EDIT: Thank you for all the comments and suggestions! I’m sorry I can’t reply to everything but I have a list now of hardware to look at. I appreciate that everyone has been so helpful! I’ll post an update once I buy one and get it going.

I’ve been running a Plex server for music off my gaming laptop for a few months and (I think) I’m ready to take it further - that is, I’d like to have the server running on its own hardware.

At this point, I’d just be running a music server, but I know I’ll want to add more services.

The first would be something like Google Drive - I’m working with a couple of other people on business plans and I’d love to self-host our files and the software (like LibreOffice) to edit them.

I’m comfortable with the software side and I’m finding lots of options, especially in this community.

The hardware side… I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by all the options and I don’t know enough to judge the search results.

Any recommendations for hardware or links to guides would be appreciated.

  • AtemuEnglish
    2•1 day ago

    Personally I went with an ITX build where I run everything in a Debian KVM/qemu host, including my fedora workstation as a vm with vfio passthrough of a usb controller and the dgpu. It was a lot of fun setting it up, but nothing I’d recommend for someone needing advice for their first homelab.

    I feel like that has more to do with the complexity of solving your use-case in software rather than anything to do with the hardware. It’d be just as hard on a pre-built NAS as on a DIY build; though perhaps even worse on the pre-built due to shitty OS software.

    • @anamethatisntEnglish
      1•20 hours ago

      Agreed - my use-case would be “24/7 server + gaming vm on demand with my monitor and peripherals connected to the gaming vm” and I doubt that is what most are going for.

      The reason I mentioned my own build is because I consider putting all the components together to be a step up in complexity too, when compared to going pre-built. For someone who is comfortable with building their own PC I would definitely recommend doing that, the ability to tailor the hw to your needs is so much greater. :)

      • AtemuEnglish
        2•15 hours ago

        I think I’d split that into two machines; a low power 24/7 server and a on-demand gaming machine. Performance and power savings don’t go well together; high performance machines usually have quite high idle power consumption.

        It’d also be more resilient; if you mess up your server, it won’t take your gaming machine with it and vice versa.

        putting all the components together to be a step up in complexity too, when compared to going pre-built. For someone who is comfortable with building their own PC I would definitely recommend doing that

        I’d recommend that to someone who doesn’t know how to build a PC because everyone should learn how to do it and doing it for the first time with low-cost and/or used hardware won’t cause a great financial loss should you mess up.