Intel N150 mini PCs are cheap, tiny, and use very little power, which makes them look almost perfect for a first Proxmox home lab.
But the more useful question isn't "can it run Proxmox?"
It's what can you realistically run before the hardware becomes the bottleneck?
For a lightweight home lab, an N150 + 16GB RAM can make sense for things like:
- Home Assistant
- Pi-hole / AdGuard Home
- small Docker services
- a lightweight Minecraft server
- a couple of small Linux VMs
- basic file and network services
The limits start becoming more important with heavier workloads.
Jellyfin transcoding can depend heavily on how you're using the iGPU. Immich can become CPU and memory intensive during indexing and processing. Multiple VMs can make 16GB RAM the limiting factor before the CPU becomes the main problem.
That's why I've started thinking about home lab hardware in terms of workloads rather than just specs.
I put together a small workload checker where you can select what you want to run and see where an N150 + 16GB setup is likely to become limiting:
https://runahomelab.com/posts/example-350-proxmox-homelab-build/
I'm curious where other people draw the line with these low-power mini PCs.
What workload made you move to something more powerful?
