Budget friendly builds

[philthy]

After perusing ebay, I've noticed a lot of (what appears to me) decently spec'd rack servers/NAS. Usually around $300-400 you can get something decent, albeit a little old but still good enough for personal use. I don't know much about server components though, Is there anything you would recommend looking out for? Or something that would be worth it with some budget upgrades? Thanks for any help! 

[Windows7ge]

That really depends on what you want it to do. You could build a server with 40 cores, 80 threads, and 1.5TB of RAM using eBay parts for about the price of a HEDT but if all you plan to do with it is run a MC server there's not a lot of value in that.

 

You can pick a middle of the road server that works for your purposes but has the expansion to go further like Dual LGA2011. You can run it with one CPU but there's room down the road for another. That sort of thing.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I got like 5 of these systems in my rack(don't drunk ebay kids).

 

There pretty fast, the big downside is noise and power.

 

But the sweet spot for used stuff now is duall 2011, so id go r720 or simmilar.

 

But really look at desktop hardware if you don't need a used server, its often a better buy for a home system, ryzen is a really good option here.