I was surprised when I setup k3d the first time, I had a multi-node cluster on my (4 year old) desktop and was able to deploy a multi-node service I wanted to test out without any problems. I would highly recommend k3d if you don't want to pay for cloud servers and don't actually need either high-availability or the CPU power of 3 servers. Also, your desktop is probably more powerful than any base-tier server.