Tag: hardware

Three mini PC brands dominate homelab 2026: Minisforum, Beelink, Trigkey. Here's how to pick the right Ryzen or N100 box for your cluster.

Your no-BS guide to buying a used GPU for local LLM inference in 2026. Budget tiers from $300 to $5,000 plus, real VRAM math, and tips to dodge the scams.

Rock 5B, Orange Pi 5, and Raspberry Pi 5 compared for home lab use, NVMe, 2.5GbE, NPU, Frigate, k3s performance, and which one you should actually buy.

Before you rack that server and walk away forever, these BIOS and UEFI settings will save you from a 3 AM drive to the datacenter or your dusty basement.

Boot any OS over the network using iPXE, covers dnsmasq proxyDHCP setup, HTTP boot menus, Talos OS live boot, and the quick netboot.xyz shortcut method.

Build a proper DIY NAS in 2026: case selection, CPU choice, drives, HBA card, ZFS pool layout, UPS sizing, and a real power budget that will not fail you.

Dell R720 or HP DL380 G9 for your home lab? We compare CPU generation, power draw, fan noise levels, iDRAC vs iLO, and which used pizza box wins the fight.

NVMe drives throttle hard at 70-85C. Here is how to monitor temps, intentionally trigger throttling to confirm it, and pick a heatsink that fixes the issue.

SAS drives are not dead, they are cheap on eBay right now. Here is exactly when used SAS3 hardware beats SATA for home lab storage builds on a budget.

Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus-E vs ConBee III vs SkyConnect, pick the right Zigbee USB coordinator for your Home Assistant home lab or apartment setup in 2026.

Edit 4K (or chunky 1080p60) on a mini PC without the timeline turning into a slideshow. Kdenlive proxies plus VAAPI/NVENC for cheap homelab editing.

2026 home lab hardware picks: N100/N150 mini PCs, used rack servers, NAS options, UPS, and switches, plus the power-draw math you need to justify the build.