Those Dell fans were never built to be quiet. And they are also not built to be replaced by any quiet fans.

While yes, there is a reason why I have retired the Dell server I had for a normal desktop PC. The server was so loud, I could hear it two stairs and two closed doors away.

My largest file transfer I have done via USB disk. You simply don’t transfer multiple terabytes over the net.

I use my former PC as the home server. It is probably 10+ years old, has no M2 slot or something, but an SSD for the OS. More than big and fast enough for all my needs: File service (Samba), Web service (apache2), Wiki service (mediawiki), Database (MySQL), Calendar service (Radicale), Project service (Subversion), and probably some others I forgot. All of it running on Ubuntu Server, aministrated by WebMin.

The only investment I did when I turned this into a server was that I put 2x8TB in it as a RAID for bulk storage - I dump the family PCs backups on that machine, too.

No docker. Plain executable.

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

Then basically any PC will do.

I do regularly have issues with radicale, for years now. One is that it does not work properly after boot. I have to SSH in, kill the radicale process, and restart it.

What the heck are you self-hosting that anything beyond 64G is even taken into account?

My home server runs on an old desktop PC, bought at a discounter. But as we have bought several identical ones, we have both parts to upgrade them (RAM!) as well as organ donors for everything else.