#Hardware upgrade from NUC to Beelink?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

crimson pendant
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Any recommendation to upgrading from an older NUC to a Beelink EQ14 or S12
I was reading @fossil lagoon post here about some different options to run HA, I don't really plan to run a virtual environment as I dont mind have a dedicated piece of hardware to run HA as I have been. But at this point I have 87 ZigBee devices through Zigbee2Mqtt, as well as 100+ other devices in my house.

Nothing is super slow at the moment. I know the way I am doing my all lighting by having my switches trigger a script that then makes a call to turn on the lights isn't the most ideal way for speed, but I've lived with that trade off as the functionality I've built into my lighting scripts I prioritized over speed.

Id like to eventually remove the Alexas from my house and do all local voice stuff, which obviously is a big undertaking and havent looked too far into it. But just trying to gauge if an upgrade would be worth it at this point.

The setup I am currently running is a NUC i5-4250U with 16 GB of RAM DDR3 and a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/76977/intel-nuc-kit-d54250wyk/specifications.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KXTCMSC?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1

Gist
Home Assistant Server Hardware Recommendations

Home Assistant Server Hardware Recommendations. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Intel
Intel® NUC Kit D54250WYK - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® NUC Kit D54250WYK quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.

SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway, Universal Zigbee USB Gat...

Users can add and manage ZigBee sub-devices through this device and smart home platform by plugging ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus into PC or Raspberry Pi and configuring accordingly to achieve communication between devices connected to the platform and create more intelligent linkages for home autom...

haughty rapids
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What are you hoping to achieve by switching hardware?

crimson pendant
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I recently ran into an issue with the NUC I was running on (I believe the drive failed) I had a second NUC lying around that got me back up and running but am questioning if I should invest in something newer and more powerful before this one fails on me too.

haughty rapids
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I don't really see the point to be honest. These devices don't usually fail that often either.

crimson pendant
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I believe it was a drive failure on that NUC. Ive seen that people ran into similar things I did with running on SD cards, this is an MSata but im not sure what the read writes are on it, I assume something that uses a newer NVME M.2 drive would be much more resilient to a failure like this than a technology from 10+ years ago

haughty rapids
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I'm not a fan of mSATA either but I don't think it should die sooner.

crimson pendant
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Also I know local voice takes more processing power... ive seen different opinions on what you should be running to comfortably run it.

haughty rapids
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I actually buy old enterprise SSDs on the regular 😄

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For a proper local voice setup I'd recommend a device where you can add a dedicated GPU.

crimson pendant
# haughty rapids I'm not a fan of mSATA either but I don't think it should die sooner.

TBH idk what else couldve cause the issues i was seeing, the reason i believe it was the drive was cause things started slowly getting weird, loss of attributes, constant crashing, and all these things just kept getting worse and worse, once i restored a backup onto my other NUC it all seems fine, which to be fair i did fully reinstall HA so it couldve been my HA went bad somehow but i feel like that is less likely than a 10+ year old pc drive failing ahha

fossil lagoon
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you could switch to a beelink but i dont think you would see a difference. except maybe some peace of mind for having a newer system

crimson pendant
haughty rapids
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That depends on the model you use and how long you are willing to wait for a response.

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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i offload it. now... you could run it with the tiny whisper model but then the accuracy wouldnt be great

crimson pendant
haughty rapids
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Unless english is your main language you likely need to run a much larger model. Even on fast CPUs that can take multiple seconds.

fossil lagoon
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even with english (at least for me) tiny is not great

crimson pendant
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English is the one and only language i know hahah

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So you basically offload the work to somehting more powerful.

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But then hypothetically if you didnt want to run that pc all the time you just wouldnt have voice until its running

fossil lagoon
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i run speech-to-text on other system

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you could also offload to cloud

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or use speech-to-phrase which limits the commands you can use but means you can run it locally

crimson pendant
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Ahh all good information

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Now if I do upgrade to a beelink EQ14, how dumb is it to run it fully on it rather than run proxmox

haughty rapids
crimson pendant
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Like is that just fully over kill

haughty rapids
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What do you mean with rather than proxmox?

fossil lagoon
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you can run haos directly on it without issue if you want

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i use proxmox because i run some other stuff on the box too

haughty rapids
crimson pendant
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Yeah like is it dumb to fully dedicate the pc to HA vs being able to run other vms as well

haughty rapids
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I think so.

fossil lagoon
haughty rapids
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I'm not sure if the addons even provide GPU acceleration yet.

fossil lagoon
crimson pendant
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Okay I think that all make sense, I know I could do it bare metal but I just wanted to see if that was just dumb because of wasting all of it for HA

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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if you go n150 system like the eq14 with proxmox though you need to ensure to update the kernel. the stock kernel is the debian stable 6.1 which doesnt support a few things

crimson pendant
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Yeah I saw you mention that in your post

fossil lagoon
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proxmox may have changed default since i last installed to be fair. but either way newer kernels are in the repo

haughty rapids
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Microcode updates are likely another thing to think about.

crimson pendant
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I think my main thinking for upgrading is giving myself a little more headroom if I want, such as local voice, or switching to running it in a vm, and as well as for the time being giving myself a little better piece of mind for the hardware I am running somthing as vital as HA is to me on.

fossil lagoon
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if peace of mind is worth buying the device to you then for sure go for it

haughty rapids
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I just think the upgrade is not large enough to invest time and money into it.

crimson pendant
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Then the follow up question would be what would be a worth it upgrade

haughty rapids
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Like it has no option for adding a GPU for example so if you consider voice you might need one and also want LLM and other such things if you got a taste.

crimson pendant
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So like do people fully build PCs to run HA?

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Like i feel like a Pi to a x86 is a big jump, but like whats the jump after that?

fossil lagoon
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i have my gpu accerated stuff offloaded to another server in my rack. so HA will run just without voice and stuff if the other server goes down

haughty rapids
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I did. You can technicaly just buy a random used PC and plug a GPU <= 75W into it but you probably want something with actual headroom to add a better GPU needing additional PCIe power inside. So no 250W PSU devices without them.

crimson pendant
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OKay so both of you do 2 different things. Is there an advantage to either way, offloading or not?

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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HA on a dedicated device so working on other systems doesn't kill the basics of the house. but i already have other servers to fit stuff in

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go full homelab

haughty rapids
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We don't really. My HA runs in a docker container in a VM. My voice stuff runs in other docker containers.
The VMs/CTs can float around in my cluster when needed.

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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my "big" server

AP1GczNNjyEOWIUY2PQWaOGxMYrnPTynhiW7BFhFnhZLSK9jgDsfXnv0zuzWw1278-h959-s-no-gm.png
crimson pendant
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And i thought this was over kill haha

fossil lagoon
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i would show a desk photo but its a mess

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rack lives under the stairs though

crimson pendant
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haha I know the second I get a server rack is when my bank account really gets sad lol

fossil lagoon
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when you first start messing with voice you could just offload to HA cloud too then move to local down the line if you want to

crimson pendant
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So what youre saying is that PC i have on the left that is fully dedicated to run a minecraft server I prob should use to offload haha

fossil lagoon
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alot of people offload some stuff to their desktop gpu

crimson pendant
haughty rapids
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That would likely be an excellent choice for your PVE host.

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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cloud will in most cases be fine for performence but its offsite so pick your battles

crimson pendant
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Yeah i know that is the big drive with HA is that everything is local, which is preferred for sure.

fossil lagoon
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a 1060 is probably fine for running whisper

haughty rapids
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It also has some benefits like better voices, easier setup, no hardware cost.

crimson pendant
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Is that part of their regular cloud subscription?

haughty rapids
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Not the LLM part but the voices and stuff.

crimson pendant
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Ahhh okay

fossil lagoon
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if you want llm cloud you would need to set it up with openai/google/whatever

crimson pendant
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So Lesson is, upgrade if I want strictly to run new hardware so i feel better, and offload higher task to other computers

fossil lagoon
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yeah, something like a 1060 will run speech-to-text fine but it will struggle with an llm for running those you need something with a bit more power

crimson pendant
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Realisticallly my main pc will be upgraded by the time I get to any of that in the future so I could always use that pc by then

fossil lagoon
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hand me down gpu's is a thing 🙂

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although my server currently has a better gpu than my desktop...

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but i wanted to mess with llm's so it kinda needed it

crimson pendant
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hahah gotta pay to play i guess with all this

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But thank you guyus for your time and the links to stuff really helpful!

fossil lagoon
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hopefully you got some things to think about and heelp come to a decision in any case

crimson pendant
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Yeah I mean i hate to upgrade when its not needed but for $200 dollars it seems like it would be worth it

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Tbh i got the 2 NUCs for around $130 a year ago (one was untested and got it for 30) and the other was 100, and they have defenilty server thier purpose and its not like I wont use them for something in the future

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But idk since all this shit happened its like running on something that was second had from 10+ years ago i cant be surpriused if somthing fails, and how much i rely on HA at this point I dont want to be cheap when it comes to the Hardware it runs on

fossil lagoon
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yeah thats fair enough. the beelink has been great for me and i have backups so worst case i could just spin it up on another proxmox node if i needed something to tide me over

crimson pendant
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Just praying that the sonoff dongle i got was good cause i reallllllyyyyy dont wanna repair everything, im pretty sure the hue shit is a bitch to repair to anything

fossil lagoon
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zigbee adaptors are usually fine. sonoff stuff from what i hear is pretty stable

crimson pendant
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The only issues ive had with it was pairing aqara shit, which sometimes takes forever but that seems to be everyones experience with aqara

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once its paired its great

haughty rapids
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I prefer the ethernet coordinators. Especially useful when having a cluster.

crimson pendant
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The only other piece of hardware I could never find was a zigbee rgb filament bulb, I have a few decorative lights that I wanted filament bulbs for so had to settle for some GE Matter bulbs that were filament and rgb and i absoultley hate them.

crimson pendant
fossil lagoon
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i currently dont use any zigbee stuff. i am considering building a zigbee network using the new gen4 shelly stuff as the core of it

crimson pendant
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I almost did the shelly stuff

fossil lagoon
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i have a load of shelly stuff thats wifi and find it great

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the gen4 supports zigbee though. so if i can find an excuse to upgrade...

crimson pendant
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Yeah i tried one and i did like it

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But i knew my eletrician whos my friend would hate me

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and idk if they supported "Smart Bulb" mode to always keep power through them so I opted for Inovelli

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Which is def pricy but have been very pleased with them.

fossil lagoon
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you can have the switch set to various modes. so it can toggle the relay or not

crimson pendant
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Yeah they were nice, honestly solid price point too for its functionality

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I only really did zigbee becuase of the Hue stuff

fossil lagoon
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yeah, choice also depends on what you already have

crimson pendant
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Which is funny cause personally i think Hue is nice but their price point is high becuase of their software which... once you toss it into HA directly you loose all funcationality

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Yeah i was doing a full home remodel so I was able to really do what I wanted

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and quckily learned you have to make some sacarafises

fossil lagoon
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if you really want to annoy an electricition during a remodel. have every switch and every light wired to central location so you can do everything from a single place 🙂

crimson pendant
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hahah he fucking hated the switches

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cause i was like look, they have a traveler lead on them i know that

fossil lagoon
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will increase time and materials cost but means you can do anything down the line

crimson pendant
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but you dont need that lol

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and to explain to him how I was going to be the one that makes a 3 way swithc work in software was blowing his mind lol

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Which is part of the reason when HA dies for me nothing works

fossil lagoon
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yeah needing a fallback config is something to keep in mind

crimson pendant
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Yeah so i think i could do that

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But not with how they are wired at this point

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But the way around it technically is that there is an air swithc on every switch, so if i pull that and push it back in it disconnects and reconnects power to the lights so they will turn on

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the main reason I did it like this was cause i wanted to be able to auto shift warm and cool light depending on the day

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as well as have people not take out half my zigbee network by flipping a light switch lol

fossil lagoon
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yup

crimson pendant
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Well thank you again man I appreciate you taking the time to explain some stuff!!

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And sorry about the DM haha!

warm turret
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Is this the Beelink you recommended at the moment: https://www.amazon.nl/Beelink-S13-Lake-N150-Ethernet-Computer/dp/B0C279CYC5/ref=asc_df_B0C279CYC5?mcid=ddc16fff90703c1f9462c25b12b4e344&tag=nlshogostdsp-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=730055949740&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7057641037170559543&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1010543&hvtargid=pla-2198109433657&psc=1&gad_source=1
@fossil lagoon

Beelink Mini S13 Mini PC, Intel Twin Lake-N150 (4C/4T up to 3.6GHz)...

Beelink Mini PC

haughty rapids
fossil lagoon
warm turret