@fdrc_ff @selfhosted
We have a Raspberry Pi 4, and its performance is totally sufficient for photo uploads, file sync, contacts, calendar, cookbook, notes, … Don’t use just the SD card, though, but an SSD.

I just bought a used Intel N100 mini pc with 16gb RAM and 2tb SSD for a little more than I would have paid for a Raspberry Pi 5 setup. It doesn’t draw much more power than a RPi, and I’m not limited to what’s available for ARM if I want to expand the install at some point.

I used a RaspberryPi 4B for about 3 years. I connected storage over USB-3 to a pair of SATA SSDs. It handled everything pretty much flawlessly for two users and half a dozen devices. We even had multiple users on Plex. dietpi was brilliant for my first home server :).

Initial uploads may be slow depending on your storage layout but in my experience the requirements are super low.

before you take the jump, consider a way lighter and easier alternative - syncthing (files) and radicale (calendar, contacts). dependable, bullet-proof, super-lightweight, zero issues - everything nextcloud isn’t.

I was the happiest when I finally booted nextcloud off my network, never to return.

I use a relatively low spec KVM VPS on another continent. Remember, kids, if all your backups are in one location, you don’t have backups. You have copies.

Nextcloud was too high fallutin for me. I share a zfs pool with proxmox’s file server appliance.

My Nextcloud journey went from a Raspberry Pi 2B with a single USB HDD over a Pi 3B to a QNAP 2bay NAS on RAID 1 with a proper backup strategy including daily encrypted cloud backup. Having come to rely on the setup much more than when I was starting out playing with it years ago, I sleep much easier now. That said, I never lost any data, even on very questionable hardware without any redundancy whatsoever.

My home server is a refurbished HP t630 thin client with 8 gb of ram and a 1tb SSD. I’m running various services, Nextcloud-AIO being one of them. I bought it for € 35 plus the SSD and a 4 gb ram extension. I definitely do recommend used hardware as it is usually cheaper, more powerful and more environmentally friendly than buying something new. Wouldn’t trust a used SSD though.

I run the AIO master container, on a NUC (4-core i5, 32G). Family use; never any load issues.

You need this for your family, and not hundreds of people? No crazy, outlandish usage requirements?

Then basically any PC will do.

In my case, I have Nextcloud on an Ubuntu server, on an old laptop from 2008. With an Atom processor 1GHz, 1 GB of RAM and 500 GB of HDD.

Mine is running on a HP 600 G1 Micro Computer Mini Tower PC. Right now, less than $80 from Bezos. It’s over powered for Nextcloud alone, but I’ve also got other services running on it, including Jellyfin.

It zips along quite nicely, but I’ve also followed the guides for tuning the server for best performance.

I am using it on an Intel J5005 with SATA SSDs, managed through Docker. Works flawlessly.

If I were to upgrade, I would choose a board with a modern PCIe 4.0 M.2 Slot, because i’d like to put the database on fast NVME storage.

I’m running Nextcloud as a VM on Proxmox, Proxmox running on a NUC6i5SYH, with 32GB and 1TB SSD. The Nextcloud VM had 8GB of RAM assigned, which is more than enough, I think I could get away with 4. There’s only two users though, so it doesn’t see a lot of Intensive usage.

It’s been working like a charm for me for years already.

I have used it on old underpowered computers happily for years. There’s just no need for anything with high specs.