Hi Everyone,

Since I am mostly working from home, I figured I should expand my knowledge and pay with virtualization. I currently have my old PC, and a borrowed Optiplex 790 from work, but since I am in California (Bay Area, where Energy cost is high (~$0.33 - ~$0.41/Kwh) I am concern I cant run my main PC, work Laptop and a Home Lab without raking up the Energy Bill.

Old PC: i7 3770K (4c/8t - TDP 77W), 16GB Ram, 4 1TB Drives, GTX 980

Optiplex 970: i7 2600 (4c/8t - TDP 95W), 16GB Ram, 2 SSD, 1 1TB Drive

Personal PC: i7 8700K (6c/12t - TDP 95W) 32GB Ram, 2 Nvme, 1 1TB SSD, 1 2 TB HDD, RTX2070

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My question: would it be better to just purchase a new Optiplex?:

Optiplex 3080 Micro i5 10500T (6c/12t - TDP 35W)

Optiplex 3080 SFF i5 10500 (6c/12t - TDP 65W)

Build an i7 10700?

Are these overkill? also the server will be in my room so noise and heat would be an issue lol.

I would like to run a Plex Server, Run a couple of VMs, Pi hole, OctoPrint, eventually try pfSense (I know I would need a second network card) I might run SSDs instead of mechanical drives.

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*I really don't want to use my main PC as a HomeLab.

Thank you!!!