The other one I was viewing is a HP Desktop i7 SFF Computer 16GB RAM 512GB SSD Windows 10 PC Wi-Fi DVD/RW. Just the desktop for $155 on eBay More on reddit.com

Is having a later generation i5 better than an older gen i7 There are websites that will compare different CPUs. (You can Google) Typically yes it is better to have a later generation i5 vs an older gen i7 but again it depends how old we are talking. It also depends on what you are doing. I will be using for running code (expermental apps requiring ram/cpu) relocating Google Photos to personal photo/media run some smart apps for home automation All of this can run with easy on a 3rd gen Intel because non of these tasks require a lot of processing power. (Maybe your code? But it depends what you are coding and how you are coding it) You can of course run these on AMD processors but most people in this community use Intel because of Intel quick sync . It will allow you to encode and decide certain media formats. People tend to start off with hardware they own (or even a friend or family owns that they are no longer using) Any old laptop or desktop computer. If you have anything, I would start there and run it with Linux OS as Linux can run on any old hardware. Personally I would start with Debian OS. But you can also use Ubuntu as it is Debian with more tooling. (You can always install the tooling yourself on Debian) Once you start your projects, you will quickly see if the current hardware you have will hit limits and if it does then you can upgrade. But if it doesn't then you can hold off upgrading as long as you can to allow tech that you would of gotten to become cheaper. If you decide to still buy them you need to look at expansion. You meantion photos, well how many GB/TB do you expect to have? You should look into a comp that can hold that many hard drives. Do you need RAID? Do you have a good backup strategy. These are the topic you will research which will help you pick your hardware case (which if you get a pre build machine like the ones you picked above, some form factor will allow for better hardware expansion). You get the idea. hi, I recently stumbled upon this subreddit & motivated me to setup my own server. Welcome to the community. Hope you have fun and learn a lot! Hope that helps. More on reddit.com

well oem machines are generally already licensed so afaik, they can be upgraded to win10 or win11. wouldn't cost anything extra. tons of dells and other brands on ebay at least. dunno where you'd get them in bulk quantities.

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clean install it you don't want to spend an hour manually uninstalling bullshit. Also, it you really want more space, wipe the entire drive, including the partition that contains the factory reset widows. That'll give you about 10GB on the drive. Just note, you'll won't be able to perform factory resets using the OEM's tools. (but it's really only there for people that don't know how to properly install an OS anyway)

Also remember to install all of the drivers from the OEM after a clean install to get the most out of the computer

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