I built a lower end linux machine out of consumer grade parts in order to self-host this. I think it ended up being $600-800 with 8TB of storage but could be done a lot cheaper. Hard to beat $10/mo though unless your needs extend beyond storage. I ended up using it for a lot more in the end (mealie, wordpress, etc). Something to consider if you the budget and time.
That sounds very expensive for 8TB of storage. I should think you could build a modest NAS for half that. Alternatively, buy two Western Digital My Books to get more space + redundancy.
I didn't want a NAS. I wanted a linux machine to experiment with docker and setup photoprism. I am self-hosting ~20 containers so far. It has 32GB RAM and pretty good CPU to experiment and run different workflows in the containers. I noted it could be done cheaper but that is not my goal. Can always add external storage.
