Should I buy a seperate machine to host a server or upgrade my current laptop and start with that?

[Nikop]

I have a gaming laptop (rog Strix scar 17) with a 3070 Ti, 16gb DDR5 and an i9-12900H and 1GB SSD

 

I'm not sure if I should just upgrade the ram and space and just go from there or if I should just get a seperate LFF for 600$ or something and just have a seperate unit for my VMs and all these kinds of stuff. 

 

I'm still learning so I can't see all the positives, negatives for whatever I choose compared to someone more experienced.

 

What would you guys do

[whispous]

Well, if you intend to use your laptop as a daily driver, and also want to be running a server, I think you'll quickly tire of having both on your daily computer.

If you intend for the server to be on constantly, which is generally what you want with any type of server, pick yourself up something second hand.

What do you want to run on the server?

[Nikop]

That was also my concern, shitting where I eat.

 

I want to run mostly a couple of Valheim/Minecraft servers for me and my partner and learn more about VMs/TrueNAs/Plex etc, so something where I can mess around with.

[Needfuldoer]

To me, the whole point of a NAS or home server is that it isn't the PC you touch all day. It sits on the network providing services to all your devices, and if your PC loses data or breaks down, the data on the NAS is still safe. (Likewise if the NAS goes down for some reason, the data is still on your PC.)

 

I recommend building something around an Intel N100 based board, or picking up an older office desktop that can take a couple large capacity hard drives.