[ryandrake]

Not sure I understand the need to use a Raspberry Pi here. They're cool and all, but wouldn't a regular old PC be simpler to setup, maintain, and attach hardware to? It's a hobby--and you can do whatever you want, but I wouldn't involve a Pi in a home server setup unless I specifically needed something it bought me, like the small form factor, low power usage, GPIO pins and so on.

[fartfeatures]

I always need lower power consumption. I'm in the UK and my power costs are $0.40 per kWh. Even running a raspberry pi 5 24/7 would cost me $25 per year

[baq]

N100 minipcs will burn about as much power as a fully decked rpi5 and they're so much more hypervisor-friendly.

[Spooky23]

Look for used thin clients. You can get HP t630s for ~$50 or less. They have a nice AMD SoC. If mostly idle, they draw about 2x a Pi. Loaded, they are similar.

[otter-in-a-suit]

I just commented on this above, but I actually got for the Pi for free and it's a very capable device. I wouldn't buy one for this use case (nor do I really recommend it, but it _does_ work).