I use old Mac Minis that were cycled out from a company and replaced. An e-waste laptop is still probably cheaper, but you can still find the older model Mac Minis fairly cheap too. I have 2 of them that sit vertically side-by-side in a small rack with my router stationed above them. They both run Elementary OS.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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the 20 year old pc of my grandparents had a graphics card failure, i fixed it but tgey decided i should keep the pc and help them pick a new one (valid after 20 years ngl) now this PC runs debian and hosts my game servers and all
I personally needed the Pi for its Arm architecture.
Too late...
I bought a dell latitude on eBay for a few bucks and run Debian on it. This one speaks to me.
Or any compact pc like gigabyte brix, nucs, lenovos , etc. you can get those for 70-200 on ebay and they are amazing for running any homelab projects, including stream services like jellyfin with hardware decoding.
I always prefer getting an Hp 600 g5 for $100 off eBay, you get a Intel 9500, can go to 64gb of ram, and idle at a few watts
Depending on the specs, I might be paying more for those, even used, than a SBC. The joys of Brazilian tech markets...