A lot of people start with old Dell Optiplexes for self hosting because businesses dump them on the market cheap when they get old. But an old PC will work just fine as a server. I think the 7040 is a good buy, you could maybe go even older. I have a computer with a Haswell era cpu still being useful.
You can find the nicest CPU they’ll take for a couple bucks on eBay too.
A lot of people start with old Dell Optiplexes for self hosting because businesses dump them on the market cheap when they get old. But an old PC will work just fine as a server. I think the 7040 is a good buy, you could maybe go even older. I have a computer with a Haswell era cpu still being useful.
You can find the nicest CPU they’ll take for a couple bucks on eBay too.