[jimjimjim]

ebay or auction websites. Lots of places dump their equipment at 3-5 years.

another secret is 'you don't need the latest', in fact, almost nobody needs the latest.

[pdimitar]

Living in Bulgaria and having a pretty solid income (programmer) I can tell you the prices are rarely the problem by itself.

My current cart in Amazon is about $470. With shipping and handling the whole thing goes to almost $800.

We might as well go to the local flea markets and spend the afternoon asking people around for the same things because almost everybody outside the comfy zone of Amazon and eBay ends up paying almost double due to shipping + handling costs.

[GibBreakPls]

Do you realize that there are more people in the world who can't afford 5 year old server equipment from eBay than those who can?

Shipping alone would cost 100USD at minimum.

[rconti]

... and magically cloud services become more affordable than they are in richer countries?

[pdimitar]

No, but self-hosting has a significant initial investment overhead cost compared to the places where Amazon and eBay deliver almost for free.

[Clubber]

I second this. I have a Dell Poweredge R610 I got off ebay in a quiet cabinet in my computer room. You can get pretty beefy ones for $500, add your own drives. Mine has been running fine for the last 2.33 years.