Surprised author didn't mention https://labgopher.com/ for finding used enterprise hardware at low cost on ebay. This hardware is cheap and typically out-of-service for enterprise, but great for home labs.
The big problem with off-lease enterprise hardware is the power usage can quickly outrun the original costs - but that may not be an issue for everyone.
The nice thing about off-lease enterprise hardware is there is so much of it, and it's enterprise. You can easily find replacement parts, and working on that stuff is a joy, everything is easily replaceable with no tools.
THIS! My Dell and HP blade chassis/server EAT power (10+ Xeon blades). I actually shut them down and started moving to SBC based stuff like odriod H2/H3's. Basically silent and just sips power. All much less heat (I live in a desert, so thats important)!
For what it's worth, we're just starting to get to where enterprise stuff that cares about power usage is coming off-lease. Some of the newest stuff actually sips power relatively when not under load.
My biggest (current) problem is finding something that supports a ton of SATA drives and still is low power (though at some point even the power usage of spinning rust can become noticeable).
I live in the icy wilderness, so excess power to heat isn't a problem for most of the year.
yeah - I don't have a need for a lot of drives, but its hard to come by...but the odroids have a PCIE expansion slot, so you might be able to add a add-on controller...
Given how huge drives are now, 1 nvme and 1 sata/spinning rust is basically all I'd ever need (I don't do video/music/etc. )
Edit: Oh shit...just checked, it does NOT have a PCIE slot..I was sure it did :-(
Some people even use an Alder-Lake-N miniPC as a "user-facing machine" (i.e., as the only computer in the room). I do, and I love it so far (after about 45 days of using it) because it doesn't have a fan to make noise and gradually become noisier as the machine ages.
My guess is that if I was used to a much faster machine, then the machine's slowness would bother me, but it in fact does not bother me. (The machine has an NVMe interface, and I have a fast SSD in there. I have the N100 CPU because I couldn't find the N200 or the i3-N305 for immediate delivery from a non-Chinese manufacturer.)
