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.

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.

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.

A computer. Seriously that’s it. Of course depends on your use case (media servers usually need more than a web host for example)

Basically none. Grab whatever device you have on hand and install Docker on it.

This specifically depends on what you want to run.

I’d say grab any unused PC in your home or off the street and it’ll work. Raspberry Pi are good for low wattage so it’s not expensive to run 24/7/365.

The electricity savings would pay for itself over time vs a 10 year old random desktop.

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.

Go wuth what you have. Old laptop? Works! Old desktop? Also works! Old android phone? Might work! (VM/terminal)

If you have a device that can run Linux, start with that. Once you get some usage you can understand if you need an upgrade, and what kind. Maybe you will findout that this old laptop that you had works perfectly and you can sace money on buying a server.

If the size and low power consumption of the Pi are what appeal to you, you can try a getting a used thin client. Lots of suggestions and specs here: http://parkytowers.me.uk/

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.

I’m running an old Igel M340C thin client to run a lot of stuff, from Jellyfin to AdguardHome. Perfectly enough.

As everyone have said, it depends on what you want to have in your server. I started with an old lenovo I bought in mercado livre for 200 BRL. It was a DDR2 PC with 4Gb ram. I bought an ssd and installed Debian. Used for years. After that I tried to build a DDR3 PC. Made it with 800 BRL and it’s decent to run my docker containers like an arr stack, nextcloud, VPN, reverse proxy and vaultwarden.

Depends on what you want the server to do. A Minecraft server and a Pihole server have vastly different requirements. As a general rule, any old laptop or desktop will do, think on requirements for your grandma and that should cover most (except gaming servers) needs.

That very much depends on what you want it to do (what is “everything”) and how many users you have.

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:

• Ryzen 1700
• 16GB RAM
• GTX 750 Ti GPU
• 2 8TB HDDs (bought for the server)
• 1 SSD for boot (128 GB, just needs to store the OS)

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.