mini pcs and mac minis are nice but if you want lot's of customization options, I do recommend getting the asrock N100 motherboards. they're around 130USD and these have an n100 cpu built in with a passive cooling heatsink. it's a flex-atx sized(also ITX is available). if you have leftover disk, ram, psu and a case, you can build a great little server since it also has m.2 nvme storage support 2 sata port, and 2 pcie(x16 and x1) slots, you can add NIC, gpu or whatever you want!
I have mine with a nic so it has 3 eth ports which I run almost everything on from a router, backup to all kinds of apps on docker
mini pcs and mac minis are nice but if you want lot's of customization options, I do recommend getting the asrock N100 motherboards. they're around 130USD and these have an n100 cpu built in with a passive cooling heatsink. it's a flex-atx sized(also ITX is available). if you have leftover disk, ram, psu and a case, you can build a great little server since it also has m.2 nvme storage support 2 sata port, and 2 pcie(x16 and x1) slots, you can add NIC, gpu or whatever you want!
I have mine with a nic so it has 3 eth ports which I run almost everything on from a router, backup to all kinds of apps on docker