Hi im looking to self host my own SMF site for a community on low powered hardware. Im not talking intel atoms as the last time i tried a distributed setup between intel atom/E for the static webserver, AMD for the backend and php for wordpress it was very slow so im planning to just have the load distributed around with faster low powered PCs instead. For an average of 20 active at a time, how much hardware is needed? assuming using a few popular plugins.
Also does SMF have a knowledgebase feature for hosting books and various knowledgebase guides and articles?
SMF in general is pretty light weight, and 20 users or so shouldn't really require too much in terms of hardware.
You probably want to have enough memory for your database to work efficiently, enough kick under the hood to serve the PHP and all static content for your users, and enough bandwidth to be able to actually deliver all the content to your users - But I have no specific numbers to give.
That said, we usually don't recommend self hosting, it's often safer and easier to just get a cheap host.
My site started here:
https://www.createaforum.com/
It'll give you a chance to see how it all works.