My $150 mini PC runs 12 Docker containers and hasn’t brok...

What’s Happening

Listen up: The secret to a smooth self-hosting experience.

My $150 mini PC runs 12 Docker containers and hasn’t broken a sweat By Dhruv Bhutani Published Mar 12, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. (shocking, we know)

Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more.

The Details

Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar. Sign in to your XDA account Add Us On Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Anyone dabbling in self-hosting runs into a familiar set of problems.

For me, it’s been deciding what to host on. While I kicked off off with a Raspberry Pi , I quickly outgrew that.

Why This Matters

Next came a NAS, but it wasn’t ideal either. Let’s just say that while I wanted to self-host my stack at home, the hardware options leaned awkward. A full desktop server was just too awkward to run Home Assistant and Immich.

Tech companies have been making moves like this as competition heats up.

Key Takeaways

• But a cheap mini PC turned out to be the immaculate middle ground I was looking for.
• Just, I picked up a mini PC that ran me just about $150, runs Linux headless and sits in a corner in my study.
• Despite that workload, the machine stays completely responsive.

The Bottom Line

Despite that workload, the machine stays completely responsive. What truly convinced me that I’d made the right choice was observing, once configured, how little attention the system requires.

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