Hmm. I run mine off a usb3 ssd and it’s faster, but still slow.

It’s OK, but I’d suggest:

Atom > arm64 > arm32

I ran on a Pi 4, but switched to a PC for jellyfin. The pi can’t transcode for shit. It was slow to boot and slow over SSH.

Look for a NUC - they’re designed for desktop use, so they have more poke than a Pi. The N6005 CPU is a good choice, the N5105 is ok. These are x64, so you’ll have the widest range of packages. 4GB will do, if its upgradeable later. NUCs usually take SODIMMs, which you can pick up on ebay for peanuts.

Bear in mind that network chipset will be your bottleneck in some use cases. If it has a “gigabit port” but only a cheap chipset, and you use it as a router, you might max out at ADSL speeds… in that case you’ll wish you’d gone for a box designed for soft routing, which are a fair bit pricier.

Pi is not the only SoC, merely the best-known.

I’d earn anyone thinking of buying a Pi for a home server: ARM is widely supported, but you might regret investing in arm32. Atom is a safer choice.

They don’t supply PoE, mind.

I’m planning an ubiquiti deployment:

• 5-6x AP 6 Pro (haven’t done survey yet)
• 1x TL-SG1016PE PoE switch (yuck, but cheap)
• 1x R86S running opnsense and docker VMs, with unifi controller and pihole in docker

The R86S is the same price as the dream machine, but good luck running pihole on the DM.

I considered Mikrotik, but my mum would have to call me every time there was an issue, and it would only be marginally cheaper. I expect any competent local tech to be able to support unifi and opnsense.

There are many similar. The best is GoWin R86S

…or MIPS…

Big fan of Mikrotik, but it helps to have some experience.

Haven’t tried hex, but RB2011 would be my default recommendation, and I’ve seen RB4009 for ~£120 (bargain of the century!)