I’m looking to build a low-end ollama LLM server to improve home assistant voice control, Immich image recognition and a few other services. With the current cost of hardware components like memory, I’m looking to build something small, but somewhat expandable.
I have an old micro-atx form factor computer that I’m thinking will be a good option to upgrade. I’d love recommendations on motherboards, processors, and video card combos that would likely be compatible and sufficient to run a decent server while keeping costs lower, basically, the best bang for the buck. I have a couple of M.2 SSDs I can re-purpose. Would prefer the motherboard has 2.5Gbit Ethernet, but otherwise I’m open.
Also recommendations on sites to purchase good quality memory at reasonable prices that ship to the US. I’d be willing to look at lightly used components, too.
Any advice on any of these topics would be greatly appreciated. The advice I’ve found has all been out of date especially with crypto fading so video cards are not as expensive, but LLM data centers eating up and reserving memory before it’s even manufactured.
I didn’t realize they were making desktops. I almost bought a laptop from them a few years ago but ended up finding an ASUS laptop that worked well with Linux and was significantly cheaper which fit my needs better for that. I’ll check them out.
Yeah they have soldered ram and cpu but have stays halo so ig that’s fine
So just glancing at the site, are these basically laptop CPU and RAM parts just packaged in a desktop form-factor case and that’s why they’re soldered? Seems like they also don’t have much expansion capability much like a laptop such as only having a single PCI-E x4 slot with a proprietary connection interface, so I couldn’t later add a graphics card for example. Unless, I’m just missing something, and if so please let me know.
Either way thanks for letting me know about the option.