Yeah kind of conspicuously absent! They said

> The previous server was 12 year old hardware

which is pretty mad. You can buy a second hand system with tons of ram and a 16-core Ryzen for like $400. 12-year old hardware is only marginally faster than a RPi 5.

> 12-year old hardware is only marginally faster than a RPi 5.

A Dell R620 is over 12 years old and WAY faster than a RPi 5 though...

Sure, it'll be way less power efficient, but I'd definitely trust it to serve more concurrent users than a RPi.

> 12-year old hardware is only marginally faster than a RPi 5

My 14yo laptop-used-as-server disagrees. Also keep in mind that CPU speeds barely improved between about 2012 and 2017, and 2025 is again a lull https://www.cpubenchmark.net/year-on-year.html

I'm also factoring in the ability to use battery bypass in phones I buy now because they are so powerful, I might want to use them as free noiseless server in the future. You can do a heck of a lot on phone hardware nowadays, paying next to nothing for power and no additional cost on your existing internet connection. A RPi 5 is that same ballpark

Plus the fact that it's been running for 5 years. Does that mean they bought 7 year old hardware back then? Or is that just when it was last restarted?

Unfortunately you can’t even get the RAM for $400 anymore.