> ... or they are pushed towards server grade components. I already have home sever rack, and would recommend it for other people.
An actual rack with noisy 1U or 2U servers may be a bit overkill but on the plus side there's a guaranteed endless supply of such used servers.
Now there's a happy middle ground: used workstations with ECC memory, that you then use as servers.
People would be really wise to not underestimate what a 12 years old dual-Xeon, 14 cores each, 56 threads in total can do, for example. And such a complete workstation can basically be found for less than what it takes to fill my car's gas tank (granted it's got a big tank and it's fancy car whose manufacturer recommends to only use 98+ octane).
A single Xeon workstation with shitload of memory in a tower form factor is basically silent. Mine is. Dead quiet, next to the vaccuum cleaner and the cat's foot in a tiny room. I use it as a headless server.
And that's with the default PSU and fans. There are, of course, people modding these with adapters for regular consumer PSUs and then putting ultra-quiet PSUs in those. Same with Noctua fans etc.
And as for the usual complain: "but a server that is on 24/7 consumes too much electricity"... I only turn on my servers at home when I begin to work: I don't need these to be on 24/7.
So yeah: "Server CPU + ECC" doesn't imply noise. And "Server CPU + ECC" doesn't imply it has to be on 24/7 neither.
I recommend this too!
I like my Dell Precision T7910 (dual-socket Xeon FTW) a lot.
What are you using?