pc computer used under $500.00 for music only

Try to look to AM1 processors from AMD. Very power efficient. Get a small ITX case with built in power supply (power brick). It's enough to power it up and dead silent. For extra silence you can go for and SSD instead of HDD. 500$ is more than enough for new computer, not used.

Been posting this a bit today.  How about a Raspberry Pi3 with HiFiBerry and Kodi or OSMC?

A Mac Mini, pre 2013. Mechanically they are well built and have a very long life span. If you don’t care for Mac’s operating system, you can load Windows or Linux, as long as the MM has intel inside. The older MM’s have tons of tweaks available which improve performance and most can be performed by the end user, thanks to online DIY videos.

My problem with Mac laptops, even heavily modified one’s, is that I’ve heard them turn otherwise sweet DACs into very hard sounding. I have no idea why. Not all DAC’s are affected equally, but for instance the Ayre QB-9 I heard was not happy. I know I’m in the minority here and that it’s a complete sub-industry.

Why not make it yourself from scratch, new? I built a mini-PC with Xubuntu and am streaming and ripping quite happily with it. Total part costs is under $600 for a 2 TB build.

Use a mini-ITX motherboard that supports FM2+ chips with an AMD A series GPU (Graphics + CPU). Stream via USB 2.0 to a modern USB capable dac (i.e. driverless for OSX/Linux) and you’ll be golden.

I stream PCM and DSD through my Mytek Brooklyn this way. It’s stellar. I also watch Hulu/Netflix and occasionally game from Steam. Oh, and I have open source Android and iPhone app support by using Logitech Media Server. If I want to stream my music remotely I can add Subsonic for a modest fee.

Music management can happen directly on the PC or remotely by sharing out the music folder and using whatever software you want on your laptop.

Using Squeezelite you can turn old Android devices into remote WiFi players too.

Best,

Erik

You can also do what I did with a Raspberri Pi 3 by the way. :) I've not tried it, but once you have Ubuntu on it the same ideas apply.