A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I want to set up a home server and take advantage of everything it can offer, specialty privacy.
Raspberry PI, no matter the version, are all quite expensive here in Brazil, so that's off the table. I'll go for a regular desktop. But the the requirements for a server that "does it all" remains a mystery to me.
What specs do you guys recommend?
Had this link in my clipboard for a different comment but it fits here as well: https://hackaday.com/2025/04/09/self-hosting-a-cluster-on-old-phones/
In all honesty this may be a bit advanced depending on your experience and more importantly nerves, but any old PC/laptop can be turned into a server.
As for parameters I would suggest you go to the apps you plan on running and check their minimum requirements.
The things I paid attention to was
USB3 - you need this otherwise connecting external drives will be a joke
Motherboard needs to accept up to 32 GB of RAM. Mine currently has only 8 but knowing I can upgrade is nice.
Quiet - must be silent when idle.
CPUs of less than 8th? gen will suck at video transcoding due to lacking certain capabilities. Important if running jellyfin, etc.
The beauty of self hosting is it's all about your individual circumstances so you priorities and acceptable tradeoffs will differ.
My preferences are quite different.
You'll need a lot of RAM for all the containers, 64 GB is nice. A CPU that saves power when idle is fine. You'll need at least 16 TB storage (32 TB RAID1). SATA HDD is fine, when you have ZFS and cache using SSDs. Never use USB for drives.
It does not need to be quiet. Just put it in the basement and close the door.
My jelly fin server is running off of an entry level desktop in 2009, a single core celeron processor. I have to downscale video files to standard definition in order for it to keep up.
Intel i3 or i5 4th gen or newer will be solid.
Dell, HP, Lenovo all make a ton of generic office PCs that are good for a home server, and you can find older models for under $40 in the US so hopefully they're also cheap in Brazil.
If you can find one of the optiplex desktops with the T version of Intel processor, those are low powered
If you aren't planning on running a media server go for a old desktop or laptop (with Ethernet port). Your bottleneck will be your network speed 9 time out of 10. Also use a firewall and a anti scrapper (ex: Anubis) to avoid wasting resources.
The joke is electricity and Linux.
The real answer is the free hardware.
My main reliable is from 2008? It cannot do modern virtualization due to not having the CPU instruction sets.
For Linux: Anything Intel 4xxx is fine, later is better obviously. 4GB RAM is OK for one family, 8GB gives enough headroom to host NextCloud for a small office. SSD for operating system makes it snappy as fuck at the terminal but aren't mandatory, slow drives for storage are fine.
You have to have an idea of what you'll run on it first.
Old corporate desktops will do for a NAS and basic light services. Look for one that has three drive bays plus an NVMe slot.
If you have an old android phone, then you can repurpose it into a Linux server.
Or an old computer. But you probably don't need to buy anything to get started.
A CPU that can run Linux along with some networking
I'm using my old desktop from 2010. There's no such thing as a server that can "do it all", but any computer from the last 10 years would probably be a fine place to start. The more you do, the more likely you'll be to hit some sort of performance limit, and by that time you'll know more about what you actually want.
In short, find old cheap/free hardware and start playing around.
Rather than give you specific recommendations, here's some guidance for parts
Mobo: The more slots you have for RAM and storage, the better.
CPU: literally anything. More cores and faster cores are ideal, but CPU requirements for these things are generally lower than a desktop.
RAM: Buy 1 stick of the fastest and highest capacity RAM your motherboard can handle. When you're ready or you start to see slowdown, buy another of the same stick. You can get far on 16-32GB, you won't need much more until later.
Storage: an SSD for the OS and one or more HDDs for storage.
PSU: generally anything in the 500-700 range will be good. You'll want more if you plan to put a GPU in, though.
a potato computer can be a server if the workload is light enough.
i had a core 2 duo era pentium with 2gb of ram as a server once and it did the job. minecraft server for 6 people + pihole + file server.
core 2 duos are dime a dozen in brazil and are probably more powerful than some older RPIs. you can probably get something newer too.
x86 will decimate most arm chips
The new stuff is a bit more debatable but old stuff it isn't even a fight
any old laptop with at least a third gen intel or something comparable works. you do want to get some extra storage via a cheap old hdd
The minimum spec is whatever e-waste you can find that still powers on.
My home server has an i3-4160, 10 gigabytes of mis-matched RAM, a ten-year-old 240 GB SSD with 36000 hours on it, and three 1 TB hard drives in a RAID5 array each with ~25000 power-on hours. It runs Proxmox on the metal with a virtualized OPNsense, Nextcloud, and Jellyfin server (plus smaller services). Jank levels are high, but not fatal, and it was mostly free.
Living dangerously
If you are buying I wouldn't get something older as the newer stuff is the same price often times because it is less well known.
raspberry pi's arent the best option anyway since you need to add on a hat just to get some SATA ports. i think Odroid has some boards with sata connectors. zimaboard or zimablade are some other options off the top of my head
Anything that does the job is good enough. At its core a server is just a regular PC with a dedicated purpose and software. Sure, there are specialized hardware better suitable and purpose built, but it's not a requirement.
I for one prefer 19" rackmount stuff with disk bays in the front, but that's more of a convenience than anything.
UPS is nice, but it'll work without it.
I've had to deal with the Brazilian computer market and how it's ridiculously overpriced due to import fees, so in your situation I'd just get any hand-me-down computer. Servers generally don't require much unless you're doing something special or intensive.
Get your hands on whatever you can find for free or dirt cheap (laptop or desktop doesn'tmatter), install linux, and you have a basic setup that you can work with. If your use case requires more, then that's something you can accommodate in the next iteration of your server.
But the the requirements for a server that “does it all” remains a mystery to me.
"All" can include anything. I mean, you can include a home parallel compute render farm that will cost millions of dollars.
You're going to have to narrow it a bit down. You can have people maybe suggest some of the things that they use their systems for. Maybe it's hosting services for a cell phone that some people use cloud-based services for. Maybe it's home automation. Maybe it's a webserver. Maybe it's AI image generation.
EDIT: To put it another way, a self-hosted server is just a computer, often without a monitor and keyboard directly attached, that you have in your physical possession. The range of things that that might be used for and capabilities it might have is really broad. It's like saying "I want a vehicle. What is a vehicle that can do everything?" I mean, that might be a bicycle or a three-trailer road train, depending upon what you're going for.
You can build a render farm for not all that much money. You will pay a very high electric bill but other than that it is possible.
I mean, you can build a render farm on a single Raspberry Pi if you want, technically.
When I started my media server in 2020 I used e-waste from my building. Had an i7 3770, 16gb ddr3 ram and an rx460 graphics card. I ran jellyfin, ultrasonic and audiobookshelf for 10-15 people with no problem on this hardware. Anything made within the last decade should provide a good starting point for you.
This was almost my gaming PC specs in 2020. Rx580 and 16gb more ram. It's now my server running jellyfin and immich for my family.
Rx580 was such a workhorse card. Used mine until a year ago and then it went to a friend who's still using it today.
My Rx580 has basically been on continuously since I bought it in like 2017/18. I used it to mine when I wasn't gaming until it became unprofitable, then to process sequencing data for my dissertation project while not gaming, and now it's in my server.
This depends entirely on what you want to run. A pihole needs vastly different resources than for example offering jellyfin to 20 simultaneous users. Both can be hosted at home.
Keep an eye out for people trashing perfectly good desktop machines because Windows 10 is being retired.
If you want a server that "does it all" then you would need to get the most decked-out top of the line server available... Obviously that is unrealistic, so as others have mentioned, knowing WHAT you want to run is required to even begin to make a guess at what you will need.
Meanwhile here's what I suggest -- Grab any desktop machine you can find to get yourself started. Load up an OS, and start adding services. Maybe you want to run a personal web server, a file server, or something more extensive like Nextcloud? Get those things installed, and see how it runs. At some point you will start seeing performance issues, and this tells you when it's time to upgrade to something with more capability. You may simply need more memory or a better CPU, in which case you can get the parts, or you may need to really step up to something with dual-CPU or internal RAID. You might also consider splitting services between multiple desktop machines, for instance having one dedicated NAS and another running Nextcloud. Your personal setup will dictate what works best for you, but the best way to learn these things is to just dive in with whatever hardware you can get ahold of (especially when it's free), and use that as your baseline for any upgrades.
This. Be on the lookout for company grade PCs, like from Dell, Lenovo or Fujitsu, they come in small form factors, offer decent upgradability and are low/on power consumption and noise (most of the time)
A repurposed old PC with something like yunohost, generic Debian, or some lightweight Linux will probably get you what you need.
It heavily depends on what programs you want to run.
Raspberry PI
This also shouldn't be your default option. Your default should be whatever you have laying around, and a lot of people have a Raspberry Pi sitting idle, hence why people use them.
What specs
That depends on what you want to do with it.
For example, if you want to host a video server, then you'll want something that can handle transcoding. Check the Jellyfin docs for details, which recommends an N100 or better.
List all the things you need and want, and then look up what the requirements are. Basic file hosting is pretty light, so you really don't need much (hence the Raspberry Pi rec).
I personally use an old PC with the following specs:
This is way overkill for what I need, but I had it laying around. You could even start with a laptop, you'll just have limited storage (can get a USB emclosure of you want).
If you don't have something, maybe a mini PC would work (minisforum, beelink, etc). Or maybe it doesn't. I don't know what you're planning to run on it. You probably don't need anything fancy, your biggest requirement might be the GPU/iGPU if you're planning to do transcoding.
Do you have access to Raspberry Pi clones like Orange Pis etc? They’re often cheaper and you can order them straight from China.
What are you intending to run on this server?
If it is just PiHole, you can basically get the weakest computer you can find.
If you want lots of storage space, you will need to make sure you have a case and motherboard that will accommodate the drives.
If you are running encryption on those drives as well, you will need a CPU more powerful than what comes in a Pi, but nothing crazy.
If you are running lots and lots of VMs, you will want lots of RAM. A linux VM will use maybe a few GB each depending on what software each is running internally, a windows vm will use a bit more.
If you are doing AI workloads, you will need a graphics card.
I have a old optiplex 7010 with i7 and 8gig RAM. About 70€ on eBay. I upgraded it with a nvme SSD to bolt from (great tutorial here) and salvaged an old SATA HDD from an external case.
Currently runs 11+ container in proxmox without issues. Way beefier than a raspberry pi.
I also have room for 3 more hdds to put in a mergerfs system and 2 additional pcie slots für things like a faster LAN card or an additional SATA controller
Take a look at some N100 devices (or N95/N150).
These are a good alternative to RPis. Just be aware some of these are sort of haphazardly assembled so they might have cooling issues or bad power supplies.
Can't say my Chuwi Larkbox X has any issues (other than missing a few QoL settings in the UEFI).
8 GB RAM or more. OS installed either to SSD, or a HDD that does not store service data (for performance). a modern CPU with at least 4 cores. modern means it has at least AES and AVX2 instruction sets to do math quickly, but probably you can just pick one made in the last 10 years, with less years generally meaning better energy efficiency.
what kind of services do you want to host on it? initial plans, perhaps longer term plans?
That very much depends on what you want it to do (what is "everything") and how many users you have.
Why would raspberry pi's be expensive but the hardware to build a server be any cheaper?
Scalpers for highly sought-after hardware or just general lack of supply in specific regions.
Second hand markets exist and Raspberry Pis are rarely sold second hand.
Sorry for my ignorance, so brasil has nothing like an Amazon where OP could buy a new pi from and have it delivered? If thats the case i feel like I could buy OP a pi and ship it to them in brasil for less cost than it would be to buy anyother option of hardware for a home server. Assuming USPS still offers flat rate boxes for international shipments.
I'm not Brazilian, but I'm guessing importing stuff is expensive. Look at PC components elsewhere in the world, it's typically much more expensive than the US.
Right but thats kinda what im saying is that wouldn't all hardware be expensive and not just Pis?
Except second hand. That's my point.