Also cost effective is to buy used rack mount servers from Amazon. They may be out of warranty but you get a lot more horsepower for your buck, and now your VMs don’t have to be small.
Currently the cloud providers are dumping second gen xeon scalables and those things are pigs when it comes to power use.
Sound wise its like someone running a hair dryer at full speed all the time and it can be louder under load.
> DO NOT TAKE HOME THE FREE 1U SERVER YOU DO NOT WANT THAT ANYWHERE A CLOSET DOOR WILL NOT STOP ITS BANSHEE WAIL TO THE DARK LORD AN UNHOLY CONDUIT TO THE DEPTHS OF INSOMNIA BINDING DARKNESS TO EVEN THE DAY