What computer to take for a smart home, a mini-server?

Question

Iron

You need a small computer for a smart home and a home-mini server, there will be spinning: Home Assistant, MQTT Broker, MySQL, garbage file, FTP for IP camera. maybe some other little thing. Now the Asus rt-ac87u router is handling the files - and it's pretty bad, sometimes it freezes, sometimes it loses disk access rules. HA and MQTT are spinning on RasPi2 - the flash drive worked for half a year and died safely. I want a small computer, not a system unit, with the ability to connect an SSD. What are the must-haves for such purposes now?

Answer 1

I took such a balalaika for myself https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/CHUWI-GBox-Windows-... Cheaper than nuke and more beautiful

Answer 2

If you want to play around with the server, then I would advise you to pay attention to HP Microserver Gen8

Answer 3

HP Microserver Gen10. Costs around $550

Answer 4

Many brands have mini computers:
HP Desktop mini
Intel NUC
Gigabyte brix
Shuttle
Asrock DeskMini
Chinese on ALiEpress
...
I like HP with T processors - and more powerful than U, and you can replace it