Home Assistant is a smart home platform that operates on a PC in your home, not in the cloud—so if you don't already have spare hardware lying around, you're going to have to find some.But what if I told you there's one type of computer you can buy that will save you money upfront, provide you with excess performance, and keep energy costs low at the same time? It's time to seek out the Intel NUC The older, the better If you inquire about installing Home Assistant, someone will quickly point you toward a Raspberry Pi.It's a cheap board that it sips power and will run Home Assistant just fine.
But you can quickly overtax a Raspberry Pi if you're trying to do too many tasks or something more demanding.You're also going to need to need more than just the Pi itself.You will need to add storage and, perhaps, also a case.
By the time you've done all that, you've actually spent more than you would if you just went shopping for an Intel NUC.The Intel NUC was a line of mini PCs with Intel CPUs and, typically, Intel-integrated graphics.They are small boxes designed to be VESA mounted to the back of a monitor, tucked away in a corner of a desk, or hidden in a TV stand.
They're also very energy efficient.All this makes them perfect for a home server.Older Intel NUCs are now dirt cheap You can buy one for the cost of a flash drive I recently purchased a used Linux tablet PC (a Star Labs StarLite MK V), and the seller also happened to be trying to off-load a relatively powerful Intel NUC with 32GB of RAM for $400.
In today's market, the RAM alone justified its low asking price, but I hopped on eBay to search for this specific model to price compare and see if I was getting a good deal.In the process, I saw that older, weaker NUCs than mine were going for as low as $40.How good a deal is this? Last year, I purchased a Home Assistant Green, which is the easiest and most straightforward way to set up Home Assistant.
It comes with everything already installed so that you don't have to touch a single line of code.You just plug the hub in to the wall, connect it to Ethernet, download the Home Assistant app, and follow instructions just like any other consumer product.That Home Assistant Green cost me around $150.
Home Assistant Green Dimensions (exterior) 4.41"L x 4.41"W x 1.26"H Weight 12 Ounces Home Assistant Green is a pre-built hub directly from the Home Assistant team.It's a plug-and-play solution that comes with everything you need to set up Home Assistant in your home without needing to install the software yourself. $179 at Amazon Expand Collapse These old Intel NUCs cost less than half that while offering comparable performance.Unlike an old desktop PC tower, these also remain energy-efficient PCs.
The TDP of the Intel Celeron chip in the eBay listing pictured above is 10W, which isn't that far from what you get from a Raspberry Pi 5.This means you'll only suffer a marginal increased cost from higher energy usage.An old NUC can be whatever you want it to be Tiny hardware that you can configure At their core, Intel NUCs are desktop computers made with mobile parts.
Virtually all let you swap out the RAM and install your own storage, like many laptops.Whereas a single-board computer has soldered RAM and relies on external storage, you can load a NUC up with 64 GB of RAM and pop in a fast 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD, or, on some models, a cheaper 2.5-inch SATA drive.This may sound excessive for Home Assistant, but if you're trying to use your box as a media server or as a local-only voice assistant, every extra bit of storage and memory helps.
When I set up a Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition last year, that's when I really felt the limits of my Home Assistant Green.If the NUC you grab is old and cheap enough, you're going to feel those limits too.But if I bump up my budget to the $150 I spent on Home Assistant Green, I could get an Intel NUC10i3FNK with an Intel Core i3-10110U processor that easily outperforms a Raspberry Pi, with 8GB of RAM and 250GB of storage, for under $140.
You can get a more powerful NUC if you're willing to spend a bit more, but in that case, you might as well grab any mini PC you want.There are powerful options from Geekom that come with stronger graphics cards already baked in, or, as Tim Brooks recommends, you can go for a Mac Mini.There's nothing new about recommending a mini PC.
I'm merely suggesting that you should open eBay right now and buy one of the cheapest old Intel NUCs you can find.It'll do just fine.It's time to install Home Assistant Compared to my Home Assistant Green, there's one downside to an Intel NUC, and that's the fact that the later is a DIY device.
Fortunately, *installing Home Assistant isn't too difficult if you're ready to tinker*.
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