Hey, I want to dip my feet into self-hosting, but i find the hardware side of things very daunting. I want to self host a Minecraft server (shocking, i know), and i’ve actually done this before both on my own PC and through server hosts. I’d like to run a Plex server as well (Jellyfin is champ now it sounds like? So maybe that instead), but I imagine the Minecraft server is going to be the much more intensive side of things, so if it can handle that, plex/jellyfin will be no issue.
The issue is, I can’t seem to find good resources on the hardware side of building a server. I’m finding it very difficult to “map out” what I need, I don’t want to skimp out and end up with something much less powerful than what I need, but i also don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on something extremely overkill. I looked through the sidebar, but it seems to mostly cover the software side of things. Are there any good resources on this?
As someone who is also looking at building a server for different things then you( mainly nextcloud and a few other self hosted services). if you don't need more then 2tb of storage look into a used HP mini office PC.
They are cheap at less then £200 for an older model or even sub £100
They are a lot more powerful then an SBC like a raspberry pi but without being an electricity consumption monster like a lot of servers
Some have a 60W PSU so they are dirt cheap to run
Newer ones have a 2.5 SATA slot and a M.2 slot( including the 60W model I'm looking at getting used). So you can have dual drives for a fast main drive and a backup drive or RAID depending on how you set it up
They are small and don't take up much room in your house like a raspberry pi
If you need more space and it doesn't have to be super fast you could get a USB NAS for it
So overall they are a really good option if you want something small and you don't have a ton of money for hardware or electricity but a raspberry pi doesn't fulfil your performance needs.