It always gets me how the world of self-hosting is usually introduced from claiming that you can start giving a second life to a Raspberry Pi or a forgotten laptop, and suddenly the next blog you read calls "minimal" a beast machine meant for racks and semi- or professional environments.
Bought a ThinkCentre M910q with an internal SSD and 16 GB of RAM for €200 a couple years ago... Right now I got it chugging along with TrueNAS + 2 USB disks in ZFS Mirror (sitting in a closed cupboard so no chance of cable disconnections).
For me, "minimal home server" means a small computer that fits on a cabinet on the living room, is practically silent, and has a very small power consumption profile (less than a decent Hetzner otherwise the cost wouldn't be worth it). I have a mini-PC in mind, but people think of Dell PowerEdges. Even if given for free, I would never install at my home a PowerEdge for a home server.
I guess it must be the difference between living on a flat vs a 2 story house :-)