u/Cendrake

So, I’m just about to dip my toes in the water of mini pcs for the first time and I could really do with some input and advice.

Just to clarify what I’m actually planning to do: I wanted to set up a small home server project.

The plan is to set up a small Proxmox host and run a few containers and the odd VM on it.

• Pi-Hole
• Paperless
• some kind of OCR-control for household account (I'm fed up of manually having to enter everything into an Excel spreadsheet; so I need some solution for scanning receipts, data extraction and posting workflow and then just double-check that it got everything down correctly.)
• Backup service
• OPNsense light (Router-on-a-stick/VLAN-trunking; no hungry stuff)
• whatever smaller, interesting things are still possible

Of course, that would require additional hardware: switch, scanner/printer combo, external hard drive for backups etc. I’d offload the OCR workloads to my main PC, naturally – I wouldn’t want to put that strain on the little machine. I want all this to grow gradually, not all at once.

Pi-Hole, Backup and OPNsense have priority over the rest.

However, the budget is relatively tight, particularly because all this other stuff needs to be bought. I'd really prefer not to go anywhere near 1000€ including everything. So a mini PC costing 500-700€ is out of scope.

I've been sifting through offers for several weeks now.

Most important component definitely is the cursed RAM. Ideally the little thing should have 32GB. If it's 16 that'd be fine, too, but it should be possible to upgrade at some point in the future in case I run out of memory. So no soldered RAM, two slots – and if it's only 16 it would actually be better if only one stick was installed and running in single-channel mode, not 2x8.

Long story short: It's nearly impossible to find anything budget-friendly.

I'm also very wary of China bomber offers from marketplaces where it's virtually impossible to enforce returns and warranties under EU law if anything goes wrong. If I see some trader with an obscure name from Shenzen and a regular Outlook mail address, I'm sceptical. I'd also prefer Amazon or other renown marketplaces over something like AliExpress. I simply can't afford to get scammed.

Since there are only very few offers that barely stay under the threshold of 400€ max, I've already started looking on Ebay and also broadening the scope to ThinkCentres and EliteDesks. Ebay of course is a bit risky again: no guarantees, no returns - but at least there's buyer protection or I can even pick up the goods in person, try them out and look the seller in the eye.

So now I'm on the verge of buying me a used EliteDesk i5-9500T, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD for 175€.

It's only 6c/6t, not luxurious but it should suffice, and it might need some upgrade in terms of RAM and storage later on, but it's dirt cheap.

Maybe I can haggle the price down a bit too, but I think it's already pretty fair.

But before I do that, I thought I’d tap into your collective wisdom. Maybe someone has another idea, a better offer or some advice.

Generally, everything helpful is appreciated. I bet there are quite a few people here who have experience with similar projects.

Thanks a lot in advance.