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

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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  • Do it. Jump in. Just start with whatever you can assemble.
    It's a great way to keep your room warm.

  • Yes, you can easily do it.

    You want to look at 2 things: 1. Noise 2. Ratio of performance / power usage.

    1. Noise

    When your PC runs 24/7 then it might be annoying to hear it's noise sometimes. Real server cases are usually even much louder than former PC's because they are built for super strong air flow inside.

    Think carefully what you need. In my situation it is just one light wooden door away from my bed, so I wanted it impossible to hear. I optimized it so, and it ended up being so quiet that I cannot hear any fans, but I hear the clicking of the harddisks all the time. Well, I got used to that, mostly. For my next home server I want to build my own case that absolutely blocks this noise.

    1. Ratio of performance / power usage

    People are frequently asking what if I turn this old Pentium etc. into a server?

    Well, these old CPU's have very low performance compared to new ones, but it might just be sufficient. But then you recognize that the old veterans burn 100 Watts for the same performance where a modern (low performance) CPU burns only 5 Watts, and now it will do that 24/7. Think about your yearly costs. Many times it turns out that buying a new one saves your money very easily.

  • My server is an HP Small Form Factor Corei5 32GB RAM that I bought on a second hand shop. The thing I paid attention the most was the i5's gen, as some older ones don't include h265 transcoding acceleration, or sometimes h264. This is rather important for Jellyfin. ANything else, just go with it and try!

    • You definitely want an 8th gen (Intel) or better to have Jellyfin Quick Sync support. It's what I have (i5-8400T) and it offer a fairly decent AVC (h264) and HEVC (h265) transcoding for my usage. However, for futur proofing consider an 11th gen for the AV1 support.

      • Thanks for specifying. You are correct, and that is exactly the CPU I have in my SFF, too.

  • 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.

  • When talking about hardware, the physical computer itself, a "server" is commercial grade and designed to run under heavy loads for years on end with very high reliability. Error correcting RAM, redundant power supplies, room inside for huge processors, more airflow than a C-130 for cooling, etc.

    On the software side, a "server" is just a computer that provides some service to users on a network. You very likely have one of those Wi-Fi router/ethernet switch things from the likes of Linksys or whatever, right? That is almost certainly acting as a DHCP server for you LAN, in that capacity it might handle kilobytes of data a day because dynamically assigning IP addresses on a household Wi-Fi network is not a very demanding task, so it'll do it on a tiny little ARM processor with a few MB of RAM. It probably also has a web server, which is how the "go to its IP address in your browser and get to your router settings page" works. It's serving a little website that most of the time gets absolutely zero traffic.

    So, turning a desktop PC into a "server." The question is, what services will it provide? Desktop PCs are pretty good at mostly low traffic with bursts of intense work, so if they're going to sit still doing nothing while you're at work all day, and then maybe handle some file storage or media transcoding during the evenings while you're home, a PC will do that just fine, if you're okay paying the power bill of having a computer up and running all the time.

    If you're hosting a website or a game server with a lot of active users around the clock, you might want to look into more professional hardware.

  • Heck yeah. Not always the best for power efficiency though.

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

    • 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.

      • 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.

        UPSes use typically lead-acid batteries like a car.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • It depends on what you are running, but at one point I had an Odroid N2+ with 8GB RAM running Home Assistant, mpd, Snap server, zwavejs, mympd, jellyfin, and Calibre, all in containers, controlling the house and providing music for the sound system, playing movies, and with no issues. It ran for 7 years. So you don't need much; memory helps.

    Oh - I take it back; after I put Jellyfin on it, it would struggle with transcoding. No GPU, old, weak CPU, whatever. But otherwise, it was fine.

    At some point I realized I'd have to leave the computer with the house, because I have over 30 hardwired z-wave devices I'm not taking out if we sell, so I moved all of the services except Home Assistant and zwavejs to another computer.

    My point is: old computers should be fine, assuming you're not trying to run LLMs on them. Or going heavy video transcoding. Just for serving up some web applications? You don't need much.

  • Its less of a need for powerful hardware and more of a want.

    I started off my days with a laptop that had a broken screen. I took screen off and hid it behind my desk, worked perfectly fine, even came with a built in backup battery too xD

  • 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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