My homelab (or infrastructure if you will) consists of 2 ARM SBCs distributed geographically and connected via a VPN & syncthing. They are fanless, powerful enough (8 cores and 8GB of RAM is plenty for what I do), and handle 90% of the automation my old desktop was doing.

I don't need Proxmox, tons of containers or anything. If I do, I can always throw a N95 into the mix with ample RAM and storage.