How Much Home Server Do You Actually Need?

A lot of home server builds start in the wrong place.

People start with hardware:

• Should I buy an N150 mini PC?
• Do I need 32GB or 64GB of RAM?
• Should I buy a used OptiPlex?
• Do I need a NAS?

But the hardware isn’t really the first question.

The first question is: what are you actually going to run?

A small Proxmox server running Home Assistant, a few containers and lightweight VMs has very different requirements from a machine running Immich, Jellyfin transcoding, multiple VMs and several internal drives.

So I’ve started thinking about home server builds in this order:

Workloads → RAM → storage → expansion → hardware

For example, a small mini PC can make a lot of sense when you want something compact for containers and light VMs.

But once you need multiple internal drives, heavier VMs or a clear upgrade path, the decision can shift toward a used office PC or a larger build.

And if you already own usable hardware, buying another machine might not be the best first step at all.

The interesting part is that there isn’t really one “best home server.”

There is only a server that fits the workload you’re trying to run.

I ended up turning this decision process into a small interactive Home Server Build Planner.

You select things like Jellyfin, Immich, Home Assistant, Minecraft, VMs, storage requirements and upgrade priorities, and it suggests a hardware direction and explains why.

⁠Try the Home Server Build Planner

It’s still an experiment, so I’m especially interested in cases where its recommendation doesn’t match what you’d actually build.