Pi-hole is one of the most satisfying home network projects you can run. By setting up a DNS-based ad blocker on your mini PC, you block advertisements, tracking scripts, and malicious domains across every device on your network — phones, TVs, tablets, game consoles — without installing any software on those devices. Your Netflix app, YouTube, and websites all just… have fewer ads. It works because Pi-hole intercepts DNS queries at the network level.
Despite its name, Pi-hole runs perfectly on a mini PC — actually better than a Raspberry Pi, since it’s faster, has more RAM, and you can run it alongside other services like Home Assistant or a Plex server. This guide walks through setup from start to finish.
How Pi-hole Works
Every device on your network uses DNS (Domain Name System) to translate website names into IP addresses. Normally, your router handles these requests by forwarding them to your ISP’s DNS servers or a public DNS like Google’s 8.8.8.8. Pi-hole replaces this — you set Pi-hole as your network’s DNS server, and it checks every DNS request against its blocklists. Requests for known ad servers, tracking domains, and malicious sites get blocked; everything else passes through normally.
Prerequisites
You’ll need: a mini PC with Linux installed (Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS is ideal), a static IP address for the mini PC on your network, access to your router’s admin panel to change DNS settings, and about 30 minutes. Pi-hole runs comfortably on an N100 mini PC with 1GB of RAM allocated — if you’re running Proxmox, a lightweight LXC container is perfect for Pi-hole.
Step 1: Assign a Static IP to Your Mini PC
Pi-hole must have a consistent IP address — if it changes, all your DNS settings break. On most home routers, find the DHCP lease table in the admin panel, locate your mini PC by hostname or MAC address, and reserve that IP address (sometimes called “DHCP reservation” or “static DHCP lease”). This keeps the same IP without manually configuring the OS network settings.
Step 2: Install Pi-hole
SSH into your mini PC (or open a terminal) and run the one-line installer:
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bashThe interactive installer walks you through: selecting your network interface (use your Ethernet interface, typically eth0 or eno1), choosing an upstream DNS provider (Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is a solid privacy-respecting choice), selecting which blocklists to start with (the default StevenBlack list is a good starting point), enabling the web interface, and setting an admin password.
Step 3: Point Your Router to Pi-hole
In your router’s admin panel, find the DNS settings (often under LAN Setup, DHCP Settings, or Advanced). Set the primary DNS server to your mini PC’s static IP address. Set the secondary DNS to a public DNS (like 1.1.1.1) as a fallback in case Pi-hole is temporarily offline. Save and restart your router.
All devices on your network will now route DNS requests through Pi-hole. This takes effect immediately for new DNS lookups — you may need to flush your devices’ DNS caches (or just wait a few minutes) for the change to be fully visible.
Step 4: Access the Pi-hole Dashboard
Open a browser and navigate to http://[your-mini-pc-IP]/admin. Log in with your admin password. The dashboard shows real-time DNS query statistics: total queries, percentage blocked, top blocked domains, and which devices on your network are making the most requests. It’s genuinely fascinating to see how much tracking happens in the background on normal browsing.
Adding More Blocklists
Pi-hole’s blocking effectiveness scales with the quality and quantity of your blocklists. In the admin panel → Group Management → Adlists, you can add community-maintained lists. The OISD Big list (oisd.nl) is widely recommended as a comprehensive, well-maintained blocklist that blocks a broad range of ads and trackers without over-blocking legitimate sites.
FAQ
Will Pi-hole break websites? Occasionally. If a site stops loading correctly, it’s likely that a domain it depends on is on your blocklist. In the Pi-hole dashboard, check recent queries and whitelist the necessary domain. Most users find they need to whitelist fewer than a dozen domains over months of use.
Does Pi-hole block YouTube ads? Partially — Pi-hole can block some YouTube ad-related domains but Google serves many ads from the same domains as regular YouTube content, making them difficult to block at DNS level without breaking YouTube itself. Browser extensions like uBlock Origin are more effective for YouTube specifically.
Can Pi-hole run alongside a NAS or Plex on the same mini PC? Yes. Pi-hole is extremely lightweight — it uses under 100MB of RAM at typical home network query volumes. It coexists happily with any other services on the same machine.