Selfhosted

Get a N100/N150 system with 12GB+ RAM for ~150 €/$. Alternatively check for one with replaceable RAM.

To get experience with Linux you can install VirtualBox on Windows and set up some Linux virtual machines. It's easier than most people think.

Used to run on a pi 4 but moved to a 11th Gen NUC and wouldn't go back. Well, the pi was nice when I didn't have any money but the performance boost of just an i3 is hard to beat. With headless debian 13, the nuc now draws 5w idle. Seriously low consumption, costs like 10eur in electric energy per year. Pi 4 still found a home for homeassistant +zigbee stack.

Buy a 7th gen Intel based tiny/mini/micro PC instead of a Pi or NUC. You get much more bang for your buck. 35W max draw. They are far more capable than people give them credit for. I run 3 of them (4 if you count the Mac mini).

tldr: A used x86 desktop is better than a pi

I've never understood why so many people self-host on pis. If it's at home and not on a sailboat or drone, don't worry about the power consumption. Worry about having enough power for a smooth operation.

Like imagine your jellyfin skips during videos. Now you have to chase down the bottleneck and when you do, probably can't upgrade the hardware anyway.

Plus if the project doesnt have an ARM binary or container, you have to create a compilation workflow.

Hospitals and schools upgrade their hardware every five years or so (when windows starts to slow down). The x86 workstations go up for auction for cheap. I buy them direct at govdeals.com (usa) where they usually sell in lots. If you just need one, look on ebay where the units are typically resold. Either way you can find something decent for $50-$100.

So buy an x86. It will live forever and you can use your pi in a weather station or drone or similar project where size and power consumption matter.

In my own setup, I have jellyfin on one $50 workstation and homeassistant/frigate on another. I would not have space (resources) for both on one machine because frigate is doing object detection on six cameras (even with a hardware detector). So the homeassistant computer has that NPU and zigbee dongle and a big hard drive for the recordings. In the Jellyfin machine, I put a 12tb hdd for the media and graphics card that is really good at transcoding (I travel a lot and stream videos from home).

Maybe you enjoy the "getting it to work" part more than me. I went from RPi to a cheap used miniPC from eBay. Installed Debian and bought a wireless keyboard with touchpad. Cheap and so much simpler. Plays all my flac music through Strawberry, plays all my movies at home and away. Easiest VPN setup, I don't use smart functions of my TV, just the miniPC for everything.

Best bang for your buck in general, IMO, is going to be an off-lease mini or SFF from eBay.

I'm in a similar situation currently hosting Pihole on my Pi's and Jellyfin on a SFF refurbished PC that's running some other project. I've decided to go with a NUC, most likely beelink, and intend to install Proxmox to then run container VMs for each of the various projects to more easily manage them.

Dell refurbished 1L PC?

I think the N100 units are still the best value.

I've found that you don't need to go that far above the $200 cost of an Intel N100/150 system to get a mini PC with a significantly more powerful AMD processor. It won't be the latest generation but it will be capable of a lot more than those low-power Intels, and from my measurements many AMD processors of the last three generations or so are good at saving power when they're idle, so it won't use a ton more electricity. Sometimes you find used ones on eBay at a decent price because someone upgraded.

I'm using a 2019 Dell SFF OptiPlex.

With the current 8TB data drive, it idles at 18w, but being Intel can convert or transcode very quickly.

With the previous 2TB drive it idled at 12w, little more than a Pi but far more capable.

I run my PiHole on it plus Jellyfin, HandBrake, etc. It also has 4 VMs using VMware for some other stuff as needed (testing mostly).

Hard to beat the bang for buck, or per watt.

I use RPi 4 2Gb for Pi-Hole.

Just retired a broken 8th gen intel i3 laptop used for Jellyfin. Its replacement is a GMKTec G3 N100. 4 core 4 thread, single channel SDRAM, but 12th gen Intel which is capable of a wider range of encoding & transcoding. Came with 8Gb ram and 256GB Nvme. Cost Less than £100 on ebay. Jellyfin installed ontop of Debian & very pleased with it.

Currently running Truenas scale with smb shares to service local network.

Additionally VPN on router provides access to home network.

I have a few redundant Rpi's sitting about now as I've consolidated and will be using more NUC/ MiniPC hardware in future. They're just better value at the moment for me.

Not looked at HA seriously yet, but its part of the plan

While I get leaning towards AMD products, I've been doing so as well, when I built my first server with a Ryzen 5 2400GE I have found that there just isn't as much resources/support for enabling transcoding with the vega 11 in Jellyfin or Immich. Most Intel iGPU's have a hardware chip specifically tuned for transcoding called quicksync that you should strongly consider.

Especially in the $100-200 price range tiny mini micro's from HP/Lenovo/Dell are widely available and offer lots of capability in a power-efficient (~10-15w idle, 40-50w full load) and easily maintainable form factor. The Lenovo's in particular are interesting due to a few models having full pci-e slots if you decide later you want a GPU.
Lenovo pci-e

Finally for software I would suggest looking into Cosmos Cloud, I use it and have found it made it so much easier to setup and manage all my docker containers and domain name/reverse proxy settings.

I have a NUC with an intel N6005 in it for around that price, very happy with it.