- 4 Dell T 7810s
- 4 hard drive cages (14 drives)
- Amcrest NVR
- TV Antenna
- 2 Ubiquiti WiFi APs
- Buttload of switches around the house
- Protectli Vault mini-pc running pfsense for my router
- ProxMox cluster with about 30 virtual machines running everything
I love the Dells I use. They’re wonderful little workhorses, and I got a pretty good deal as they used to mine chia cryptocurrency.
You are on the right path. Most stuff people self host requires very little horsepower. Most of your CPU will be idle in the end. Things might get expensive if you want to add a lot of storage, but the good news is that can be added later as you need it. I think you’ll be surprised just how much a modern-ish laptop can host.