New Media Server

Epsilon Rose · November 14, 2025

Budget (including currency): $500-$1000usd

Country: United states

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily

Other details: I have a 1TB HDD from my old computer and 8GB of DDR3 ram in a closet, but I'm not wedded to using either of them.

2. Aim

Primarily this will be hosting ebooks, via Calibre, though I may also want to expand to more media types, or maybe some backups for my other computers, eventually. If it has enough power, hosting a FoundryVTT server or maybe some game servers (like Terraria) might also be nice, but they're less of a priority. Beyond that, I'd like it to be relatively quite and energy efficient.

3. Monitors

One monitor, but ideally it won't be in use most of the time. Either way, I already have it.

4. Peripherals

I already have the peripherals and I'm planning to run Linux for the OS.

5. Why are you upgrading?

I was planning to use an old HP Z400 for the job, but it's graphics card is so old that its drivers are no longer supported on the current iteration of Mint. Rather than continue to wrestle with that nonsense, I'm just going to bite the bullet and get something new.

I've built PCs before, but I haven't done any server stuff, so I'm slightly at a loss for where to start looking or what to get and I'd appreciate any dirrection on the matter.