When building a home server, could a used/cheap PC do the job?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve never done any sort of home networking or self-hosting of any kind but thanks to Jellyfin and Mastodon I’ve become interested in the idea. As I understand it, physical servers (“bare metal” correct?) are PCs intended for data storing and hosting services instead of being used as a daily driver like my desktop. From my (admittedly) limited research, dedicated servers are a bit expensive. However, it seems that you can convert an old PC and even laptop into a server (examples here and here). But should I use that or are there dedicated servers at “affordable” price points. Since is this is first experience with self-hosting, which would be a better route to take?

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EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
My current home server that runs three dozen containers including Plex and Emby as well as two dozen other services and many terabytes of data is literally an old Lenovo desktop I got for free out of somebody’s garage in 14 years ago. So yeah

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neatobuilds@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I started with my old gaming rig as a server, any decent intel cpu with quicksync is very good for plex and transcoding saving having to buy a cpu if you went with like a server grade cpu with no igpu

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bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Heck yeah. Not always the best for power efficiency though.

Old laptops also a great choice but I really recommend removing the battery first.

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- leadore@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Why removing the battery? I was thinking that could be one good thing about using a laptop is that in a way it has its own UPS.
  
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  - bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Because as a headless server it’s likely to sit hidden for a long time. This and the always being plugged in is not good for lithium-ion batteries. If/when it starts ballooning will you notice? It’s a fire risk.
    
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ashenone@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yea definitely. I started tinkering with my first server in 2020 and used an ewaste dell tower with an i7 3770 (8 years old at that point) and an old rx460 I had laying around. As others mentioned power consumption was way worse than modern hardware. But I had at one point a half dozen people streaming jellyfin 1080 content from it with no hiccups at all. That said I was running on linux, not sure how it would do if you run windows.

Right now I’m using a low power pc to run my server, again an old ewaste dell micro pc with a 5th or 6th gen i5 and no dedicated gpu. Still no problem streaming to my partners and I’s phone/tablet simultaneously. Again, running linux.

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skribe@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It depends, but probably. I use 5-10yo laptops running Debian.

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bigDottee@geekroom.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
100%. That’s how I started, that’s how I continue to operate. Currently have a few HP prodesk and elite desk mini pcs, my old desktop converted to be a proxmox node that runs OPNsense as a vm, and an even older desktop that runs TrueNAS. However, I would like to replace my current truenas system with something newer and lower power as it consumes quite a bit for what it’s doing.

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CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
When I build my NAS/server last year, I bought a used Dell Optiplex from 2013 on eBay for $50. I tossed in an old SSD I had laying around, and squeezed in 42 TB worth of HDD drives.

The only real downsides of doing it this way are

No realistic way of upgrading hardware

Limited space for internal drives

No hardware transcoding abilities out of the box

More power consumption than buying something newer
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I started out with an old laptop then eventually “upgraded” to a refurbished office surplus desktop. I highly recommend starting out on a project PC as a sort of proof of concept before investing any money into it. Even hosting the family media libraries, I have never had an issue with streaming video, etc. even with pretty dated hardware.

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Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Mine are lenovo thinkcentres, ypu xan get a good cpu, low power usage, up to 32GB RAM, one 2"5 drive + one nvme. Very easy to open and service.

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LMurch@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I love the vibe in this thread/community. You all seem like real cool cats. I appreciate that.

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- AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Absolutely, this is great. Knowledgeable people being reasonable.
  
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- jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Image
  
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fishcharlie@eventfrontier.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It really depends on what you’re trying to do. At the end of the day, the foundational components are pretty standard across the board. All machines have a CPU, motherboard, storage mechanism, etc. Oftentimes those actual servers have a form factor better suited for rack mounting. They often have more powerful components.

But at the end of the day, the difference isn’t as striking as most people not aware of this stuff think.

I’d say considering this is your first experience, you should start with converting an old PC due to the lower price point, and then expand as needed. You’ll learn a lot and get a lot of experience from starting there.

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empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Any normal computer can become a “server”, its all based on the software.
Most enterprise server hardware is expensive because its designed around demanding workloads where uptime and redundancy is important. For a goober wanting to start a Minecraft and Jellyfin server, any old PC will work.
For home labbers office PC’s is the best way to do it. I have two machines right now that are repurposed office machines. They usually work well as office machines generally focus on having a decent CPU and plenty of memory without wasting money on a high end GPU, and can be had used for very cheap (or even free if you make friends that work in IT). And unless you’re running a lot of game servers or want a 4k streaming box, even a mediocre PC from 2012 is powerful enough to do a lot of stuff on.

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- archemist@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Totally agree, I’ll add that I run jellyfin, the *arrs, an admittedly low throughout ripping/encoding setup, and a few other containers on a single optiplex micro 7060 and there’s a lot of room leftover. I very much appreciate the laptop processor in it because it usually sits idle for 16 hours a day.
  
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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If you already have one, it’s a good place to start. However, power efficiency will be the biggest drawback. Power ain’t free, and in some places it is very expensive. I’d recommend picking up some cheap ThirdReality switches and using them to monitor power consumption in Home Assistant.

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tonytins@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Generally speaking, yes. My home server is just a Pi.

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TinyRhino@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Hardware requirements really depend on what you want to do with the server. I have a few raspberry pi, an old PC, and at least one or two old laptops to host things on. But really, I use the old PC the most. It pulls more power than a raspberry pi, but I’ve found it to be much more reliable and stable.

Drop some additional hard drives if you need a media server. More memory & CPU if you are doing things like manipulating images or transcoding video. I run a webserver and host various subdomains for things I don’t want to pay to host. Plus working samples of my portfolio projects. I keep my actual portfolio on cloudflare, but link out to these work samples.

I also host some other apps that are just for my home network. Everything works great on a 10 year old PC sitting in a network closet. You are very likely not in need of professional server hardware.

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southernbeaver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think that’s preferable. I have resused my old gaming computer as a server since I stopped gaming for a while.

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