homelab

I decided to go with Tiny/Mini/Micros personally. It consumes more than a Pi but it's also more powerful. I can find second-hand TMMs locally with 8th gen Intel i5 for almost the same price as a Pi kit (Some Single Board Computers looks affordable, but you often need to add storage, a power brick, an enclosure, which can add up quickly!)

I use TMMs with a mix of 6th-gen and 8th-gen Intel i5. The 6th gen are decent for my needs, but the >7th-gen's iGPU supports more codecs, which is useful if you want to stream HEVC. i5-8500T also have 2 more cores than i5-6500T!

Edit: those TMMs are used in a lot of businesses and often replaced every 3-4 years. They may be slightly more power hundry than newer hardware, but I like to think I am saving them from being e-waste!