Something small and 2 or 4 GB RAM. Raspberry pi's compute power is good enough for me, I'm not doing anything too intensive.
Is raspberry pi 4 still the best answer?
I am a tinkerer and don't mind tinkering. I typically use Gentoo Linux as main OS. I also don't mind ARM or other architectures. I've been eyeing the RockPro64 as well.
Pi's have kinda garbage IO. You're limited to USB only which is a shared bus (so if you're saturating one hard drive, the other drives won't be able to do shit and I dislike it) you're also required to boot from SD card on a Pi, and OS level writes tend to kill SD cards frequently.
The Orange Pi 5 that I have technically has a PCIe NVME M.2 slot that runs at PCIe 2.0x2 iirc. I've not done it with mine yet, so I can't guarantee compatibility, but that can theoretically be split using a m.2 to SATA controller adapter like that
But at that point and cost the Rockpro64 look like a legitimate option, since PCIe to SATA adapters using a 4x slot exist all over the damn place.
Honest opinion though: look for used office PC sales or government/school district clearing sales. I've gotten a stack of older 2nd/3rd gen intel Core machines at $50 a pop that are plenty fast for light home server use and have full fat motherboards for connecting up a bunch of SATA devices. They're a little more power hungry- expect 50W or more at idle when you have drives spinning - but they simplify setup a lot, they package nicely since you can put the drives inside, and the power supply is built in.
Note that the Pi5 finally exposes PCIe, which introduces the potential for much better IO. technically the CM4 already did that, but that moves the price outside normal Pi prices with the necessary carrier boards to make use of it).
But I agree that for most tasks there are better, more competitively prices SBCs out there. The major reason to pick the Pi is popularity and wide usage/support (which is especially useful for new users IMO).
yeah, it exposes PCIe, i forgot about that. but still a single lane and requiring an additional adapter card and ribbon cable that complicates packaging a bit and adds cost. I dunno, I'm sour on Pi these days since they've spent years screwing over consumers in favor of business customers. I've chosen not to buy their stuff despite the better software support.