Tag: hardware

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.

CUDA vs ROCm for AI on Linux: NVIDIA's easy path, AMD's emotional journey, and why CPU inference isn't dead yet. Real Docker setups included.

2026 home lab hardware picks: N100/N200 mini PCs, used rack servers, NAS options, UPS, and switches — plus the power-draw math you need to justify the build.

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.

DRAM prices are killing the hobbyist SBC market, but there are still great options. Here's what's worth buying in 2026 for a sub-$200 homelab setup.

1-bit models store weights as -1, 0, or 1. That sounds insane until you see them run a 100B parameter model on a laptop CPU. Here's what's actually happening.

AMD finally has a fast, open source local LLM server that uses both GPU and NPU. If you've been jealous of Nvidia users, Lemonade is worth your time.

Check SSD health, find excessive write patterns, use noatime, move logs to tmpfs to extend lifespan.