Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
It's a possibility. I've been browsing some r/homelab over at reddit and daydreaming about hypervisors...
Also, ZFS recommends 1GB RAM per TB of disk space, so it's better to have it than not. They also recommend you keep your pools below 80% of capacity. I'm well over both on my old machine, so I went a little overboard in speccing out the upgrade. I'm going to start with 2 x RaidZ2 6x6TB, and with 36 drive bays the overkill on the RAM was worth it if only for futureproofing the overkill on pool size. The ebay prices on used servers are pretty fantastic though, it wasn't nearly as expensive as it might seem.
Of course, I don't technically "need" any of this. We are in the hobby forum after all. It just lets me play around writing scripts, setting up systems, and getting the networking to $!@#$#@ work properly. I enjoy fiddling with the settings and getting things running smoothly.
Even the cost savings aren't that great any more. There are a ton of pre-built systems that are priced really well. Unless you want a weird form factor (my sister and I built a fanless mini-ITX computer for her over the summer - think a full power desktop crammed into a 190x190x60mm case) or want a high end gaming system, you'll only save a bit by building it yourself.
Dual monitors are a great upgrade.
I guess I should re-phrase in that everything I'm interested in doing with my computer(s) can be handled with relatively benign specs, so it's hard to justify an outlandish system. The PC we bought a few months back was actually a machine to allow my fiancée to better help with our wedding (before that she was on a dated laptop). Even so it's a great computer and more than capable of handling everything I do.
The last thing I've been thinking about you had mentioned to me in another thread, actually. Some sort of computer system that I can hook into my TV to beef up the 'smart' capabilities. To date I've been streaming the odd thing through an Android Box, but I think I could get much better results with something a little more robust.
edit: although now that I think of it, my PC is within reach of my Samsung TV so I could probably just string a HDMI cable between the two when needed
A lot of people seem to be using cheap Raspberry Pis and similar SoC systems running Linux/Kodi as a streaming media center. All you need then is a nice wi-fi remote.