I’m ready to graduate from my Raspberry Pi era of selfhosting and buy hardware specifically for use as a server.

I’ve been recommended in the past to look for used Lenovo Thinkstations and/or Dell Optiplex, but it has been so many years since I’ve shopped for a computer, I don’t know what kind of specs to look for. What are the types of specs I should look for to get the best value for money?

I’m hoping to spend around $300-400, get something that can be upgraded in the future to last 10+ years, and do the following things:

  • YUNoHost / reverse proxy
  • Nextcloud with a custom domain for email addresses, cloud drive, photos
  • Music Streaming with something like Navidrome
  • Serve static websites
  • pi-Hole
  • Maybe pi-VPN

And someday maybe:

  • Host game servers like minecraft
  • Jellyfin for videos
  • Kodi and output to TV?

So far based on my selfhosted journey, I expect to want the following:

  • Room for 3+ Hard Drives
  • External UPS (probably will go with the cheap APC at Microcenter that’s always on sale).
  • Solid Power Supply / Cooling
  • probably 1000 gigabit Networking (?)

The types of questions I have for Thinkstations / Optiplex:

  • How is the Power Supply / Cooling?
  • Processor? Do I need i5? i7? Generations? AMD? Clock Speed? I’m completely lost here.
  • How much RAM do I need?
  • Do I need a discrete graphics card? Can Thinkstations / Optiplex have a graphics card added to them later?
  • Anything else I’m missing?

Thanks!

  • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    I could get by with 2 HD bays – it is more because I would like to use RAID if possible, and have an easier time to upgrade to larger capabilities as time goes on.

    I’ve also just appreciated larger cases with more room – with small cases sometimes it’s hard to work in there.

    Internal redundancy would be nice to have with a file server, but probably not necessary if I can have redundancy with regular backups instead.

    Thanks for the ideas!

    • kevincox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      IMHO for 2 drives you don’t want redundancy. (I assume that is what you want RAID for, mirroring?). The per-drive failure rate is so low that you are unlikely to encounter it and nothing you are running seems particularly availability sensitive. Having a bit of downtime to rebuild in the very rare case of a drive failure is fine. The extra storage space is way more valuable.