[mdmglr]

This will not be popular but you don’t need ECC or Xeons.

You can find great deals on powerful PCs from eBay sellers who are IT recyclers.

I’ve found the SFF/Mini PC’s to be great.

You also have to decide what you want to do. And if you want the headache.

For example it’s easy to start doing home automation, dns server, NAS. When things break or updates break things and nothing is working and you have to pull it all apart again was to much for me.