That hunk of plastic collecting dust in the basement might be more useful than you realized. With new upgrades and changes to one's setup often comes a question about what to do with old hardware. Building a home server is a fabulous financial investment that could be immensely beneficial in the uncertain years ahead.
It is tantalizingly easy, making the process both painless and affordable. It can trim down your streaming services bill. There are a lot of streaming services, and nearly every major company has entered the streaming service arms race.
It can add up to quite a bit of money over four weeks, and one way to combat that is to build your own home server. With one of these at your disposal, your server becomes a custom media machine where you can stream your own shows and movies as you please. It can greatly cut down on the number of streaming services you have, making things lighter on your wallet.
It is sometimes shocking to see how many streaming services a family is subscribed to, and using a home server to offset that can really help keep your monthly bill down to a more manageable number. Thanks to media servers like Plex, Jellyfin and other alternatives, you can populate your device with anything you want. A home server can double as a mass storage device.
If you have precious photos and videos, or important documents, a home server can pull its weight. If you subscribe to cloud storage or data backup services, it can all add up over the year. With your own home server, you can cut those elements out.
The server itself can also be upgradeable over time. Buying more hard drives and installing them is a snap. Resurrecting an old PC into a home server can save a large chunk of cash on storage and entertainment needs.
It can also act as a building block toward actual custom PC builds.
Source: Engadget · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing