First Dedicated Node Buying Options
I'm based in the EU and trying to find a reasonable option for a first homelab node. I will be running some public facing services with no hard uptime requirements on it and would need somewhere between 16-32GB RAM as a start.
The lab is part of a bigger improvement project, so budget is pretty limited, I'd like to keep the node itself under 500€.
The hardware that has been locked in so far: Mikrotik RB5009UG+S+IN, Mikrotik CSS610-8P-2S+IN and a 2.5G ISP uplink. I may be getting more ISP contracts to increase bandwidth across them in time (multi WAN).
For the server, the current best option I found is a GMKtec M3 16 GB version. The plan is to have multiple of these in a proxmox cluster in the long term so I'd at least like to set a general direction and keep buying more of the same thing. I've gone through the ThinkCentres on refurbed.de and on techsavers.com but none of them really seemed like a better deal than the mini PC. Am I wrong here? I'm not familiar with ThinkCentre models at all, but I'm not sure what lifetime to expect from the GMKtec either.