Hi :)
I’ve been playing around with a pi 4 for a few months now, but I want a dedicated home server now, since I want my pi to run HomeAssistantOS.
I’m looking for something that can store documents and photos (paperless and immich) and maybe run a small program like Ad guard. At first I just want to hookup an old SSD (250GB) and a HHD (1TB), but maybe I will buy a second one for RAID in the future. Power consumption at idle is really important for me (energy prices in Germany are really high).
As a beginner I find it very hard to find the right hardware, because everyone is recommending different things. (Slim-Clients, Intel Nuc, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS).
I hope someone can recommend me something that will work for me.
Amazon has a “refurbished” program, where you can find lots of cheap thin clients and smaller form factor desktop machines.
However, the refurbished computers often have their SSD/HDD replaced with a crappy one that is unreliable, so I would recommend assuming that you assume that you will need to buy storage in addition to that.
But, overall I really like Amazon Refurbished because you get a better quality guarantee (warranty/returns), but a cheaper price.