ThorrJo

Used "1-liter" business PCs which come with a modest amount of RAM+storage (assuming you're likely to replace/upgrade after buying anyway) and an 8th gen Intel CPU should run between ehhh like $125 to $250 depending on which model CPU, how much RAM etc. Totally worth it IMO, I use one with an i5-8500T as a Proxmox host for my web services and so far I'm quite happy with it. Snagged a deal on it a couple months ago, $110, shipped with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD which I immediately replaced.

Intel ended up changing their mind and sold the product line to Asus, who will continue producing NUCs!

The one advantage of using megacorp "1-liter" business PCs from Dell/HP/Lenovo over brands like Minisforum is that parts commonality / availability is likely to be a lot better for the big brand boxes.

This will make little or no difference to a lot of people of course :) in my case it's a big factor because I'm trying to do everything on a shoestring budget and I want the hardware to be physically small but still as repairable/upgradable as possible, and to last as long as possible. So I ended up going with used 1L PCs even though you get a bit less CPU capability per dollar spent, as right now these PCs are the smallest platform that I know of that tends to be upgradable (no soldered RAM etc) and have lots of parts available.

Damn, the last time I thought about this (20 years ago) I was able to buy a tape drive for a PC for like ........ I wanna say $250-300?? I forget the format, it was very very common though and tapes were dirt cheap, maybe $10-12 a pop. Worked great, if you were willing to sit around and swap tapes out as needed.

Syncthing's file versioning has got me out of many a jam

Wait, Proxmox Backup Server runs on ARM?

For a long time I did 1 hot copy (e.g. on my laptop), 1 LAN/homelab copy (e.g. Syncthing on a VM), and 1 cloud copy ... less a backup scheme than a redundancy scheme, albeit with file versioning turned on on the homelab copy so I could be protected from oopsies.

I'm finally teaching myself duplicity in order to set up a backup system for a webdev business I'm working on ... it ain't bad.

I use NoMachine, but that's in a Linux-to-Linux environment.

Did a test last weekend sitting in a department store parking lot on the store's public wifi, wifi bitrate about 50Mbps both ways, 50ms between me and my homelab ... very very usable experience with quality set at 6/10.

I use individual Turnkey Linux VMs sometimes ... Yunohost is a cool project but I like one VM per service

I consider selfhosting to be both. VPS or homelab. The latter has more 'cred' but is also a much bigger investment and not everyone can do it. Granted I'm living in a difficult environment but as somebody using Linux since 1994 it took me 3 years to recently get a homelab to where I could credibly serve the wider internet from it, and I still use a VPS as reverse proxy anyway! Meanwhile, offloading your physical plant to a mom-n-pop platform-as-a-service provider isn't the worst thing in the world. Some operators started out selfhosting and grew their little VPS provider from that, those guys need business too!

Just get a used ultra-small form factor PC a la the Tiny, Mini, or Micro series. A higher-end one which is 7 generations old will still absolutely destroy the Pi in terms of performance.

Once I gave up (for now) on doing all this on ARM and switched back to x86, everything got way easier to actually accomplish.

Check out ServeTheHome's "Project TinyMiniMicro" on Youtube for a great overview of ultra-small form factor ("1 liter") business PCs.

The big three PC makers each have standardized products in this form factor with (relatively speaking, compared to smaller manufacturers) tons of spare parts available.