In 2024, upgrading or repairing new Macs has become nearly impossible. This limitation made the decision to replace our old Mac, which served as a home server, an easy one. For the price of a new Mac Mini, we assembled a machine that is upgradable, easily repairable, and quite powerful.

Here are our specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core, 12-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with Wraith Stealth Cooler
(3.7GHz with 4.6GHz boost, 6 CPU Cores/12 Threads, 65W TDP) - $144

ASUS Prime B450M-A II AMD AM4 Motherboard - $75

PowerColor AMD Radeon R7 240 2GB 64-bit GDDR5 Graphics Card - $29

EVGA 500 GE, 80 Plus Gold 500W PSU - $76

Zalman S2 TG ATX Mid Tower PC Case - $50

A-Tech Server 32GB 2Rx8 PC4-25600 DDR4 3200MHz ECC Unbuffered UDIMM 288-Pin Dual Rank DIMM 1.2V RAM - $95 x 4 = $380

Western Digital 6TB WD Red Plus - $127 x 2 = $254

Total: $1008 + Tax



The major challenge was finding a CPU, motherboard, and RAM that support ECC (Error-Correcting Code memory). Intel currently does not support ECC on consumer CPUs, at least not on their 12th, 13th, and 14th generation CPUs, the last time we checked.There's no place like ~