TL;DR: Need budget server hardware for Minecraft in Poland (~$100 max). Must be small, quiet, low power. Need 500GB+ storage. Considering: free netbook/laptop/phone, thin clients (<$60), e-waste FrankenPC, friend’s Optiplex (i5 7th gen, 16GB DDR4), or Wincor Nixdorf POS PC ($25, needs RAM upgrade). Looking for recommendations or other ideas.

The heaviest service I want to run is a Minecraft server. I think I need at least 500GB of storage. I’m aiming for the barely usable/e-waste category of products because of budget constraints. I don’t have much space (I don’t think a full-size ATX PC will fit), and the server will be in a public place so it can’t be too loud. I can’t use much power, and space limitations narrow the cooling potential anyway. I only have 1Gbit cable.

I live in Poland. Hardware is more expensive here, but I can buy from international/European markets.

I didn’t intend to beg for parts - if you perceived my post this way, I apologize.

Here are the options I’m considering:

Early 2010s netbook (4GB DDR3, 250GB HDD) ($0). I have this one at home and can use it right now. Technically it’s the only hardware out of all these options I actually own. It has performance and power consumption similar to a Raspberry Pi 3.

Early 2010s laptop (some early mobile 4-core i5/i7 CPU, 12GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, GT210) ($0). Specs aside, this laptop is gigantic - I think the screen is around 18 inches diagonal, and that’s not counting the bezels. There’s not much else to say about this one.

Broken POCO X6 Pro (12GB RAM, 512GB storage, specs are available on Google if you’re interested) ($0). Well, this is a phone, so it can’t really be a true server. I put it here only because I thought someone might find a use for it.

Some thin client (specs really differ between models, I’m aiming for something from mid-to-late 2010s, so probably some Celeron from Intel 6th gen or later years, but these things are upgradable) (I’m looking for models that cost less than $60, but with disk or even CPU upgrades, the price will surely be higher - I’m aiming for <$100, but that’s not a hard limit). As far as I know, these devices are well-known in homelab spaces.

FrankenPC made from very cheap/free parts or just straight-up e-waste (this is a wildcard in terms of specs, but I don’t expect anything modern - any DDR4 platform would be well above my expectations) (I don’t want to spend much more than $100 or so, but if I could, I’d rather get something from e-waste). I asked my friends and neighbors, and I already have an old mini PC reserved for me. I’m also in my local e-waste Facebook groups.

My friend’s old “server” (really just some slim Optiplex) (i5 7th gen, 16GB DDR4, lots of disks - 2x 240GB SATA SSDs, 2x 500GB HDDs) (he also “inherited” the entire PC from someone down the line) ($0). This is the option I’ll try first, but I’m not exactly sure if he wanted to give it to me or just lend it for some time. Anyway, this is my best option.

Wincor Nixdorf Beetle M-III (Celeron G3900, upgradable to 6th/7th gen, 4-6GB DDR4, 128GB HDD) ($25). This is a POS computer, meant to be used in large shops. It’s probably the cheapest functional PC with an upgrade path you can buy. The huge downside is that 4GB of RAM is too low for my use case, and DDR4 RAM is obscenely expensive these days. Aside from that and the fact that it’s louder than everything else on my list, this would be my second pick.

If you want me to elaborate on any of the options, I’m happy to tell you more. Please let me know if you have any other ideas for hardware (in this post I don’t care about software - there will be time for that later, when I actually have the server up and running) or something to recommend. I also have access to a 3D printer.