Fell down a hole looking at the Optiplex machines last night. My desk is tiny and I'm already rocking this Mac Mini, a Mac Studio, work laptop and a pi3B running PiHole. So I'm leaning towards a micro, although I might be able to get away with a small form factor instead. I also have a MBP (“Core i7” 2.8 15" Early 2013) that I could wipe and use as a temporary measure while I save for something new. Also bought a pi4B with 4GB of RAM laying around and not used, so I could always split up services, whack Plex on the Studio and use what I've got for a while longer.
Right now I might go with @phanto suggestion to find a USB NIC adapter to keep this beast running or at least determine if it's just the NIC and not the board. Any suggestions for a Debian friendly USB to ethernet adapter appreciated. I also have the Apple thunderbolt to ethernet adapter, might keep trying to get that working. Not seen a single dropped ping overnight with the builtin NIC, so it appears to be super intermittent or when I start to watch something on Plex.
I'm putting some money aside for an 10th or 11th gen i7 at minimum, I feel like I'd like the option for 4K transcoding if needed. Looks like I can put a 2.5" SATA in a micro (7090?), which would be awesome seeing as I have a SATA 1TB SSD in the mini right now I'd like to cannibalize.
My wife and I have had some bad experiences with Ebay in the past, but I'm willing to go back if I can find a good deal on an off lease Optiplex. Any other suggestions on places to look for off lease options that I can hopefully trust (US)?
Also please be brutally honest if you think I should just get a 6-8th gen Optiplex and not bother with the newer CPU. Outside of Plex and torrents, I'd like to eventually run Node.js, VSC Code Server, Pi-hole, home assistant, some storage or cloud access and a Screeps Server. Also playing with Blender, but I doubt I'll be able to do much with rendering with any of these machines.