Selfhosted
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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Whatever is cheapest. When youre first starting out basically any hardware will do, it just needs to boot Linux. As you progress and find more stuff to put on the servers, you'll discover what you're real hardware needs are.
When I first started, it was a hand me down single core AMD Sempron machine (socket 754!) that I later upgraded to an Athlon64 and 4gb of DDR. I managed to bodge that poor thing into running a Minecraft 1.5.2 server.
Personally I would stick with the i3 machine since I am assuming it's an office PC that can be had for cheaper than a Pi 5 (which is quite inflated in price IMO). x86 still retains better software support vs ARM and they are significantly easier to attach large cheap storage to via SATA. Power cost will be greater but I doubt an office i3 pulls more than 70w wall power at full load.
Thanks for the feedback! And yes, used mini pc can be found cheaper than rpi5, also comes with a proper cooling and housing, which would be extra for rpi.
Unless you already use Linux, you don't need to start with Linux. Windows works perfectly and is significantly easier for most people as it's what they already know.