I use a headless Raspberry Pi 4 connected via USB to an external 2TB SSD and host

• Nextcloud
• Pihole w/Unbound
• Transmission
• Jellyfin
• Webmin
• Apache webserver with a personal static webpage
• Soon to host my own Lemmy instance

Make sure you have a plan for hard drive space. Mini computers tend to not have as many bays for hard drives. And since you're doing the media server thing, you'll want to be able to easily drop in more drives at a later time. You could do this with like an external USB hdd enclosure with multiple bays, but if you go with a desktop form factor that wouldn't necessarily be required.

Speaking of hard drives, checkout MergerFS, you can use this to pool multiple hard drives into a single mountpoint so you don't have to worry about moving files around to maximize disk usage. Also, the nice thing about mergerfs opposed to say RAID is all of the drives can be different manufacturers and sizes.

Also, I would personally recommend going with proxmox as your baremetal install and then spin up VM's for the various things you plan to run.

And if you think you might get more into the *arrs (like readarr or lidarr), it's probably worth your time to setup prowlarr.

And if you haven't yet, I recommend learning how to use Docker and docker-compose. There's a bit of a learning curve to start, but you'll save a lot of time and headaches in the long run. Linux-server has some good docs and images to get you started: https://docs.linuxserver.io/

And don't expose your *arrs to the internet, if you plan to share your Plex/jellyfin, then setup Overseer to support requests for new content.

Hopefully this all helps. Feel free to ask me any follow up questions as I have a similar setup (albeit with a bit more going on).

Maybe stating the obvious, but don't skip over older laptops if you can get your hands on them. The CPUs are optimised to be power efficient. They also come with a built in UPS that even in bad cases will still be good enough for 15 minutes or so, which is good enough for 99% of the power cuts. Only down-side: lack of SATA ports, but that is more or less the same with mini-PCs.

Intel NUC is probably the best choice - silent, possible to have two SSDs, pretty low powered.

Personally, I did settle with 13 Dell optiplexes 9020 SFF

I've had mostly good luck with lower end NUCs. I say mostly because of 3, one died a hard and abrupt death after 2 years; but the other 2 have been fine going on 2 years now. The only problem with NUCs in general is they tend to be over priced. If you can find them on sale they are totally worth it. As others have pointed out, you should have a plan for more storage. Personally I've found a good usb hub and some external disks work great for what I do. As to why I like them: 1) form factor, low profile cube, 2) they happily run headless, 3) hardware seems to be of decent quality (ignoring my i3 box that never turned back on after a reboot), 4) most models have enough I/O to fit your needs.

You can also use hosts like linode with $100 credits to try out self hosting with no investment at all. If you need a coupon code, let me know.

A few years old prebuilt for the office can work well, I have an HP 290 and HP S01 that work great as servers.

I got myself a used/refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Tiny, which works pretty well. Put in more ram and bigger storage and it is pretty beefy now as well as silent.

I have a big enough house to be able to put this machine somewhere out of the way but there are plenty of cheap server gear on classifieds. I paid ish 300 euros for a 32 core machine with 40gb ram. I can host all the things without it even breaking a sweat.

Probably uses a lot more electricity, but I haven't really noticed it on my power bill

I use a few used Dell Optiplex 7050 Micros, they’re great for the price (and have a small footprint too!)

Edit: for storage I have a HP MicroServer Gen. 10 plus

https://techmikeny.com/

Depending on where you're at in the IT space it's entirely possible to start with an old desktop system and build from there. If you get into things heavily though memory space can quickly become a bottleneck. I just recently upgraded a couple parts of mine so the principal host is a Dell R820 which has the potential for 4 multi-core processors and around 1.5TB of memory, should cover everything for a while outside of the storage and security side of things. Going to a place like the site above is a fine way to get some low cost hosting gear custom built to your specs. I think with reusing the drives I had already it was under $800 all told and has plenty of room to grow.

Originally I had planned to do what you’re doing and use a mini PC to upgrade from my pi4 eventually what I did was get a Mac Mini and keep the pi for pihole and dhcp.

Not saying you should get a Mac mini m2 but the power consumption was the main push for me to go down that route cause remember you’re running the thjng 24/7 for years and depending where you live electricity isn’t cheap. (I pay 32.5p per kWh)

Considering the cost the same as a decently mid range mini pc (i got mine for £500 new) it makes sense.

If you’re looking at a cheaper budget try finding something at least 8th gen intel and up for better power savings

I'd recommend to start with a mini-pc, or something like Odroid H3. I love my Odroids and can highly recommend them. It has two SATA, NVME, supports up to 64 GB RAM and dual 2.5 GBe - I couldn't imagine a better machine to start with at that price.

I bought a Morefine N100 recently, it's a great device. Support 1 NVMe and 1 SSD 2.5, you can use both combined in RAID and even backup options in the cloud or on an external disk through the USB3.0 ports.

Quicksync for Plex/tdarr works great on the latest version of Debian Bookworm.

Another vote for Asrock Deskmini. I’ve had an A300 going for a while now. It started off just doing a few things on Docker, it’s now been repurposed as a Proxmox host. The nvme plus 2x 2.5” sata is very useful for storage options, and you can put some reasonable desktop CPUs in - subject to cooling, of which you can get a very low profile replacement if you need to. As there’s no video on the motherboard and no space to fit a PCIe (let alone the video card) you are restricted to CPUs with onboard video, which I think is more of a restraint for the AMD version than the intel, but even so there are enough options in the AMD lineup if you need firepower.

I am running openmediavault on a HP workstation I bought off ebay. I paid less than $100 dollars for it I think 10 years ago. I have jellyfin set up for media. I should probably upgrade as it is an old Core 2 Quad.

Asrock Deskmini x300. Great little home server :)

If you just want something small and fun to play with Linux and containers try looking for used Chromeboxes. Just bear in mind that going down the *arr app rabbit hole usually means building something with more storage.

I just built a Server using J5040 board. With 16gb ram (yes it works) a 500gb m.2 as system , 2x4tb ironwolf as ZFS mirror pool, 350 W power supply all in the node 304 fractal case for 550 euro.

Runs proxmox as hypervisor for VM or Container. As example LXC container for motioneye and syncthing

I would head over to https://forums.serverbuilds.net/ and chat with the nice people there. They specialize in used hardware, both consumer and server-grade stuff.

There's lots of ways you can take this, but from my perspective the best place to start is a NAS (preferably one with Docker and VM capabilities like Unraid). That will open up a big rabbit hole for you to explore.

Intel NUCs are a great mini PC option (while a little expensive)

sounds like you need newegg.com. I build a new PC every few years and they have most things you want. tom's hardware usually has reviews and lists. couple sites I can't remember help with parts compatibility. use the search https://www.newegg.com/