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.


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.