Hey All,

Currently in the process of trying to both upgrade my servers and downscale my lab size. I have two Dell R620s running my stack, and im trying to look into downsizing these to 2-3 Small Form Factor or Micro Form Factor machines.

Hardware Goals:

i7 12th gen or newer for CPU

32GB ram at least

10G Networking to keep consistent for the management plane

NVME storage

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When it comes tot he RAM and NVME, I am fine purchasing these aftermarket to keep the costs down. My general workload is PLEX + *arrs, but I do run Home Assistant, various game servers, and other learning/automation projects. Thus far, I have been eyeing up

Lenovo P3 Tiny
Dell Optiplex Micro Plus 7010
Dell Optiplex SFF Plus 7010
Miniforums N7B

All of these have met some sort of need, but dont seem to hit all of them, primarily the networking aspect tends to be the biggest caveat for getting something both affordable for this project (~$1000 or less per machine), while still being decently sized and hitting power desires. Im willing to bend a little bit but wanted some community insight.