@scanlime I ended up setting up a lot of storage at home as a "NAS" (read: old-ish flat computer case with cables snaking out), with 4 HDDs in a 3D-printed HDD tower sitting next to it with a case fan taped to the shelf to cool them. Works surprisingly great.

The old 'server' behind pixie.town has been replaced by this point I believe, but it ran for years as an old laptop with the bottom cover removed and a few HDDs/SSDs connected to it, some literally hanging out of it. With a cheap Hetzner VPSs reverse-proxying to it. Worked quite well too!

Honestly my conclusion so far has been that if I need actual server-grade stuff, I'll rent something in a datacenter somewhere; for anything that just needs to work, a random old low-power system with some cable spaghetti honestly works fine, and is not a very big imposition on my living space. I certainly wouldn't put *server* hardware at home though, it tends to be extremely loud and unpleasant...