Treczoks

One place to look at are web sites dealing with company bankruptcies. They are good for purchasing electronics and tools.

Back when windows and office licenses were bound to a sticker with a key number, I bought a stack of broken laptops for 10€. They were leftovers from an auction - nobody wanted them. I removed and tested RAM and harddisks, and then cut out the bottom of those laptops where the license stickers were. I sold each set of licenses, Windows and Office, for 10€ each, making a good profit. And kept the RAM and HDs that worked for my own use.

A bit pricy for home use with 8-10k bucks…

If you have a RPi, install Mozillla Firefox, and Ublock. The only way to watch YT without going nuts.

The “faucet” was water literally streaming in through the broken window during a thunderstorm. One of my coworkers went outside and shielded the window with a wooden board to reduce the flow.

Not selfhosting, but I remember standing in a server room with a hands’ width of water on the ground (and rising), and hastily shutting down servers where the water was already in the case. It were big towers (Compaq Proliant, if anyone remembers), and luckily the board, drives, and PSU were in the top part of the big tower cases, the drive bays at the bottom were empty.

We got all equipment out safely, and we did not get electrocuted, either. We left with the last equipment when the water level was approaching the knees.

Not necessarily the color code that changed. Even though resistors are resilient, they may fail and change their value. Given that the device is 50 years old, it might happen.

I think it is important to also include hardware in this group, as hardware for selfhosting is different, both from user PCs as they are discussed elsewhere, and from large, professional hosting hardware, which is usually outside the range of selfhosters.

I support striking that part from rule 3.

There are companies dealing with used and refurbished hardware. There are loads of PCs around that are not bloated enough for Win11, but still make good home servers. Depending on specs and prices, buy more than one for extra RAM, a second SSD, and spare parts.

If it randomly locks up, try memtest86. It can often be found as a boot alternative in Linux installation images, but it is probably available solo.