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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 2nd, 2025

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  • I’m using the same, Dell OptiPlex SFF.

    Has an M2 for the OS, put a full size 8TB drive in for data. I run multiple VMs in VMware on Windows (yep, I know, not the best approach).

    It has 32GB of RAM, and it does fine simultaneously converting video and streaming it via Jellyfin. My data is locally replicated to two other systems: a NAS that’s too slow to actually host anything, and a low power machine just for replication.

    What I would do differently: run Linux and use KVM of some sort.

    Currently it idles at about 15w, peaks at 80w when converting. It’s practically silent at idle.

    Paid next to nothing for the box (~$50), most costs are in the ram and drive upgrade.












  • I’ve had the opposite experience with Mikrotik.

    I really wanted to like it, but (I say this as a former Cisco instructor) their approach to UI and documentation is terrible (the docs don’t tell you what’s what, just tell you how to setup a specific config, without explaining what they’re doing or why, even worse, they start numbering their eth interfaces from 1 - it took me a while to figure this out).

    Worse, it was unstable as hell. I setup one just as a test, with one laptop connected via ethernet. Every couple days I wouldn’t be able to even ping the laptop - I’d have to reboot the router, manually, since it had become unresponsive.

    This with a simple config (just eth2 is LAN, eth1 is external), and no rules.

    It may have been a faulty unit, but as a consumer I can’t risk assuming this, especially given the very poor docs and clumsy UI/config approach - it all indicates this is a very immature product, definitely not something I’d recommend to a newbie.

    I hope they can really improve - the form factor is excellent, the price point is unbeatable, the capabilites of the hardware are extensive.