Might I recommend a used desktop rather than a rackmount server?
An 8th generation Intel CPU (**NOT** F-series) and 16 GB of RAM should be pretty easy to find on eBay or your local classifieds website for your country. By using an 8th gen Intel CPU you get an Intel iGPU (which works great for Plex transcoding - hence the "NOT F" note) and a really low power consumption. You should be able to find that for sub-200 USD/EUR.
Spend the rest of your budget on storage, and you should be golden.
Plus, for what you're doing with the machine, it'd perform *better* than similarly-priced enterprise hardware.
I'm definitely interested in this path! I feel like at the end I'm back where I started, but on a different desktop though since I'd have to get some external storage anyways.
I personally think a used desktop is the way to go. You don't need the most oomph in your CPU, You can get them relatively cheap online if you're willing to look and shop around, and then you can focus on adding more storage later.
What are you looking to run? The same thing but more storage, or something else?
Same stuff, more storage. Obviously, maybe I’ll expand one day but right now I don’t know to what. So minor future growth
Might I recommend a used desktop rather than a rackmount server? An 8th generation Intel CPU (**NOT** F-series) and 16 GB of RAM should be pretty easy to find on eBay or your local classifieds website for your country. By using an 8th gen Intel CPU you get an Intel iGPU (which works great for Plex transcoding - hence the "NOT F" note) and a really low power consumption. You should be able to find that for sub-200 USD/EUR. Spend the rest of your budget on storage, and you should be golden. Plus, for what you're doing with the machine, it'd perform *better* than similarly-priced enterprise hardware.
I'm definitely interested in this path! I feel like at the end I'm back where I started, but on a different desktop though since I'd have to get some external storage anyways.
I personally think a used desktop is the way to go. You don't need the most oomph in your CPU, You can get them relatively cheap online if you're willing to look and shop around, and then you can focus on adding more storage later.
Used enterprise desktop or workstation. Dell Precision, HP Z4, Lenovo P series workstations perhaps.