this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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I have a refurbished Lenovo Thinkcentre that I was running Truenas off of. Everything was working great, but it got hit with a power surge and after lots of trouble shooting it appears the motherboard is fried and I don't trust my ability to soder and fix it.

No now I need to upgrade my setup. Wondering what is a good sub $300 computer I can order that will run Jellyfin, Immich, and a few light services off of? With Truenas you seem to need two SSDs. One to boot and one to run apps, so it seems like a mini PC will not work.

I have a seperate HDD drive bay with a few hdd's in it full of shows and picture. Just need a PC to run my services.

I would prefer something I can order off Amazon or can be shipped quickly so I can get back up and running again.

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[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ok "bro" damn you're right and you sure showed my unc self! What an idiot I am!

Pick any laptop model you like and search for "how to remove battery" or look up the model on ifixit. Show me a single one where the battery cannot be removed. I'll wait.

[–] BenevolentOne@infosec.pub 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're arguing that something I've been doing for over a decade can't be done.

Why? Look at my perspective. On one hand, I have 10+years of lived experience doing this thing, on the other hand there's internet guy who says it can't be done?

Just compare a mini-pc to a entry level laptop with the same specifications from any manufacturer.

An Asus NUC with no disk or ram and an Intel 250 (celeron) uses 65W of power and starts around $300. It has 2 cores at 1.8ghz and costs go up from there.

From the same manufacturer at the same time, I can find over 300 laptop SKUs at the below $300 price point to choose from including the entry level zenbook 14, which, in addition to being complete (having ram is nice) packs a significantly more powerful processor and only uses 45W.

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I never said it couldn't be done, hell, I've done it myself. Try being a human and asking me what my actual argument or suggested approach is, try re-reading what I actually said rather than assuming it is X just so you can dunk on it.

Max TDP is completely irrelevant, that is about cooling capacity which completely sucks in a laptop, hence the chip limit. The relevant factor for a server is idle power draw at the wall outlet.

For my servers I get second hand dell / hp / mini pcs for peanuts. Sips power, still work fine, still going strong, upgradeable storage etc. Second hand laptops of the same era are now useless ewaste.

[–] BenevolentOne@infosec.pub 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah, that's your problem, you're buying Dell and HP laptops, which start off as e-waste. Their batteries have thermal issues while they're still on the factory line and their laptop power supplies are engineered to die no more than 3 minutes after the warranty expires.

We're probably talking past each other. I recommend switching to ASUS.

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago

I'm buying dell and hp laptops? I thought I was the world expert on what I am doing but apparently not.