I have never homelabbed, and this is going to be my first experience. I want to set up a home server. My current goals are to set up a gallery using Immich, an ad blocker/DNS using Pi-hole, and a cloud service.
I want you to suggest what second-hand PC or laptop I should get. I researched a bit and found out that a PC is better because of 24/7 reliability, better cooling, no risk of laptop battery swelling, easy RAM and storage expandability, and low idle power consumption.
What I think the specs should be for me is 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. And my budget is 10k INR.
I want to hear your thoughts. Thank you! :)


If you have options and the space go for 64bit CPU and midi sized office tower for expandability. If you want hardware acceleration for playback you need the check the docs (like immich vp9 > intel 9th gen CPU). What do you mean by cloud service?
By cloud, i rn mean smth like syncthing. Like basically a storage machine