Most VPSes I use offer a slower (200mbps) connection without a data cap for free.

Not dead enough. We need to bully all high profile plex users such as Linus (tech tip man) into switching to Jellyfin.

The most optimal plex setting is Jellyfin

Currently have a setup similar to yours, except the chip is N100 (12th gen Intel, 4 e-cores) and 16 gigs of ram. Running Jellyfin with hardware accelerated transcoding into VP9 and HEVC just fine. Nextcloud is ok too, kinda slow but I think that’s because of my networking.

It’s one of the cheapest pre made n100 mini PCs I could find on Amazon.

Just make sure that you have enough IO for your needs. Mine has only three usb ports, I plugged in two usb hard drives and a Zigbee dongle and now I’m out of ports. Gonna have to get a hub now.

If you have the money I’d recommend getting a mini pc with an amd ryzen apu.

Bro what

Servers are just really big computers. I started off with a Chinese Raspberry Pi clone, then upgraded to an old mac mini + mini pc + a cheap cloud server (VPS). As you can see, you can turn any old computer into a server.

The cloud is expensive but reliable. Having your own server is cheap but it will go offline with every network fault or brownout. If you’re serious about self hosting I suggest buying a UPS.

Whatever computer you decide to use as a server, make sure it is quiet. When I first started, I tried to use an old 2010 aah workstation as a server, but the fans were so loud I couldn’t sleep, it was driving me crazy.