give an example of those “callouts”? Joplin has many plugins, many you can find that in there.

My only complaint about Joplin is that there’s no production / real WebUI for it yet.

Too bad the UI sucks and it doesn’t have a WebUI.